Sociology as a Life or Death Issue: The Dynamics of Suicide Bombing Robert J Brym Department of Sociology University of

1. Sociology as a Life or Death Issue: The Dynamics of Suicide Bombing Robert J Brym Department of Sociology University of Toronto

3. Theories of Suicide Bombing • PSYCHOPATHOLOGICAL: Suicide bombers are psychologically unstable and irrational. • DEPRIVATIONIST: Suicide bombers are poor, unemployed, and socially marginal. • CULTURAL: Islamic culture motivates suicide bombers. • RATIONALIST: Suicide bombers act when they believe that suicide attacks have a high probability of achieving organizational goals.

4. Criticisms of Rational Choice Theory • OBJECTIVES: Suicide bombing involves mixed motivations and organizational rationales. • TIMING: Suicide bombing is often not timed to maximize the strategic advantages of insurgents. • RESULTS: Suicide bombing sometimes encourages targets to make minor concessions, but bombings often fail to achieve their main objectives and sometimes have consequences that are the opposite of those intended by suicide attackers and their organizations.

5. Motive, Rationale, and Precipitant • MOTIVE: Reasons suicide bombers give for their suicide attacks in statements they make prior to attacking. • RATIONALE: Reasons that representatives of organizations claiming responsibility for suicide bombings give for the attacks. • PRECIPITANT: Specific preceding events that affect the timing of suicide bombings according to representatives of organizations claiming responsibility for the attacks.

6. Suicide Bombing and the Second Intifada:Causal Mechanisms (in percent) * Does not equal 100 because of rounding.

7. For the text of this lecture and accompanyingslides, please visit: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/soc101y/brym/mun.html