What is terror? What are its roots and its results - and what part does it play in human experience and history? This volume offers a timely and original anthropological insight into the ways in which acts of terror - and reactions to those acts - impact on the lives of virtually everyone in the world today, as perpetrators, victims or observers. Since the destruction of the twin towers, terror has been defined very largely in the public mind in terms of Islamic fundamentalism, but as contributors to this volume demonstrate, what we have come to regard as acts of terror - whether politically motivated, or state-sanctioned - have assumed many different forms and provoked wildly differing responses throughout the world. This collection brings together new ways of thinking about violence and terror in a coherent analysis that encourages fresh insights and offers a genuinely new way of understanding the social processes of terrorism.