Terrorism and Peacebuilding

This chapter examines the relationship between terrorism studies and the practice(s) of counterterrorism, and peace studies and the practice(s) of peacebuilding. The chapter seeks to uncover the political implications of the conceptualizations of both “terrorism” and “peace” in order to evaluate how peace was sought (or not) to be built in terrorist conflicts. A brief chronology of long-established approaches in each field uncovers the basic deficiencies in approaches to these two concepts by both academics and practitioners, resulting in a shared definition of objectives: counterterrorism’s preoccupation with the annihilation of terrorists, and peacebuilding’s anxiety with domination and imposition; as a consequence, both of these fail to provide anything other than a victor’s peace. The emergence of more critical approaches in both fields has begun to rectify those understandings, but more daring epistemological and methodological steps need to be undertaken. The chapter concludes by identifying some of the obstacles and limitations facing these more recent approaches and tries to identify the scope of future research.