Understanding Terrorism: Building on the Sociological Imagination

Two fundamental problems within the social sciences are the failure to integrate the existing segments of knowledge and a very limited ability to point out directions for solving social problems, given that lack of integrated knowledge.

This volume illustrates the integrated work of seven sociologists to reverse this situation not only for the problem of terrorism but also for any substantive or applied problem. C. Wright Mills in The Sociological Imagination castigated the failure to integrate social science knowledge, and this volume carries forward his efforts to analyze human complexity.

To understand and confront terrorism we require not only the integration of social science knowledge bearing on that problem, as illustrated by these authors. We also require the integration of that knowledge with the understanding of those on the front lines in order to connect the dots of specialized basic and applied knowledge, which this volume makes possible.

Bernard Phillips, a student of C. Wright Mills at Columbia, received a Ph.D. at Cornell and taught at the University of North Carolina and Illinois before teaching at Boston University. He cofounded the American Sociological Association section on sociological practice as well as the Sociological Imagination Group—a movement toward a broad scientific method that follows scientific ideals.