Terrorism, Geography of

Definitions of Terrorism

Definitions of terrorism abound. Terrorism is viewed in this entry as the use of violence by individuals, substate groups, agents of the state, and state authority against innocent victims to achieve political, ethnic, racial, religious, or other ideological objectives. Terrorism can be a broad strategy as well as an individualized tactic used in sociopolitical conflict, practiced by nation-states and substate actors alike. The sociologist Donald Black defines pure terrorism as a form of social control and collective self-help among groups addressing perceived problems—one group wages collective violence on others to get something done or to stop something. Terrorism is also considered to be a tactic of asymmetric warfare.

Geographical Components of Terrorism

Every terrorist incident occurs in a physical place in which four necessary elements of terrorism come together: (1) the perpetrator of terroristic violence, (2) the victims of violence, (3) the types of violence (methods and weapons), and (4) the ideological motivations that transform ordinary criminal violence into terrorism. The interactions among terrorists, victims, methods, motivations, and places of attacks produce several geographical dimensions of terrorism.

Spatial Strategy of Terrorist Violence

Terrorist behavior has a spatial component when violence driven by political, ethnic, sectarian, or religious motives is perpetrated to control, change, or eliminate the activities occurring within an area or the people occupying that area. Terrorist violence is instigated to (a) drive out the occupants of a particular place, (b) keep other parties away from an area, or (c) stop certain activities from occurring in an area. Alongside these motivations is a desire to create a climate of fear through random violence that sends a message that no place is safe and that the innocent will be targeted to accomplish the terrorists’ objectives. Ethno-nationalist, state terror, and genocidal campaigns commonly include explicit spatial strategies to stop the performance of human activities in a space, drive people out of certain spaces, or simply eradicate them.

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