Description
Book SynopsisMonsters, Law, Crime, an edited collection composed of essays written by prominent U.S. and international experts in Law, Criminology, Sociology, Anthropology, Communication and Film, constitutes a rigorous attempt to explore fertile interdisciplinary inquiries into “monsters” and “monster-talk,” and law and crime. “Monsters” may refer to allegorical or symbolic fantastic beings (as in literature, film, legends, myths, etc.), or actual or real life monsters, as well as the interplay/ambiguity between the two general types of “monsters.” This edited collection thus explores and updates contemporary discussions of the emergent and evolving fronts of monster theory in relation to cutting-edge research on law and crime, and may be seen as extensions of a Gothic Criminology, generally construed. Gothic Criminology refers to a theoretical framework initially developed by Caroline Joan “Kay” S. Picart, a Philosophy and Film professor turned Attorney and Law professor, and Cecil Greek, a Sociologist (Picart and Greek 2008). Succinctly paraphrased, noting the proliferation of Gothic modes of narration and visualization in American popular culture, academia and even public policy, Picart and Greek proposed a framework, which they described as a “Gothic Criminology” to attempt to analyze the fertile lacunae connecting the “real” and the “reel” in the flow of Gothic metaphors and narratives that abound around criminological phenomena that populate not only popular culture but also academic and public policy discourses.
Trade ReviewMonsters, Law, Crime reminds us in a graphic way how different societies have taken their fears of the out-of-the ordinary and portrayed and treated those deemed to be "other". They range from victims of misogyny in Israel and Jihadists through the mentally ill in Victorian Britain to modern day medical serial killers. There is much more besides. How the media over the years have responded to a variety of challenges to social norms is the subject of this collection. This happens in crime narratives, newspapers, television and film. These essays provide a fascinating kaleidoscope of how the various media have adopted the monster form as a way of showing these challenges. This is an absorbing collection of essays which shifts the focus away from the mundanity of the deviance encountered on a daily basis in the justice process. It shows how Stan Cohen's “Folk Devils” have both a rich tradition across cultures and a likely long-term future. The contexts of the moral panics change but the resort to the demonisation of the other is a recurrent feature which this collection effectively illustrates. -- Peter Robson, School of Law, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Explorations in Gothic Criminology: Ruminating on Monsters, Law, and Crime — Caroline “Kay” Joan S. Picart
I. Of Myths and Monsters
Chapter One: “Deeds of Treachery and Violence and Lust and Cruelty”: Revisiting Freud’s Primal Crimes in Aboriginal Central Australia — John Morton
Chapter Two: Criminal Anthropology, Fabulism, and Criminology’s Unacknowledged Teratological Lineage — Jon Frauley
Chapter Three: Vampire Fictions and the Conflation of Violent Criminality with Real Vampirism: A Practical Overview — John Edgar Browning and DJ Williams
II. Contagion, Monstrosity, Ethics
Chapter Four: A Double-Tap “Lilith Moral Panic” in Israel, 2014: How Labeling Others as “Monsters” Conceals Their Victimization — Orit Kamir
Chapter Five: Evil-By-Proxy and Everyday Monsters: Towards a Moral Sociology for Overcoming the Passive Observation of Evil —Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Chapter Six: Monstering Madness: Criminal Lunatics in Broadmoor 1863–1913— Lucy Williams, Sandra Walklate, and Barry Godfrey
III. Monsters in Reel/Real Life
Chapter Seven: The Purge, or Law of the Universal Monstrous — Matthew Sorrento
Chapter Eight: Contrasting Depictions of Medical Serial Killers; Doctors Pétiot and Shipman from the Manic to the Mundane — Steve Greenfield
Chapter Nine: The Redactasaurus Chronicles: Fear, Consumption and Graffiti in Capital City — Deborah Landry
IV. Law, War and Monstrous Discourses
Chapter Ten: Human Trafficking, Empathy for Victims, the Tool of Eradication —David “D.W.” Duke
Chapter Eleven: Visualizing Monsters and Just Wars in Legal and Public Analyses of Eastwood’s American Sniper — Marouf Hasian Jr.
Chapter Twelve: Monstrous Discourses, Jihadi Cool, and Emergent Counter-Terrorist Narratives: The Case of Ahmad Khan Rahami (a.k.a. Ahmad Rahimi) and the 2016 New York/New Jersey Bombings — Caroline Joan “Kay” S. Picart
Postscript: Gothic Criminology’s Evolving Frontiers — Cecil Greek
