October 13, 2024 • 43 mins
In this episode, Matthew talks to Professor Jack Katz from UCLA about his research on crime and crimonology.The central thesis of Seductions of Crime is that situation-specific emotional and sensual sensations play an important role in the commission of crime. It is not a complete theoretical construct, but rather the sensual experiences and emotional states of the perpetrator that are brought to bear in various forms of crime – from occasional shoplifting to cold-blooded robbery.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the Sociology Show podcast. My guest
for this episode is the fantastic professor Jack Katz, talking
all about seductions of crime. Before we go to the interview,
just a couple of messages. So firstly, a message for
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(00:20):
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dot com. So, without further ado, let's go over to
the interview with Professor chat Katz.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
You're listening to The Sociology Show, a podcast about absolutely
anything to do with the wonderful world of sociology. Whether
you're a teacher, a lecturer, a student, or just taking
a passing interest. This podcast will look at a range
of issues from social class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, crime, education,
(01:38):
and anything else that sociology has to offer. My name
is Matthew Wilkin. In each episode, I will speak to
someone working in the field of sociology and let them
explain all about their own interests, their research, and their experiences.
So put your ear phones in, turn the volume up,
and let's be sociology geeks together. Ah, Hello, and welcome
(02:03):
to the Sociology Show podcast. Would you like to start
by telling us a little bit about who you are
and what you do?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Please? Okay. So I'm Jack Cats and I've been doing
sociology for maybe forty years. I was initially trained as
a lawyer and then went into sociology writing school and
(02:29):
what I do. I work on a number of different topics.
First crime, which is why you're talking to today, Also emotions,
self in every day life. And I've been doing a
long term project neighborhoods in Hollywood right an area in
(02:55):
Los Angeles that's famous for the movies but also has
interesting people living there, and how to change sociology. So
I work on a lot of different topics and enthusiastic
as ever about sociology and what you can learn. I'm
stimulated every day by it. Yeah, So as we go along,
(03:19):
I think you'll get a sense. So my perspective is
similarly different things what other sociologists.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Great, Thank you Jack, Thank you. And the main reason
I want to talk to you today is about your
your book, Seductions of Crime. Sociology students always really interested
in it because most of the research that you look
at in understanding crime and criminology very much comes from
sort of socioeconomics, trying to understand inequalities, poverty, money. Students
(03:49):
learn about things like strain theory, status, frustration, and so on,
and yours really kind of leaps out as something a
little bit different and sort of approaching and trying to
understand why crime case from a very different angle. So
I wondered if you you wouldn't mind sort of expanding
on that in terms of how you take a slightly
different look at why crime the curs.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, it's a good question and helped me kind of
open up how what I do is different. Basically, I
look at the thing we're trying to understand. Okay, you
can there's different vocabularies for this, but you can talk
about the independent variable and the deepenetary. You can look
(04:32):
about the explanans thing that's going to do the explaining
and the explanandum the thing you're trying to explain. Almost everybody,
especially in criminology generally in sociology, is looking at the
explainer the cause, and the debates are all about is
it a lack of self discipline, It's something in the
(04:56):
way the child was raised that leads them to is
it something about poverty, It's something about race or ethnic
or minority status. Is it something about neighborhood? And each
of these causes have different sociologists associated, But you could
(05:18):
probably go down the list of the different theories that
your students are looking at and associate different sociologies their
careers are tied to different costs, different explanams, different independent variables,
most recently neighborhood, at least in the US, I don't
(05:38):
I'm Some work in England too and in other countries
emphasizes the neighborhood character. Life history studies that Barrington and
others have sustained in England that looked is there a
difference between lifelong offenders and those who just offend an adolescence?
(06:01):
Is that related? That difference related to something in the
family and early childhood. So all the action, all the
status differences among academics is on the explanance side. Everybody
on the other side the thing you're trying to explain.
Everybody takes crime range pretty much. Some people do studies
(06:24):
where they have interview, they interview people who self report
whether they offend it or not. But most mostly people
are trying to explain. So that's not where the action is.
The action is not on the side of the thing
you're trying to explain. The intellectual action is all on
the cause. And so my difference is essentially I start
(06:47):
by looking at the thing we're trying to understand, and
to me, that's the way a natural scientist operates. It's
and I think often people read subductions and they think
I'm saying people do it for the thrill, that background
isn't important. That's not really organizing idea of the book.
(07:09):
The organizing perspective is to look, get as close as
you can, seem as much detail whatever it is you're
trying to understand. I've done that in my other studies,
like when I studied emotions, I did video tapes of
people laughing in a fun house, video tapes of little
(07:30):
kids crying, and to try to understand the dynamics of
those emotional events. To me, that's what that's a scientific impulse.
You try to get see as far out into the
universe as you can technologies are allowing us to do.
(07:52):
You look under the microscope, you look at DNA, you
look at the structure you're just trying to describe, and
then see process, and you build towards cause from first
looking at the thing you're trying to explain. So that's
I think that's why my work is very different. The
(08:13):
action in academics and in politics is all on the
cast side, and I think the action and the action
in the sense of what motivates, what organizes the careers
of academics, especially in criminology, is very politically tied. If
you look at all the causes that people cite for crime,
(08:35):
whether it's the lack of self discipline or neighborhood quality, poverty,
racial discrimination, they're all tied to different political programs, and
everybody takes that for granted. That's what you should be doing.
