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Hiding in Plain Sight

Community Organization, Naive Trust and Terrorism

Virginia Polytechnic and State University, USA, hawdonj{at}vt.edu

John Ryan

Virginia Polytechnic and State University, USA, johnryan{at}vt.edu

Terrorism is behavior that is both initiated and sustained by actors within a social environment. That social environment may vary along a continuum from supporting and enabling the behavior, to ignoring or being unaware of the behavior, to actively opposing the behavior. This article applies social disorganization theory, social capital theory and Black's work on terrorism to predict community characteristics likely to provide the anonymity required for the development of terrorist activity in developed nations. Using the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey and case studies, the article demonstrates how the theory predicts and helps explain why the 9/11 terrorists went undetected even as they lived in the US.

Key Words: community • social capital • social disorganization • terrorism • trust

Current Sociology, Vol. 57, No. 3, 323-343 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0011392108101586


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