Narrative, Political Violence and Social Change

Narrative, Political Violence and Social Change is a call for engaging actively and critically with the ontological, epistemological, and methodological implications of narrative in the study of political violence and terrorism.

Building on a basic framework of three modes of narrative – as lens, as data, and as tool – the chapters in this book demonstrate how the study of political violence and terrorism benefits from narrative inquiry as an interdisciplinary endeavour, in particular as regards diverging perceptions of social reality, the meanings of belonging, and the human drive for change. They showcase the substantial advances that scholars have made in this field to date and identify promising avenues for further research.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.

Raquel da Silva is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the School of Economics, University of Coimbra, Portugal. She has published numerous articles and a monograph entitled Narratives of Political Violence: Life Stories of Former Militants (Routledge 2019).

Josefin Graef is independent scholar whose work focuses on the uses of narrative for understanding contemporary European politics and societies. Her first monograph Imagining Far-right Terrorism: Violence, Immigration, and the Nation State in Contemporary Western Europe is forthcoming with Routledge.

Nicolas Lemay-Hébert is Senior Lecturer, Department of International Relations, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University. His latest books are The Law and Practice of Peacekeeping (coauthored with R. Freedman and S. Wills; CUP 2021) and Normalization in World Politics (coauthored with G. Visoka; MUP 2022).