Relative Deprivation Theory

In my opinion, the most persuasive cause of terrorism would be what Martin describes as sociological causes, particularly the theory of relative deprivation. This theory means that people turn towards acts of collective violence due to the belief that they are being deprived of certain rights or are being treated as second-class citizens. The rights that people may be derived from can be anything from social rights such as personal security to basic rights like food and shelter. When people in a particular area who have a sense of being repressed in some manner unite, they may begin to act collectively to achieve their goals. The relative deprivation theory works well in that it is not too broad, yet it still is narrow enough where one can argue that most terrorist feel that they are being prevented from exercising what they believe to be their rights. For example, people in the Basque region in Spain fight for their right to preserve their national identity whereas Palestinians in Israel fight for their nation and their rights as Israeli citizens which are denied (Martin 50,51). This shows the broad range of reasons why people may take up arms as terrorists

These are often people who are not deprived of something to the point the point where it severely harms them, which would be absolute deprivation, but they are being relatively deprived since they still maintain most basic human rights. It could be argued, for example, Osama bin Laden was relatively deprived in that he may have felt he was denied the ability to openly practice his interpretation of his religion or that the right of his state’s or region’s sovereignty was being denied, which, in turn, meant he was being denied a form of