In this groundbreaking work, leading scholars and experts set out to explore the utility of the concept of affordance in the study and understanding of terrorism and political violence. Affordance is a concept used in a variety of fields, from psychology to artificial intelligence, which refers to how the quality of an environment or object allows an individual to perform a specific action. This concept can represent an important element in the process of choice involved in behavior, and is closely related to situational analyses of criminal behavior. In this book, the contributors set out to explore how this concept can be used to study terrorism and, as a result, develop management strategies. Essays discuss such topics as affordance in relation to counterterrorism, technology, cyber-jihad, ideology, and political ecologies. By importing the concept of affordance and a new set of research to the study of terrorism, the authors offer an innovative and original work that challenges and adds to various aspects of situational crime prevention and counterterrorism.

Author Biography

Max Taylor is Professor of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Earlier appointments include Director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at the University of St. Andrews and Professor of Applied Psychology at University College Cork, Ireland. His publications include: The Future of Terrorism (with John Horgan), 2000; Terrorist Lives (with Ethel Quayle), 1994; and The Fanatics: A Behavioural Approach to Political Violence, 1991. P.M. Currie was educated at Cambridge and Oxford where he gained a doctorate on Islam in India,published as The Shrine and Cult of Muin al-din Chishti of Ajmer (Oxford University Press, 1989; re-issued 1993 and 2006). He has also contributed to the new edition of The Encyclopaedia of Islam published by Brill. He is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the School of International Relations, St Andrews University.