You should be emphasizing the cause side. My approaches to
start on the thing you're trying to explain, you don't
(08:57):
quite know what it is. If you knew, but if
you had an accurate sense of the thing you try
to explain, we would have to do the research. But
you have something important is going on out there. Well,
I mean, and then you look at process, you look
at life cycle, you look at the course of an advance,
and then you try to build towards an explanation, try
(09:20):
to find causes and ingencies of change behavior that way.
So that's what I would encourage your students. I would say,
maybe it's a personality thing, but I'm either paranoid or
suspicious about what government tells them. So most sociologists who
(09:41):
study crime are very happy. From dirkime on right, I mean,
They're very happy to take official statistics with it at
suicide or crime and say, okay, that that gives us
what we're trying to explain. Now let's look for the cause. Well,
I'm not comfortable with that. I don't I don't try
government and don't trust government doesn't produce information on crime
(10:07):
in order to serve social science. In some sense, criminology
is an effort by academics to kind of get the police,
the courts, the whole, the judges, the whole criminal justice
system to be their research agent, their research assistance, what
(10:29):
the criminal justice system is in, the businesses are doing.
So when they produce statistics on crime, they produced the
crime rates, it's for their own purposes. So when I
started to study crime, which I just started to study
in a way because I was starting to teach and
I had to teach something and I had a law background,
(10:50):
and I realized people studding crime never actually looked at
what the people were doing very much. So I just
started to gather all the information I could what people
were actually doing in the moments of doing time, and
whether they're doing this before, what are they doing after?
And I tried to build I tried to find patterns.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Should we start with that then, because you mentioned about
perhaps a different methodology compared to what other people used, say,
but for your book Seductions of Crime, how did you
approach it? You mentioned ethnography, ethnographic research.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, I just collected everything. I put all the biographies,
auto biographies, all the close up descriptions by journalists. I
found a very nice data sets that were collected by
a couple of researchers in Chicago who didn't just take
the police statistics. They went into the police files. And
(11:48):
when you go into the which it's hard to do, right,
they spent a lot of time and I pickybacked off
of them. They spent a lot of time over years
getting good relations with the police departments, so they get
into the files. When you get into the files, you
get the witness statements, you get the reports made on
the scene when the tops first get there, you get
(12:11):
sometimes the fender statements. You get more raw material on
what actually happened. So that was really helpful. So I
put all that stuff together, and other studies have done
videos that and you know, one thing I'm working on
now with other people in Europe are videos of people
(12:34):
getting into the fights that are recorded on iPhones are smartphones.
Everybody's got a smartphone through students, maybe they've done this themselves.
They pulled out the phone. Something interesting is going on,
and that stuff is posted on the web and you
get the first time in human history you actually get
(12:56):
first hand immediate documentation of what's going on. And and
it's a it's a real challenge to work up this material,
but there it is for you. So that's the sort
of way of working at least to gather the data
that's I see this as the video material of the
kind of new frontier that the next generation will spend
(13:19):
a lot of time developing. They find. It's a wonderful
education if you really try to just describe what's happening,
you know, you get a very fine sensibility of interaction
and how people are adjusting their behavior based on what
they perceive other buildings, other kind of influence of it.
(13:40):
And it should be useful for understanding the contingencies of
starting violence, progressions and violence, and of ending violence, but
bystanders and so forth. But they're there. It's interesting to me,
and I think instructive that while these videos have become
available and there are a lot of them out of England,
(14:02):
a lot of them in English language US out of England.
And a lot of these events happen in public transportation,
on buses, on trained cars, free cars. A lot of
really ugly stuff happens. And there it is not quite
from the beginning, because somebody has to Usually the recording
(14:24):
starts after the event it's already turned towards violence. But
you get more of a complete documentation of what actually
happens in violence than we've ever seen before. And it's
striking that criminology is barely looking at this. I mean,
what would you want to look at it in criminologists?
(14:46):
But this is the stuff. It's kind of like you
can see cancer. You can see a progression, you can
see the cells fantastasizing it, and you don't want to
look at it. You want to look at some statistics.
It's crazy.
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Speaker 1 (15:28):
I was just thinking, like the example you gave, you know,
the people whipping out their smartphones to record a fight.
That sort of brings me on to the first question
that one of my students asked. Because the full title
of your book is going to read it Seductions of Crime,
Moral and centual attractions in doing evil. We are all fascinated,
we're all interested, you know, if something does go viral
(15:49):
and it's a fight on a bus or something like that.
So do you mind explain what you mean by the
central attraction of crime?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
To start with? Yeah, we think of it this way.
Whatever background factors may be important in the theology and
the kind of path forwards h and a violent attack
or affect, they're there. They're not active, they're not controlling
(16:21):
the person. And until a certain moment, in a certain situation,
what happens in that some change of behavior, some change
of perception happens that makes it attractive, compelling, productive to
act right now. And that's the transition that I'm focusing on,
(16:44):
and that is you know, all of a sudden, it
feels the moment feels right, Well, let's do okay, let's
let's steal that from the store. Let's you know, break
that window. Let's uh, I'm going to attack that guy.
It turns out that actually, when you look at like
(17:04):
these violence I haven't minded working on that recently, the
attacker usually is in a dominant position. Often, okay, they
can say they've been threatened, they've been challenged, but when
they attack, they're in a dominant position, so it feels right.
