Towards a theory of the global event---the cases of 11 March 2004 and 7 July 2005 terrorist bombings.

Abstract

How can we understand the major contradiction that seems to exist between the unilateral global strategies of certain actors and a world which is now, for the first time, largely interdependent. This question has undoubtedly been among the key themes of the globalization debate in the post 9/11 world. While writers on globalization have tended to focus their attention on the incoherencies and eventual failures of the Bush Administration's policies, the structural role that the 9/11 terrorist attacks played in the whole process has been largely overlooked by systematic scholarly research. This Master's dissertation attempts to explore the mechanism of social change that is implicit in the latter perspective. Building on Anthony Giddens' methodology of episodic characterization, global events are defined and studied as starting points of contingent, unpredictable and highly strategic sequences of structural transformation. The exploratory framework is applied to the study of the realization and aftermath of the Madrid 2004 terrorist bombings in order to give a flavour of how global event episodes can be individually characterized. The London 7/7 terrorist attacks episode is also explored, with the aim of outlining a program of comparative research towards a possible theory of the 'global event'