Assessing the Constructivist Critique of the Evidential Value of Terrorists’ Accounts of Their Actions

Abstract While there is increasing recognition of the need to assess the relevance of the risk factors for radicalization detected in large quantitative studies using qualitative research involving interviews with current and former extremists, many terrorism researchers doubt the evidential value of the accounts terrorists provide of their radicalization. Complementing an earlier critique of this situation by the author, this chapter further examines a reason for suspicion: the radical social constructivist rejection of the differentiation between the motivations for actions and post hoc rationalizations in the study of such accounts. Surveying the grounds for the radical constructivist stance in some classic sociological texts, and as debated in the study of religious conversion accounts, a close analogue to radicalization accounts, this chapter explains why and how terrorism scholars can and should undertake a more systematic assessment of the evidential value of the ways terrorists account for their actions.