Citation

Böckler N, Leuschner V, Zick A, Scheithauer H. Int. J. Dev. Sci. 2018; 12(1-2): 5-24.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, IOS Press)

DOI

10.3233/DEV-180255

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Analysis of incidents over the past ten years in Germany reveals that the boundaries between targeted attacks in schools and terrorist attacks are starting to blur. Böckler, Leuschner, Roth, Zick, and Scheithauer (2018) recently presented a set of hypotheses about similarities between the developmental pathways of school attackers and lone actor terrorists. To date there is only a small body of empirical research comparing these two forms of targeted violence in depth. In order to fill this gap, this article presents findings from a qualitative analysis of prosecution files comparing the developmental pathways of German school attackers (N = 7; age range: 13 to 23) and Jihadi attackers (N = 7; age range: 21 to 28 years) who committed their attacks between 2000 and 2013. Using theoretical coding and constant case comparison, the contribution shows that the two phenomena have overlaps in which developmental processes and social mechanisms are similar. Both school attackers and Jihadi attackers frame their act of violence using cultural scripts and perform the attack on a public stage where victims are attacked not on the basis of personal conflicts but because of their symbolic meaning. Taking into account the similarities in the perpetrators' developmental pathways, the authors propose that it might be more fruitful from an operational perspective to discuss severe target school violence and terrorist attacks under a common concept of demonstrative violence than to artificially assign them to exclusive classes of violence.

Incidents of severe targeted school violence and terrorist attacks are usually considered as distinct social phenomena, although no clear and unequivocal definitions have been formulated for either. Severe targeted school violence is generally understood as targeted attacks committed by (former) school students, where the school is deliberately selected as the location and lethal weapons are used with the intention to kill (e.g. Bondü, Cornell, & Scheithauer, 2011; Bondü & Scheithauer, 2014a). While these incidents are driven by personal motives associated with the school context and usually understood as personal revenge for experiences of humiliation (for example Vossekuil, Fein, Reddy, Borum, & Modzeleski, 2002), terrorist attacks are normally defined as acts of violence directed against a political or societal order (Crenshaw, 2001). Terrorism is always embedded within a communication strategy designed to have far-reaching psychological effects beyond the immediate victim(s), namely by generating public fear within a wider audience. The addressees might be a rival ethnic or religious group, an entire country, a national government, a political party, or public opinion in general (Hoffman, 2006). Hence, terrorism is defined as "asymmetrical deployment of threats and violence against enemies using means that fall outside the forms of political struggle routinely operating within some current regime." (Tilly, 2004, p. 5)...

Language: en