‘Suspect categories,’ alienation and counterterrorism: critically assessing PREVENT in the UK
The ‘suspect community’ thesis has been a primary tool for exploring counter-terrorism strategies like the UK’s PREVENT and their effect on communities. However, in seeking to shed light on the differentialist, complex nature of modern counter-terrorism, it was recently redesigned by Ragazzi as the...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2020
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| In: |
Terrorism and political violence
Year: 2020, Volume: 32, Issue: 4, Pages: 851-873 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (Verlag) |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | The ‘suspect community’ thesis has been a primary tool for exploring counter-terrorism strategies like the UK’s PREVENT and their effect on communities. However, in seeking to shed light on the differentialist, complex nature of modern counter-terrorism, it was recently redesigned by Ragazzi as the ‘suspect category’ thesis. This article engages with this thesis’ concept of distinguished ‘risky’ and ‘trusted’ suspect categories defining PREVENT’s counter-terrorism engagement with Muslim communities. With the author’s own reservations about this thesis, this article also explores this important concept to critically assess PREVENT as a counter-terrorism strategy. Principally, it provides an exploration of PREVENT’s construction of risky and trusted suspect categories and their potential for fostering alienation, as well as a reflection on the effects of alienation on counter-terrorism. These discussions prove that PREVENT fosters alienation that is detrimental to counter-terrorism efforts. Damaging constructions as such not only make PREVENT redundant, but are also emblematic of Jackson’s theory of the epistemological crisis of counter-terrorism, as this article will discuss. Recommendations regarding rethinking the conceptual basis for PREVENT will be also made with a specific emphasis on addressing the epistemological crisis of counter-terrorism. |
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| Item Description: | Gesehen am 24.01.2023 Published online: 08 Jan 2018 |
| ISSN: | 1556-1836 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/09546553.2017.1415889 |