Grounding Suicide Terrorism in Death Anxiety and Consumer Capitalism

Abstract

Thomas Huxley, known to history as “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his forceful advocacy of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, is claimed to have once remarked that “we must learn what is true in order to do what is right.” Whether speaking about physical or social processes, understanding is enhanced when we know how the pieces fit together.

Suicide terrorism is one topic about which we would like to do the right thing. For most, that would include finding a way to prevent such attacks. To the extent that prevention depends on removing the motivations to engage in the activity, learning what is true can be difficult, not least because the perpetrators are necessarily unavailable to tell us their reasons. As a result, decision-makers often fall back upon assumptions and stereotypes that serve other purposes, but which rarely lead to useful or truthful insights on the problem.

This article examines an influential theory of suicide attacker motivations, the Significance Quest Theory, and suggests that this death anxiety approach can be improved by shifting its focus toward the related but more comprehensive Terror Management Theory. The theoretical productivity of this realignment is tested by examining the relationship between suicide attacks and one variable thought to trigger the underlying anxieties, the local pressures from global consumer capitalism. After describing the relationship between death anxiety and suicide terrorism generally, the paper concludes by applying these insights in the ethnographic context of Egypt.

Keywords: suicide terrorism, death anxiety, capitalism, consumerism, Egypt, terror management theory, significance quest theory