They have a sense of power advantage. Well, that's a seductor,
(17:27):
that's a seduction, it's a feeling. So that's why I
call it aesthetic. And it's moral in the sense of
either its specifically I'm gonna defend my honor get respect,
whether it's you know, I don't I don't know what
you do with bulgarity on these videos, but that's fine.
(17:50):
It's fine then. Yet, Yeah, I'm gonna fuck this guy over.
I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna break his balls, I'm
gonna I'm gonna, I'm gonna ally with the power of
destruction and triumph and feel that from my body. Okay,
when you attack with violent you organize yourself, your whole
(18:12):
body into a weapon. Right. I mean, if you're a
good boxer, you want to stay loose, right, But in
order to generate power, you've got to discipline a whole
series of muscles in your body to be affected. And
so that's an aesthetic sensual attraction. Okay, I'm going to
(18:33):
I'm going to be a tough gun, which is just
a metaphor. It's like I'm going to toughen up my
body to be effective. And how I attack. You know,
each of the kinds of violence or staff or devians
that I'm identifying describing the book and their central and
(18:57):
moral attractions is different. But that's the critical shift that
all of a sudden it feels right. That's why, that's
why the background factors, however poor you were, however, discriminated against, however,
lows in your schooling, however lows you, your neighborhood, however,
(19:17):
cuon your father was, however victimized you were in one
way or another. You don't constantly effect, you don't constantly
steal or beat people up. Something happens in that moment,
and that shift is because all of a sudden it
seems like the right thing to do. Also positive. It's
(19:39):
interesting if you look at all the explanations of crime
that are out there that are popular, they're all negative things.
There's a kind of moral symmetry that seems to govern
the way people think about crime. Crime is banded oy,
so what can explain it must be something bad? Poverty's bad,
(20:03):
racial discrimination said, yeah, coming from a broken families fail,
a neighborhood that doesn't have good social services, that's bad.
So you could see that all basically, all the explanations
have caught out there are something bad because it's something bad.
(20:24):
And that's basically a kind of non rational, mythological way
of explaining that has an ancient history that's in all societies,
has always been part of the way people think in society.
If you know, the crops fail, it must be because
somebody violated the rules prohibitions that the gods insist on.
(20:56):
So we have to find that person do something to
make the gods. Something bad happens. People are getting sick,
another group is attacking us. We got to find something bad,
somebody to blame. That's an ancient kind of way of
(21:17):
looking at things. But in fact, what happens in the
actual doing of time, is that it seems positive. I'm
going to achieve something I'm attracted to. It's positive. That's
why seduction in the title has some some relevance. That's
(21:37):
why it's the right term, I think, because it's it's
a version of something positive.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
You also use the word you know, you mentioned central seductive.
The word that often raises an eyebrower students is that
the word arousal, you know, or even the word sexual.
How do you how do you attach sort of arousal
to the idea of criminality.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
You know, there's a lot you can do a lot
for the sexual metaphor and penetration, violation, going beyond a
protective boundary, taking the risk projecting yourself into somebody else's world,
all these things. And you know the fact that the
(22:25):
kinds of behaviors we're thinking about when we think about crime,
that violence, peak and adolescence isn't coincidental sexual and the
fact that males are doing these activities at five to
(22:46):
ten times a rat the females are, and the female participation,
even when it occurs, is often different process that's not
unrelated to sexual dynamics. H no I think I get
a little bit at that, a little bit because I
do have some discussions in the book where I try
(23:07):
to get the background factories, like the sexual difference. Often
there's this art pattern that when women murder and they're
asked about it, they can't recount what was going on
at the time. Males can. And it's it seems to
(23:28):
be difficult for more difficult from femails to reconcile, organizing
their bodies and violence more difficult than it is for men.
You know, for men, you're just you're being a hard man.
You know, which is a stick up guy, which is
a ballot medical it's a very straight coward not subtle.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
For women that doesn't a lot of them, you do violence,
it's hard for them to reconcile. They are in the
violence with who they are and the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, could I ask you about that, because I was
really interested because you know, if we look at evidence
of things like vandalism or graffiti, ars and setting something
on fire, they are predominantly may lax. So what what
essentially or arousal? What what what are men getting from
it that women don't?
Speaker 2 (24:28):
You're being masculine, right, stamp being tough, you're being re sturbed,
You're you know, doing violence. You're organizing your body into
a into a hard wool. It's just like a you
know a lot of work set. I mean, think of
(24:49):
the cocky way when wal mm hmm. All these metaphors
are not accidentally close one to the other two violent activity.
Let me say just one of the something before, because
I if your students want to understand how to do
(25:11):
this work, I wrote a like four page, very short,
a little essay called on analytic induction, and it's I
think pretty accessible. It's in International Encyclopedia and Social Science.
They can find it on the web. It's open access.
(25:34):
But that'll kind of show you how you do this
work and how it's different than how social scientists soften.
And there are examples of studies and other fields, not
just crime. But if you want to pursue this and
start your own investigations, and even you know your students
(25:57):
who are in high school and what we call high school,
that's a good time to start, because I mean, I
think basically what I'm doing is continuing who I was
when I was an analystspected I had I think, this
is you find and I would encourage your students, you know,
finding a way of working there continues who you are.
