Suicide attacks are a complex and vexing phenomena that are appearing with greater frequency in the international arena. Previous approaches to studying suicide attacks tend to examine them at one-level of analysis. While helpful, the insights produced are isolated from other crucial factors. This dissertation examines suicide attacks at three-levels of analysis as it investigates the organizational incentives, individual motivations and how the attacks achieve societal resonance. As such, the dissertation asks three primary research questions: why do organizations adopt suicide attacks, why are individuals motivated to become suicide attackers and how do the attacks attain resonance?
The research questions are applied to four case studies selected along a conflict continuum where suicide attacks were used. The cases are (a) the Japanese use of Kamikazes during World War II, (b) the LTTEs use of suicide attacks during its irregular war against Sri Lanka, (c) Hamas use of suicide attacks as domestic terrorism against Israel, and (d) Al Qaedas use of suicide attacks as transnational terrorism. The dissertation argues that organizations use suicide attacks out of defensive necessity and for strategic purposes, individuals are motivated to become suicide attackers by a religo-nationalist liberation ideology that promises the attacker post-mortem incentives for his or her death, and that societal resonance is achieved when the organization draws on religious, cultural and nationalistic narratives that enable the population to accept the tactic.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-08242010-092039 |
| Date | 29 September 2010 |
| Creators | Echemendia, Michael Patrick |
| Contributors | Prof. Dennis Gormley, Dr. Stephen Sloan, Dr. Paul Nelson, Dr. Phil Williams |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08242010-092039/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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