What does Critical Terrorism Studies contribute to the study of Terrorism?
consign traditional terrorism studies to a position of irrelevance.1
A Pluralist Approach
Considering that CTS may harbour the potential to disregard over forty
years of scholarship earned from traditional terrorism studies, orthodox
academics are neither powerless nor voiceless and have attempted to
stunt the growth of this emergent critical field. As such, the appeal of a
pluralist approach to the study of terrorism becomes clear as it embodies
a logical solution to the apparent schism within terrorism studies. In this
manner, facets of each approach could be utilised to represent a more
holistic theory for studying and understanding terrorism. Despite the
current imposition of a cycle of continuous antagonism, this antipathy
within the discipline is relatively unproductive and serves only to shroud
the fact that critical and traditional terrorism research are actually complementary. These two spheres are less like enemies and are more akin to
opposite sides of the same coin. Therefore they stand to make a radical
contribution to terrorism studies if merged together. For the terrorism
scholar can try to be as independently minded as possible and test for the
robustness of findings based on different definition