(26:23):
That helps you. You know, you get a lot of
motivation out of that, Like your work reflects back on
concerns you have on an ongoing basis, and that gives
you motivation.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Thank you, Thank you for that. Can I throw a
few more turns at you that often come up that
the student asks for a little bit more clarification on
And you mentioned that the stick up guy doing the
stick up? Do you just want to explain what that means?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I mean, you know, in the US it's a phrase
for robbery. I don't know in the UK whether.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
It is occasionally use yeah the stick up, ye.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, pick them up, which I mean, you know, put
your hands on ah as you're illustrator. But it's also
a pilot metaphor so of being a hard man and
so forth. These are beard often admired personalities. Dominance is
(27:27):
a large part of the tracture. I have a chapter
Ways of a Badass that doesn't focus on a particular
a crime like event, but it's just a way of
being that sometimes ends up in violence or exploitations. But
that came out of really a memory. I had one
(27:48):
of my first jobs. I was like a busboy waiter
at a hotel where we we would stay there. It
wasn't a community every day, it's that the resort kind
of place you go stay there. We lived in both
would have been stalls for horses that were converted and
(28:12):
the first night I got there, we would have roommates
and I my roommate guy they called Billinger out of
uh it was a boxer, but Dollinger was a famous
American criminal, escaped the law for a long time, was
finally shut down at the Biograph Theater. And this guy,
(28:35):
he told me, somebody's gonna come up to you and
they're gonna ask you to borrow some money. And it's
not gonna be a lot of money, and you're gonna
think I got the money. You know. They'll ask me
for a dollar, two dollars and you're gonna think, well,
I need to have friends here. I don't know people.
I'll give him the money. Don't give them them. If
(28:59):
you give the money, And I mean, he didn't explain
a lot. I don't think if I recall, right, but
I what I came to understand is that if I
give this guy the money the first day I'm there
the rest of the summer because of the summer jol.
The rest of the summer, I'm going to be looking
(29:20):
to that guy to get paid back, and he's not
going to pay me back. And so what's going to
happen is he's going to be robbing me the whole summer.
Like it starts out as a loan, but then it
turns into robbery. It's a dominance thing, not that he
(29:44):
needs a dollar or two dollars, it's that that dominance
in a world of mails, and we were all males
of fails. Well that's a masculine thing, and you know,
when you get into masculine things, you're never very far
from sexuality. So the next day, in fact, this guy
comes up to me. He's not a big guys, not
(30:06):
an intimidating guy, and he says, hey, Jack, and I'm
a little short, and you give me a buck. I
want to get amber with them. And I said, you
know what, I was just about to ask you, because
I'm sure too. And that's say Bill. Because they were
a judge juvenile delinquents, and the head waiter would recruit
(30:29):
these guys from the judge in the Lower East Side
of Manhattan, and this would be the way they would
avoid jail come out to do this work. So these
were interesting guys. It was a good instructor summer, but
that I always had that in mind when I was writing,
like Waves of the Badass. You know what, you know
these events when somebody goes in and punches somebody, or
(30:51):
somebody goes in and steals something around. So that's not
what this is about. Really. The real thing to explain
is the attractions of the waves of the badness, of
dominant of how you can do something. And it only
has the power this kind of asking a person for
money and not paying it back. It only has power
if the other people understand you're doing something bad and
(31:13):
you're getting away with it. That's where you generate the
power the rule that you should pay back. Otherwise it's
robbery that allows this guy with a little phrase, hey
can you give me a buck? Can you lend me
a buck? Can you not lend the guy a buck?
And that innocent little phrase becomes a summer long robbery. Yeah,
(31:37):
and it comes worse and worse every day.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
I can't help hearing stick up and waves Badass without
thinking about pulp fiction the film, which I think both
both have made reference to, aren't.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
They Yeah, yeah, you know a lot of people, yeah,
creating culture, movies, writing scripts, writing books. The responsor to
always symbol They're not getting it from me, It's just
(32:11):
I'm getting it from the same place they are from
the world the you know, people who were living whom
it's motivating. The Joe Peshi character, I think he's very
you know, the people doing the streets that whole series
of movies. They are very respond These are people, but
(32:31):
these are very much like people are new from New York.
They were responding to the Saint and I the same
dramatic and dramatics of everyday life.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Thank you, And if it's like, go with you. I
just wanted to ask you two more things, one one
at one end of the scale and one at the
other end of the scale. So I wonder the scale
you talk about the sneaky thrills, okay, which students always
interested in. Do you mind just explaining what that means
and some examples if that's okay?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, you know, I asked my students and at uc
C L A H anonymously described to me any uh
kind of thefts that you did a little transgressions and
what they were about. And over a couple of years
(33:21):
I got dozens and dozens of these reports. Some of
them were franklin bullshit, you could tell, but others were detailed,
and they all they fit together in that the people
were off and shoplifting, stealing something. Ah. I remember one
(33:47):
of the reports was getting a pizza up the back
of the truck. I remember the account. We weren't even hungry,
but that was the tastiest piece of the ever did
just to say, oh, is actually the transgression that was
the attraction. It's the whole drama of had I pass
(34:12):
as looking normal when I'm in this store? It's not
just the thing. In fact, the things some up and
thrown away. It's neglected. They had the money in their
pocket to buy if they want. It's not like they're
really poor. And that's what Even if they are rule,
it's not like they needed this thing. So what is
really a think here? Well, what's really a thick is
(34:34):
shown that you can get away, you can be seen
as normal while you have these dan thoughts. And so
people are approaching sexuality. You know, if people know what
you're thinking all the time, if they really, if everybody
really knew what you were thinking all the time, I mean,
my god able to because what you're thinking, well, you couldn't,
(35:00):
you couldn't defend it. So it's very important for you
to realize. I remember when my own kids were young
and they would do these embarrassing things, and I kept hoping,
why don't they get to the age already when they
have to hide this stuff I don't even want to
know about, you know. But so eventually now they're pretty
good at hiding from they will they became pretty good
(35:24):
at hiding stuff from me. That's what's its fake. You know,
this is a Huberty Adolesson pre adolescent edge of adolessons
in adolescens kind of phenomenon. And then you know, it
can payed off. And that's one of the reasons that
these crimes vandalism as well are very graffiti. Okay, you
(35:50):
come at night when nobody's looking, you put your name
up and you disappear. Okay, there's something in you you
want known, but you don't want people seeing it that
it's you. It's come. I want to be known but
not known. Yeah, your name up everywhere. Ah. But on
the other hand, you don't want them to identify with
(36:10):
you and arrest you. So there's a tremendous attraction in
ad less or proving you to get away with it.
