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First published online August 13, 2009

Modern serial killers

Kevin D. HaggertyView all authors and affiliations
Volume 5, Issue 2
https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659009335714

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.

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1.
1 The male pronoun is appropriate here as almost all instances of serial killing have involved male perpetrators. That said, some authors are uncomfortable with how women who kill sequentially have been effectively written out of the serial killer designation because they do not conform to the stranger-to-stranger dynamic noted later. The sequential killing done by women, for example, typically involves killing people with whom they are familiar, if not intimate, including their own children, spouses or, in the case of nurses, killing patients. Typically this intimacy with their victims means that they will not be designated as serial killers (Hale and Bolin, 1998) This is an important qualification that accentuates the problematic definitional issues surrounding serial killers. For our purposes, however, we are not concerned with inevitable characteristics of serial killers, but with commonalities related to the structure of modern society. In this regard, the stranger-on-stranger dynamic remains one of the most distinctive attributes of serial killing.
2.
2 This excludes the notable exception of the European witch burnings which were highly public killings of women.

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Published In

Volume 5, Issue 2
Pages: 168 - 187
Article first published online: August 13, 2009
Issue published: August 2009

Keywords

  1. anonymity
  2. celebrity
  3. modernity
  4. narcissism
  5. rationality
  6. serial killing

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Kevin D. Haggerty
University of Alberta, Canada, [email protected]
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