Values and Violence

Most books on terrorism deal with descriptions of terrorist organizations and activities, some examine privacy and civil liberties issues, and others treat terrorism as a series of policy choices. Hardly any books deal with the foundational questions of values and violence as they relate to terrorism. The two unique features of this book are that it deals with violence at the normative foundations of values and human dignity and that it includes many of the best-known authors in the world from a variety of disciplines, making it a paradigmatic example of cutting-edge study in interdisciplinary scholarship, with a focus on bringing theories and policy issues closer together.

"Values and Violence" includes chapters by a dozen of the leading scholars in the world on patterns of political violence, responses to terrorism, and the basic value choices inherent in them.

• Amartya Sen
• Crime
• Martha Nussbaum
• Terrorist
• Violence
• civil liberties
• human dignity
• ideology
• issue
• morality
• pattern of political violence
• terrorism
• terrorist organisations
• terrorist threats
• values

"This is a remarkable collection of many of the best minds pondering the terrorist threat. Here we see terrorism in all its variety of motivations, the conditions that foster it and the policies that can best address it. The authors see little prospect for eliminating the scourge, but they do offer a farsighted guide to how the world can live through it, reduce it and still maintain humane values intact. The international community needs to do much better than we have been doing; here is the intellectual platform for doing so."
Michael W. Doyle, Columbia University

"Seven years after 9/11, policymakers are still struggling to understand the dynamics that produce terrorism in ways that help them craft better approaches for confronting the challenge of political violence. In Values and Violence, some of America's and the world’s top scholars come together to provide a state-of-the-art assessment of these issues, with particular focus on how the quest for human dignity can motivate violent acts. I know of no other single volume that brings together this much talent to try to help the world understand the sources of the scourge of terrorism and, thereby, to help us understand how to contain it.  This book will further enhance the reputation of University of Utah’s Institute for Public and International Affairs as one of America’s leading centers of study of this critical region." 
Philip Gordon
Senior Scholar, Brookings Institution, Washington D.C.

"If you want a broad and sophisticated inter-disciplinary approach to terrorism to understand the role of values both in forming terrorist activity and in responding to its challenges, this reader is for you. The authors, eminent in a variety of disciplines, mix theoretical and empirical case studies in a primer ideal for the student and specialist alike. The emphasis on the normative dimensions of understanding and responding toterrorism in a globalized, multi-cultural environment is especially valuable; not least because of its neglect in recent years. All in all a splendid volume of high caliber for students and a substantial contribution to the study of political violence in its broad context for the experts in the field!"
Shahram Chubin
Director of Studies, Geneva Centre for Security Policy

• University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA

  Ibrahim A. Karawan, Wayne McCormack, Stephen E. Reynolds

Policies and ethics