Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer discusses that terrorism is a methodology that belongs to military science in a collection of techniques, but terrorism is included under the category of criminology in library cataloguing systems. The writer notes that terrorism can be well understood through the approaches of criminology, however, conflict theory seems best equipped to explain terrorist organizations and acts, depending upon circumstances, for reasons that are explained in the paper's later sections. The writer concludes that like well planned crimes, incidents of terrorism often do work, as a set of considerations to be kept in mind before denouncing crime or terrorism, or acts of terrorism as mere random crimes which they are not.

Outline:
Introduction
Classical Theory and Terrorism
The Consensus School and Terrorism
Conflict Theory and Terrorism
Conflict Theory, Sri Lanka and Tamil Terrorism
Concluding Remarks

From the Paper:

" If one traces the rise of modernity from the Industrial Revolution, capitalist development and the ideas of the Enlightenment, one appreciates classical models of criminology to assert that deviance was a natural result. Since human beings are rational creatures, they should have and will demand rights and freedoms, eventually. The deviant person asserts his or her rational self-interest due to a particular form of 'free thought' and agency that we discuss as deviant and thus, criminal, because it departs from a society's legal framework and moral standards. This classical approach has replaced earlier ideas of the criminal as a person acting under supernatural influence, as in medieval ideas of the criminal as a person possessed by the devil. Instead, crime came to be seen as a rationally calculated action with the result that reducing crime meant deterrence, in approaches based on how the deviant could be dissuaded from committing a crime, its penalty helping a criminal to see that a planned crime was not rational or appealing because of its risks. Further thought moved from a concept of the punishment fitting the crime, proportional to the harm done to society, or a specific victim."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Elliot, R.S.P. and J. Hickie. (1971). Ulster - a Case Study in Conflict Theory. London: Longman's.
• T.R. Gurr. (1980). Handbook of Political Conflict - Theory and Research. New York: Free State Press.
• Johnson, C. (2000). Blowback - the Costs and Consequences of American Empire. New York: Henry Holt.
• Juergensmeyer, M. (2000). Terror in the Mind of God - the Global Rise of Religious Violence. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Kearney, R.N. (1985). Ethnic Conflict and the Tamil Separatist Movement in Sri Lanka. Asian Survey. 25: 898-917.

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