Modern serial killers

Abstract

The study of serial killing has been dominated by an individualized focus on the aetiology and biography of particular offenders. As such, it has tended to downplay the broader social, historical and cultural context of such acts. This article addresses this lacuna by arguing that serial killers are distinctively modern. It highlights six modern phenomena related to serial killing: (a) the mass media and the attendant rise of a celebrity culture; (b) a society of strangers; (c) a type of mean/ends rationality that is largely divorced from value considerations; (d) cultural frameworks of denigration which tend to implicitly single out some groups for greater predation; (e) particular opportunity structures for victimization; and finally (f) the notion that society can be engineered. Combined, these factors help to pattern serial killing in modernity’s own self-image, with modernity setting the parameters of what it means to be a serial killer, and establishing the preconditions for serial murder to emerge in its distinctive contemporary guise.

The social nature of serial murder: The intersection of gender and modernity

“…More recent significant contributions to work on serial murder identify the material and cultural circumstances of modernity and late modernity as fundamental to serial killing. where iIt is argued that social and economic transformation has led to increased marginality and vulnerability alongside a collective mind-set which has absorbed the classification of citizens based on economic value and the selfishness and amorality inherent to late capitalism (Haggerty, 2009;Wilson, 2012;Wilson and Harrison, 2008;Hall and Wilson, 2014). Although I am appreciative of how this work has advanced understandings of serial murder via the implementation of a socio-structural framework, I argue that insufficient attention is given to how gender relations and masculinity shape such violence.…”

“…Haggerty (2009) notes parallels between modernity's defining features and the rise of serial murder, arguing that they enable serial murder in a situational sense and shape and legitimate it at the level of the subjective. which heThis claims is is borne out in increases in this type of killing since the onset of modernity.…”

“…Leyton's (1986) Hunting Humans was one of the first to apply this type of socio-structural analysis, identifying class configurations during pre-industrial, industrial and postmodern periods as producing offenderperpetrator relationships specific to these historical eras. More recent work has built on this approach, claiming that the nature of the social as realised at various stages of modernity is central to the emergence of the serial killer both materially and culturally (Haggerty, 2009;Wilson, 2012;Hall and Wilson, 2014). For instance, Haggerty (2009) discusses how modernity does not cause serial killing but provides a set of conditions, which enable and sanction it (see also Picart and Greek, 2007), arguing that the worldview of the serial killer reflects the values espoused byin modernity.…”

“…More recent work has built on this approach, claiming that the nature of the social as realised at various stages of modernity is central to the emergence of the serial killer both materially and culturally (Haggerty, 2009;Wilson, 2012;Hall and Wilson, 2014). For instance, Haggerty (2009) discusses how modernity does not cause serial killing but provides a set of conditions, which enable and sanction it (see also Picart and Greek, 2007), arguing that the worldview of the serial killer reflects the values espoused byin modernity. Likewise, Wilson's work (2006Wilson's work ( , 2012 builds on these themes, highlighting how widening inequalities, reduced state protection and the erosion of the social, which characterise neo-liberal late modernity, have brought about increases in violence and victim vulnerability.…”

“…The article outlines and interrogates some of the more recent nuanced sociological approaches to serial murder which identify the structural and cultural conditions of modernity/(late) modernity and the current political economy ains constituting serial killers and victims (Haggerty, 2009;Wilson, 2012;Hall and Wilson, 2014). It is argued that although this body of work acknowledges women and particularly prostitutes as victims, the overriding analysis fails to sufficiently locate female victim and male perpetrator relationships in the context of gendered structural and cultural conditions and violence against women more generally (Grover and Soothill, 1998;Caputi, 1987;Cameron and Frazer, 1987;Walkowitz, 1982;Dworkin, 1976;Radford and Russell, 1992).…”