Whatever the hell it is, it's not that important.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
I think we've probably all done that one, haven't we.
And from from sneaky thrills. Right at the other end
of the scale, then is your section of cold blooded
senseless murder. It's called yeah. I mean, if we've, for example,
you know that the sneaky thrills, I think we can
all get our head around that. We can understand of
it trying to act like a badass doing the stick up,
you know, demonstrating masculinity. But I think it's a little
(36:47):
bit more difficult to understand why someone would commit such
an extreme act and what's the just you know, are
they trying to justify in some way or is it
is it something that's just gone beyond their control.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
You know what I've done since that book, I did
the one paper school intimate massacres. I call it it's
school shooting. So let's talk about that example, because it
becomes important to break down what the government or what
(37:28):
journalists consider all one category into the subcategory. So let
me talk about school shooting. Uh, there's lots of things
going on in school, and we have many more here.
You have some experience with us because availabilities, so rat
(37:49):
of many more of these things. But in some one
subset of them, what's going on what I call into
the massacres. That is, who are attacking others in places
that they think have a very intimate understanding of who
(38:13):
they are, and they're trying to destroy that undertone. So
that becomes that it's not that they're trying to achieve anything.
In fact, they often don't have much of a plan
to get away. And what's going on in that kind
of cold blood senseless what we call cold blooded senseless
(38:35):
murder is a destruction of the image that the attacker
things others, even if they don't even if they don't
even know the attack, they have this images and they're
trying to destroy them, and sometimes they destroy them. In
some of these events, they kill their mother, they kill
(38:58):
people very close to them who could give them different
accounts they are. They want to get rid of that version.
So without constructing anything new and.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Just going back to what you said right earlier, on
in the show that all of these kinds may mayle
dominated other than that sort of the demonstration of masculinity.
What else is going on there? How can we explain
or understand it through a gendered lens.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
We're talking now pretty much about physical steps and bios
and we think of that as male, and we think
of that as the associable poverty, lack of opportunity and
so forth. But why can't I corruption, broad theft, in
(39:50):
devious means that kind of taxes, shooting people, all kinds
of internet us say they will be much more common,
and the masculine dominates may not be the same, or
maybe people haven't really looked into it. The kinds of
(40:11):
crimes we're talking about, the kind of physical we break
into some place, when you're physically violent somebody, it's a
way of being masculine, that it's better with men than
it does with women. On the un hand, fraud, conspiracy,
(40:31):
a cheating may well be a different gender bats. So
I think it has to do with how these acts
fit into who you are in the rest of your life.
It's not like you do these things separate from the
rest of your life. This has to be an extension
of the rest of your line. So if we look
(40:56):
at what's called white collar time, we might find a
very different male or female and make those acts assist.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Thank you, Jack, Thank you. I always end by asking
if people want to find out more about your work
or read some more of your literature, how can they
get in touch or find out more about you?
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Well, you know you can my emile from U C.
L a Is and I have a female female and
you can find me on that. I have an article
that should be coming out in the next year, well
beyond the selections of the state, and you can look
(41:42):
for that, and that will particularly how my approach is
suspicious of government and of the state, and how so
much of criminology goes along with this state, and that
might be a kind of guide to how to read
(42:02):
the whole range of different contributions, perhaps specify brilliant.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Well, thank you, yeah, exactly, Thank you. I really really
do appreciate your time. Sorry, I said it'd be about
thirty minutes, so I've taken up more of your time.
So I really do appreciate you giving up your time
for me today, Jack, Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
The Sociology Show podcast relies on the kind contributions of
sponsorship and donations. If you enjoy the show, then you
can help with the hosting costs by donating as little
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(42:50):
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Speaker 1 (42:56):
Thank you for taking the time to listen to the podcast.
If you would like to con tack the show or
be interviewed, then please email The Sociology Show Podcast at
gmail dot com.
Hello, and welcome to the Sociology Show podcast. My guest
for this episode is the fantastic professor Jack Katz, talking
all about seductions of crime. Before we go to the interview,
just a couple of messages. So firstly, a message for
students listening. The Sociology Show podcast now offers online tutoring.
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(00:20):
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(01:04):
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email address, which is The Sociology Show podcast at gmail
dot com. So, without further ado, let's go over to
the interview with Professor chat Katz.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
You're listening to The Sociology Show, a podcast about absolutely
anything to do with the wonderful world of sociology. Whether
you're a teacher, a lecturer, a student, or just taking
a passing interest. This podcast will look at a range
of issues from social class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, crime, education,
(01:38):
and anything else that sociology has to offer. My name
is Matthew Wilkin. In each episode, I will speak to
someone working in the field of sociology and let them
explain all about their own interests, their research, and their experiences.
