Rethinking the Roots of Terrorism

Rethinking the Roots of Terrorism seeks to explain why terrorism occurs. This study provides a comprehensive interdisciplinary survey that investigates the motivations, reasons and causes of terrorism at all levels in society, and more specifically in the context of the Middle East. The author is critical of what he describes as 'orthodox' terrorism discourse and the conventional understanding of terrorism, which he argues does little to address its roots causes. He seeks to open up the debate on the causes of terrorism by aligning it with the causes of conflict and thus using the methods and approaches provided by conflict resolution to rethink the roots of terrorist violence. Franks reveals the multifarious and multilevel political, social, and economic causes and motivations that generate terrorism, which tend to be obscured- or worse, purposefully ignored- by the orthodox approach.