Identity and The Terrorist Threat

Abstract

Many analysts would agree that terrorism is an ever-changing phenomenon. However, like all forms of human behavior, there are certain sociological and psychological elements of terrorism that remain constant. One such element is that of identity, which can serve to both inform and influence terrorist behavior through individuals' perceptions of themselves and their environment. This article relies on symbolic interactionism and five of its organizing concepts—symbols and objects, acts and social acts, meaning, role-taking and role-making, and the emergence of the self—to create an interpretative model for understanding terrorist behavior through identity theory. The conceptual framework is then used to examine the creation and maintenance of identities within three terrorist groups: the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Hamas, and the Tupamaros. Although these groups do not account for all of the terrorist attacks in the world, they do represent three diverse forms of terrorism (i.e., national, religious, and revolutionary) from three distinct regions of the globe (the West, the Middle East, and Latin America). Therefore, understanding their behavior through the identity prism can help to shed light on other terrorist groups—those that currently exist and those that have yet to emerge. Implications are proposed for the areas of law enforcement, public policy, research, and the model's general utility in assessing other forms of human behavior.