Jeffrey Lewis - Engaging and Countering the Social and Cultural Mechanisms Used by Organizations to Motivate Suicide Attackers

Jeffrey Lewis
Lecturer, Department of History, The Ohio State University
"Engaging and Countering the Social and Cultural Mechanisms Used by Organizations to Motivate Suicide Attackers"

This unit presents a comprehensive approach for allowing students to understand why suicide bombing has come to be used in so many different environments (including those not directly involved in conflict). The unit contains a short, stand alone lecture with background readings suitable for integration into numerous courses on different aspects of terrorism or contemporary security issues. It also includes a longer unit containing 2-4 weeks' worth of material (several lectures, more comprehensive reading, an overview of recent scholarship regarding suicide bombing, short assignment ideas) which is suitable for more specialized courses on political violence, insurgency, recent terrorism, or events in Iraq and Afghanistan. Finally the unit contains detailed plans for a specialized class on suicide bombing that can be taught either at the general undergraduate/professional education level or at the advanced undergraduate/beginning graduate level.

Learning Objectives

The objective of this unit is to allow students to understand suicide bombing as a complex social phenomenon that operates on three distinct levels:

The level of the individual bomber, which will present psychological explanations of the factors that motivate suicide bombers, as well as the coercive psychological tools often employed to induce individuals to become bombers;
The group/organizational level, which will encourage students to utilize approaches from the information sciences to better understand the distributed nature of recent suicide bombing and also models from the business world to see suicide bombing as a way of globally branding and marketing a very specific form of resistance against perceived aggression; and
The social level, which will take a cultural approach toward understanding the history and religions of different societies in order to explain the social needs that suicide bombing and suicide bombers fill and to reveal the traditions and symbols that organizations use to connect themselves to this broader audience.

Intended Audience

This curriculum unit has been developed with the following audiences in mind:

Students with some background knowledge of terrorism at the advanced undergraduate, beginning graduate, and executive education levels.

Table of Contents

Single Lecture Unit: Unit Objective; Preparatory Reading; Suggestions for Further Reading; Student Objectives; Potential Assignments; Student Outline; Outline with Instructor Notes; Appendix I: Palestinian Suicide Attacks; Appendix II: Global Suicide Attacks
Two-Four Week Unit: Unit Objectives; Preparatory Reading for Instructor; Suggestions for Further Reading; Overview of Lecture Topics and Readings; Suggested Assignments; Student Outlines; Outlines with Instructor Notes
Full-Term Class, Beginning Undergraduate/Professional Education Level: Course Objectives; Preparatory Reading for Instructor; Suggestions for Further Reading; Model Syllabus with Assignments; Student Outlines; Outlines with Instructor Notes
Full-Term Class, Advanced Undergraduate/Graduate Level: Course Objectives; Preparatory Reading for Instructor; Suggestions for Further Reading; Model Syllabus with Assignments; Student Outlines; Outlines with Instructor Notes