A response based on hope, not fear

This form of violence is not the product of Islam, but a dynamic between nations plays a role. In particular, post-colonial logics: between Spain and Morocco, or between Britain and Pakistan. These forms of violence are not generated by religion, but in the absence of political ideologies, the actors involved take religious themes to construct meaning.

The actors construct themselves as generic, abstract Muslims, disconnected from cultures and living traditions. Their abstraction and disconnection make them global people.

Security clearly is part of a response to terror, and the social sciences have an important role to play in this. They can help us understand trajectories into violence, which no longer take the form of joining an organisation, but occur through friendship networks, family networks, the impact of charismatic individuals or the internet.

But the social sciences have a role to play as well in making extreme forms of violence intelligible.

We no longer live in the period of arrogance that in the 1990s celebrated "the triumph of the West". The social sciences need to avoid becoming part of catastrophic views of the world, where the future becomes impossible.

Globalisation has witnessed other important cellular movements that bring new forms of encounters, mobility, cultural production, such as the many groups and networks involved in global action against poverty.

We could call for a 0.1 per cent tax on arms production to support new types of encounter and mobility, global media projects that span borders - a global civil society project made up of decentred networks. We need to think of ways where radically different worlds can encounter each other rather than increasingly fear each other.

We need a type of sociology that can encourage the development of social creativity, new forms of innovation, and strive to construct languages and experiences where conflicts can enter into social and political time.

The social sciences have a key role to play in helping us understand the different forms of violence we encounter in the contemporary world. But we need to remember that where successful responses to terror have emerged - such as in Northern Ireland or the Basque country in Spain - they have always been grounded in images of a world of hope, not fear.

Helping to construct and sustain such images is a key task today for the social sciences - sociology, in particular.