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Structural and Cultural Perspectives on Serial Murder

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Revisiting the Yorkshire Ripper Murders

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology ((PSVV))

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Abstract

This chapter analyses serial murder on a number of levels. Firstly, it acknowledges the dominance of psychologically-informed perspectives on serial killing in both the academic and popular imagination. The discussion then moves on to explore approaches which stress the importance of history, social structure and culture in explaining the proliferation of serial murder and the growing ubiquity and fascination with the figure of the serial killer in US and British culture in late modernity. The latter part of the chapter then examines feminist structural and cultural analyses of femicide and serial murder. The chapter concludes by arguing for greater integration between feminist approaches and social structural approaches which privilege class and the political economy as a means of theorising and accounting for the proliferation of serial murder in late capitalist societies.

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  1. School of Social Sciences, Business, Law, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, UK

    Louise Wattis

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  1. Louise Wattis
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Wattis, L. (2018). Structural and Cultural Perspectives on Serial Murder. In: Revisiting the Yorkshire Ripper Murders. Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01385-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01385-1_3

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