So put your ear phones in, turn the volume up,
and let's be sociology geeks together. Ah, Hello, and welcome
(02:03):
to the Sociology Show podcast. Would you like to start
by telling us a little bit about who you are
and what you do?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Please? Okay. So I'm Jack Cats and I've been doing
sociology for maybe forty years. I was initially trained as
a lawyer and then went into sociology writing school and
(02:29):
what I do. I work on a number of different topics.
First crime, which is why you're talking to today, Also emotions,
self in every day life. And I've been doing a
long term project neighborhoods in Hollywood right an area in
(02:55):
Los Angeles that's famous for the movies but also has
interesting people living there, and how to change sociology. So
I work on a lot of different topics and enthusiastic
as ever about sociology and what you can learn. I'm
stimulated every day by it. Yeah, So as we go along,
(03:19):
I think you'll get a sense. So my perspective is
similarly different things what other sociologists.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Great, Thank you Jack, Thank you. And the main reason
I want to talk to you today is about your
your book, Seductions of Crime. Sociology students always really interested
in it because most of the research that you look
at in understanding crime and criminology very much comes from
sort of socioeconomics, trying to understand inequalities, poverty, money. Students
(03:49):
learn about things like strain theory, status, frustration, and so on,
and yours really kind of leaps out as something a
little bit different and sort of approaching and trying to
understand why crime case from a very different angle. So
I wondered if you you wouldn't mind sort of expanding
on that in terms of how you take a slightly
different look at why crime the curs.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, it's a good question and helped me kind of
open up how what I do is different. Basically, I
look at the thing we're trying to understand. Okay, you
can there's different vocabularies for this, but you can talk
about the independent variable and the deepenetary. You can look
(04:32):
about the explanans thing that's going to do the explaining
and the explanandum the thing you're trying to explain. Almost everybody,
especially in criminology generally in sociology, is looking at the
explainer the cause, and the debates are all about is
it a lack of self discipline, It's something in the
(04:56):
way the child was raised that leads them to is
it something about poverty, It's something about race or ethnic
or minority status. Is it something about neighborhood? And each
of these causes have different sociologists associated, But you could
(05:18):
probably go down the list of the different theories that
your students are looking at and associate different sociologies their
careers are tied to different costs, different explanams, different independent variables,
most recently neighborhood, at least in the US, I don't
(05:38):
I'm Some work in England too and in other countries
emphasizes the neighborhood character. Life history studies that Barrington and
others have sustained in England that looked is there a
difference between lifelong offenders and those who just offend an adolescence?
(06:01):
Is that related? That difference related to something in the
family and early childhood. So all the action, all the
status differences among academics is on the explanance side. Everybody
on the other side the thing you're trying to explain.
Everybody takes crime range pretty much. Some people do studies
(06:24):
where they have interview, they interview people who self report
whether they offend it or not. But most mostly people
are trying to explain. So that's not where the action is.
The action is not on the side of the thing
you're trying to explain. The intellectual action is all on
the cause. And so my difference is essentially I start
(06:47):
by looking at the thing we're trying to understand, and
to me, that's the way a natural scientist operates. It's
and I think often people read subductions and they think
I'm saying people do it for the thrill, that background
isn't important. That's not really organizing idea of the book.
(07:09):
The organizing perspective is to look, get as close as
you can, seem as much detail whatever it is you're
trying to understand. I've done that in my other studies,
like when I studied emotions, I did video tapes of
people laughing in a fun house, video tapes of little
(07:30):
kids crying, and to try to understand the dynamics of
those emotional events. To me, that's what that's a scientific impulse.
You try to get see as far out into the
universe as you can technologies are allowing us to do.
(07:52):
You look under the microscope, you look at DNA, you
look at the structure you're just trying to describe, and
then see process, and you build towards cause from first
looking at the thing you're trying to explain. So that's
I think that's why my work is very different. The
(08:13):
action in academics and in politics is all on the
cast side, and I think the action and the action
in the sense of what motivates, what organizes the careers
of academics, especially in criminology, is very politically tied. If
you look at all the causes that people cite for crime,
(08:35):
whether it's the lack of self discipline or neighborhood quality, poverty,
racial discrimination, they're all tied to different political programs, and
everybody takes that for granted. That's what you should be doing.
You should be emphasizing the cause side. My approaches to
start on the thing you're trying to explain, you don't
(08:57):
quite know what it is. If you knew, but if
you had an accurate sense of the thing you try
to explain, we would have to do the research. But
you have something important is going on out there. Well,
I mean, and then you look at process, you look
at life cycle, you look at the course of an advance,
and then you try to build towards an explanation, try
(09:20):
to find causes and ingencies of change behavior that way.
So that's what I would encourage your students. I would say,
maybe it's a personality thing, but I'm either paranoid or
suspicious about what government tells them. So most sociologists who
(09:41):
study crime are very happy. From dirkime on right, I mean,
They're very happy to take official statistics with it at
suicide or crime and say, okay, that that gives us
what we're trying to explain. Now let's look for the cause. Well,
I'm not comfortable with that. I don't I don't try
government and don't trust government doesn't produce information on crime
(10:07):
in order to serve social science. In some sense, criminology
is an effort by academics to kind of get the police,
the courts, the whole, the judges, the whole criminal justice
system to be their research agent, their research assistance, what
(10:29):
the criminal justice system is in, the businesses are doing.
