Book Review: Lee Jarvis, Times of Terror: Discourse, Temporality and the War on Terror (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009, 208 pp., US$85.00)
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| Author | Caron E. Gentry |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298110400011213 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Reviews 207
To the extent to which a balanced critique is the role of the reviewer, for me it
remained unclear in the introductory chapters exactly how the analysis of NGO strate-
gies would be conducted, and what set of factors permitted the selection of only seven
UK-based NGOs that surely diluted the universality of the study’s findings. More puz-
zling still, given the author’s critique of liberal conceptualisations of global civil society,
was that Stavrianakis did not examine those initiatives – such as the Principles for
Responsible Investment and Cluster Munitions Coalition – which have begun publicly
identifying those companies, investors and financiers involved in the production and
trade of this most relevant form of conventional weaponry.
Overall, Stavrianakis’s analysis unquestionably makes a practical and timely contri-
bution to the study of civil society, particularly for those interested in the present role of
NGOs advocating a binding Arms Trade Treaty.
N.A.J. Taylor
N.A.J. Taylor is a PhD candidate at the School of Political Science and International
Studies, University of Queensland, Australia.
Lee Jarvis, Times of Terror: Discourse, Temporality and the War on Terror (Basingstoke: Palgrave
MacMillan, 2009, 208 pp., US$85.00).
Alex J. Bellamy, Fighting Terror: Ethical Dilemmas (London: Zed Books, 2008, 196 pp., US$90.00
hbk, US$27.00 pbk).
Lee Jarvis and Alex J. Bellamy can surely agree that there are significant problems with
how the US conducted and framed the War on Terror. But from this common stance, Jarvis,
as a postmodern discourse analyst, and Bellamy, a Just War ethicist, build nearly diametri-
cally opposing arguments about how to address terrorism as a topic of scholarly research.
Jarvis deconstructs the use of time in the discourse of the Bush Administration, believing
that the subjective nature of the term ‘terrorism’ leads to problems in how the morality and
legitimacy of various actors are constructed (pp. 11–13). Bellamy challenges presump-
tions about the ethics of counter-terrorism policies and procedures, believing that it is
absolutely necessary to ground approaches to terrorism in a moral framework (pp. 1–2).
Both are fascinating, and fascinatingly different, accounts of how to approach terrorism.
Writing within the emerging subfield of critical terrorism studies, Jarvis ably articu-
lates that this book is meant to ‘disrupt … specific framings of terror’ (p. 11) and to
explore how ‘terror’ and ‘terrorism’ are produced as research and scholarly topics.
Therefore, Jarvis’s main contribution is to introduce ‘time’ as a device in the rhetoric that
emerged in the US immediately following the 9/11 attacks. Such a unique analysis is
necessary, Jarvis cogently argues, because ‘time’ was used to frame the ‘perceived coher-
ence, necessity, and legitimacy of the Bush administration’s new War on Terror’ (p. 2).
Jarvis explains that time/temporality is a political phenomenon. Time is used to evoke
certain images and events that have historical, social and political significance. In
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