2 The Unanticipated Consequences of Globalization: Contextualizing Terrorism Michael J. Stevens Some scholars have forecast a decline in terrorism due to international efforts toward prevention and, ironically, as I will show, due to the global expansion of free markets and democracy (Johnson, 2001). However, they acknowledge that the 1990s witnessed a significant increase in casualties due to terrorism (Johnson, 2001; Merari, 2000). Others argue that emerging ethnic and religious sensibilities, the widening gap between rich and poor, the status of the United States as the only superpower, links to organized crime, access to the Internet, and the availability of weapons of mass destruction will increase the incidence of terrorism (Crenshaw, 2000; Jensen, 2001; Medd & Goldstein, 1997; Merari, 2000). Given the unprece- dented attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and evidence of an active network of terrorist groups worldwide (e.g., al-Qaeda), there is an urgency to understand and respond to the threat posed by such groups and their members. In this chapter, I argue that globalization contributes to the creation of sociocul- tural and psychosocial conditions from which terrorism may emerge. I first review the definition of terrorism and trace its recent history and future course. I then highlight how positivistic psychological theories have rooted terrorism in individual pathology or small-group processes, thereby perpetuating decontextualized, cause- effect accounts of terrorism that have useful, but narrow, meaning. I go on to describe globalization and provide examples of the sociocultural dislocation and psychosocial dysfunction it has reaped. I then articulate how constitutive, relational approaches offer meaningful frameworks for understanding terrorism in the con-