So when they produce statistics on crime, they produced the
crime rates, it's for their own purposes. So when I
started to study crime, which I just started to study
in a way because I was starting to teach and
I had to teach something and I had a law background,
(10:50):
and I realized people studding crime never actually looked at
what the people were doing very much. So I just
started to gather all the information I could what people
were actually doing in the moments of doing time, and
whether they're doing this before, what are they doing after?
And I tried to build I tried to find patterns.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Should we start with that then, because you mentioned about
perhaps a different methodology compared to what other people used, say,
but for your book Seductions of Crime, how did you
approach it? You mentioned ethnography, ethnographic research.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, I just collected everything. I put all the biographies,
auto biographies, all the close up descriptions by journalists. I
found a very nice data sets that were collected by
a couple of researchers in Chicago who didn't just take
the police statistics. They went into the police files. And
(11:48):
when you go into the which it's hard to do, right,
they spent a lot of time and I pickybacked off
of them. They spent a lot of time over years
getting good relations with the police departments, so they get
into the files. When you get into the files, you
get the witness statements, you get the reports made on
the scene when the tops first get there, you get
(12:11):
sometimes the fender statements. You get more raw material on
what actually happened. So that was really helpful. So I
put all that stuff together, and other studies have done
videos that and you know, one thing I'm working on
now with other people in Europe are videos of people
(12:34):
getting into the fights that are recorded on iPhones are smartphones.
Everybody's got a smartphone through students, maybe they've done this themselves.
They pulled out the phone. Something interesting is going on,
and that stuff is posted on the web and you
get the first time in human history you actually get
(12:56):
first hand immediate documentation of what's going on. And and
it's a it's a real challenge to work up this material,
but there it is for you. So that's the sort
of way of working at least to gather the data
that's I see this as the video material of the
kind of new frontier that the next generation will spend
(13:19):
a lot of time developing. They find. It's a wonderful
education if you really try to just describe what's happening,
you know, you get a very fine sensibility of interaction
and how people are adjusting their behavior based on what
they perceive other buildings, other kind of influence of it.
(13:40):
And it should be useful for understanding the contingencies of
starting violence, progressions and violence, and of ending violence, but
bystanders and so forth. But they're there. It's interesting to me,
and I think instructive that while these videos have become
available and there are a lot of them out of England,
(14:02):
a lot of them in English language US out of England.
And a lot of these events happen in public transportation,
on buses, on trained cars, free cars. A lot of
really ugly stuff happens. And there it is not quite
from the beginning, because somebody has to Usually the recording
(14:24):
starts after the event it's already turned towards violence. But
you get more of a complete documentation of what actually
happens in violence than we've ever seen before. And it's
striking that criminology is barely looking at this. I mean,
what would you want to look at it in criminologists?
(14:46):
But this is the stuff. It's kind of like you
can see cancer. You can see a progression, you can
see the cells fantastasizing it, and you don't want to
look at it. You want to look at some statistics.
It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
The Sociology Show podcast relies on the kind contributions of
sponsorship and donations. If you enjoy the show, then you
can help with the hosting costs by donating as little
as five pounds on the go fundme page. Simply visit
UK dot GoFundMe dot com and search for the Sociology Show.
If you can donate, then you will be sent a
(15:22):
Sociology Show pen as a small thank you for your
continued support of the show.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I was just thinking, like the example you gave, you know,
the people whipping out their smartphones to record a fight.
That sort of brings me on to the first question
that one of my students asked. Because the full title
of your book is going to read it Seductions of Crime,
Moral and centual attractions in doing evil. We are all fascinated,
we're all interested, you know, if something does go viral
(15:49):
and it's a fight on a bus or something like that.
So do you mind explain what you mean by the
central attraction of crime?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
To start with? Yeah, we think of it this way.
Whatever background factors may be important in the theology and
the kind of path forwards h and a violent attack
or affect, they're there. They're not active, they're not controlling
(16:21):
the person. And until a certain moment, in a certain situation,
what happens in that some change of behavior, some change
of perception happens that makes it attractive, compelling, productive to
act right now. And that's the transition that I'm focusing on,
(16:44):
and that is you know, all of a sudden, it
feels the moment feels right, Well, let's do okay, let's
let's steal that from the store. Let's you know, break
that window. Let's uh, I'm going to attack that guy.
It turns out that actually, when you look at like
(17:04):
these violence I haven't minded working on that recently, the
attacker usually is in a dominant position. Often, okay, they
can say they've been threatened, they've been challenged, but when
they attack, they're in a dominant position, so it feels right.
They have a sense of power advantage. Well, that's a seductor,
(17:27):
that's a seduction, it's a feeling. So that's why I
call it aesthetic. And it's moral in the sense of
either its specifically I'm gonna defend my honor get respect,
whether it's you know, I don't I don't know what
you do with bulgarity on these videos, but that's fine.
(17:50):
It's fine then. Yet, Yeah, I'm gonna fuck this guy over.
