Entry into terrorist organizations has often been described from an extrinsic perspective, as a biographical rupture. However, the “careers” of activists from illegal Basque far-left and national liberation organizations show continuities, underscored by the players themselves. We used a model developed by Snow and McAdam [2000] to understand the "identity work" that accompanies integration and participation in clandestine groups. Two major forms of identity work characterize entry into the organizations studied: “identity convergence” and “identity amplification”. These results suggest a need to reconsider the heuristic relevance of the concepts of radicalization and tip over into terrorism. They also help clarify the role of both cognitive and affective group identification within the identity redefinition process for the individuals involved.

Dominant theories fail to explain the use of terror during the Second Palestinian Intifada. Notably, they fail to explain Hamas’s abandonment of suicide attacks by 2005. We classified the universe of fatalities on both sides and examined the conflict’s patterns of lethal violence. Our analysis of fatality ratios and rates of change by fatality category supports a dual-arena theory of terror. Noting a rapid increase of indiscriminate Israeli civilian deaths and a relative evening out within this category in the conflict’s initial phase, we demonstrate that externally Hamas aimed to improve the balance of forces to compel Israel to negotiate on equal terms using the “out-suffering” mechanism. Internally, Hamas used terror to build confrontational capacity by attracting Palestinian factions to a resistance pole and isolating conciliatory elites. When their continued deployment became too costly relative to emerging options, the campaign was swiftly called off. In the end, while based on strategic calculations, Hamas’s use of terror proved to be a failure.

The terrorist attack in Norway on 22 July 2011, carried out by a right-wing extremist, was a shocking event, leaving 77 dead and dozens seriously wounded. It soon gave rise to a range of interpretations and explanations as to the causes and implications of the attack. Engaging with classical anthropological and more recent sociological literature on trust and blame, the article shows that there was no hegemonic narrative or explanation of the attack, and similarly no broad agreement over the steps to be taken in order to reduce the chances of future attacks. Six different attempts to account for the terrorist attack are described, but only two correctly identify demographic change, migration and the rise of xenophobic politics as the underlying causes of the terrorist attack. This suggests that the high level of trust characteristic of Norwegian society is likely to be reduced as a result of accelerating change and accompanying social fragmentation.