Perceived Injustice: The Psychological Roots of Somali Piracy

This research interrogates Somali piracy through an integrated framework of critical geopolitics, postcolonial theory, and psychologies of perceived injustice. Challenging conventional security narratives that reduce piracy to state failure and criminal opportunism, this study argues that piracy must be understood as a morally and politically significant act rooted in perceived injustices stemming from centuries of global power asymmetries. Drawing on discourse analysis and narrative inquiry, this dissertation demonstrates how marginalized coastal communities perceive piracy as symbolic agency against geopolitical domination. The findings re-theorize piracy not as deviance but as contested geopolitics emerging from postcolonial subjectivities and psychological responses to humiliation, dispossession, and misrecognition within global inequality.