I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna break his balls, I'm
gonna I'm gonna, I'm gonna ally with the power of
destruction and triumph and feel that from my body. Okay,
when you attack with violent you organize yourself, your whole
(18:12):
body into a weapon. Right. I mean, if you're a
good boxer, you want to stay loose, right, But in
order to generate power, you've got to discipline a whole
series of muscles in your body to be affected. And
so that's an aesthetic sensual attraction. Okay, I'm going to
(18:33):
I'm going to be a tough gun, which is just
a metaphor. It's like I'm going to toughen up my
body to be effective. And how I attack. You know,
each of the kinds of violence or staff or devians
that I'm identifying describing the book and their central and
(18:57):
moral attractions is different. But that's the critical shift that
all of a sudden it feels right. That's why, that's
why the background factors, however poor you were, however, discriminated against, however,
lows in your schooling, however lows you, your neighborhood, however,
(19:17):
cuon your father was, however victimized you were in one
way or another. You don't constantly effect, you don't constantly
steal or beat people up. Something happens in that moment,
and that shift is because all of a sudden it
seems like the right thing to do. Also positive. It's
(19:39):
interesting if you look at all the explanations of crime
that are out there that are popular, they're all negative things.
There's a kind of moral symmetry that seems to govern
the way people think about crime. Crime is banded oy,
so what can explain it must be something bad? Poverty's bad,
(20:03):
racial discrimination said, yeah, coming from a broken families fail,
a neighborhood that doesn't have good social services, that's bad.
So you could see that all basically, all the explanations
have caught out there are something bad because it's something bad.
(20:24):
And that's basically a kind of non rational, mythological way
of explaining that has an ancient history that's in all societies,
has always been part of the way people think in society.
If you know, the crops fail, it must be because
somebody violated the rules prohibitions that the gods insist on.
(20:56):
So we have to find that person do something to
make the gods. Something bad happens. People are getting sick,
another group is attacking us. We got to find something bad,
somebody to blame. That's an ancient kind of way of
(21:17):
looking at things. But in fact, what happens in the
actual doing of time, is that it seems positive. I'm
going to achieve something I'm attracted to. It's positive. That's
why seduction in the title has some some relevance. That's
(21:37):
why it's the right term, I think, because it's it's
a version of something positive.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
You also use the word you know, you mentioned central seductive.
The word that often raises an eyebrower students is that
the word arousal, you know, or even the word sexual.
How do you how do you attach sort of arousal
to the idea of criminality.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
You know, there's a lot you can do a lot
for the sexual metaphor and penetration, violation, going beyond a
protective boundary, taking the risk projecting yourself into somebody else's world,
all these things. And you know the fact that the
(22:25):
kinds of behaviors we're thinking about when we think about crime,
that violence, peak and adolescence isn't coincidental sexual and the
fact that males are doing these activities at five to
(22:46):
ten times a rat the females are, and the female participation,
even when it occurs, is often different process that's not
unrelated to sexual dynamics. H no I think I get
a little bit at that, a little bit because I
do have some discussions in the book where I try
(23:07):
to get the background factories, like the sexual difference. Often
there's this art pattern that when women murder and they're
asked about it, they can't recount what was going on
at the time. Males can. And it's it seems to
(23:28):
be difficult for more difficult from femails to reconcile, organizing
their bodies and violence more difficult than it is for men.
You know, for men, you're just you're being a hard man.
You know, which is a stick up guy, which is
a ballot medical it's a very straight coward not subtle.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
For women that doesn't a lot of them, you do violence,
it's hard for them to reconcile. They are in the
violence with who they are and the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, could I ask you about that, because I was
really interested because you know, if we look at evidence
of things like vandalism or graffiti, ars and setting something
on fire, they are predominantly may lax. So what what
essentially or arousal? What what what are men getting from
it that women don't?
Speaker 2 (24:28):
You're being masculine, right, stamp being tough, you're being re sturbed,
You're you know, doing violence. You're organizing your body into
a into a hard wool. It's just like a you
know a lot of work set. I mean, think of
(24:49):
the cocky way when wal mm hmm. All these metaphors
are not accidentally close one to the other two violent activity.
Let me say just one of the something before, because
I if your students want to understand how to do
(25:11):
this work, I wrote a like four page, very short,
a little essay called on analytic induction, and it's I
think pretty accessible. It's in International Encyclopedia and Social Science.
They can find it on the web. It's open access.
(25:34):
But that'll kind of show you how you do this
work and how it's different than how social scientists soften.
And there are examples of studies and other fields, not
just crime. But if you want to pursue this and
start your own investigations, and even you know your students
(25:57):
who are in high school and what we call high school,
that's a good time to start, because I mean, I
think basically what I'm doing is continuing who I was
when I was an analystspected I had I think, this
is you find and I would encourage your students, you know,
finding a way of working there continues who you are.
(26:23):
That helps you. You know, you get a lot of
motivation out of that, Like your work reflects back on
concerns you have on an ongoing basis, and that gives
you motivation.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Thank you, Thank you for that. Can I throw a
few more turns at you that often come up that
the student asks for a little bit more clarification on
And you mentioned that the stick up guy doing the
stick up? Do you just want to explain what that means?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I mean, you know, in the US it's a phrase
for robbery. I don't know in the UK whether.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
It is occasionally use yeah the stick up, ye.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, pick them up, which I mean, you know, put
your hands on ah as you're illustrator. But it's also
a pilot metaphor so of being a hard man and
so forth. These are beard often admired personalities. Dominance is
(27:27):
a large part of the tracture. I have a chapter
Ways of a Badass that doesn't focus on a particular
a crime like event, but it's just a way of
being that sometimes ends up in violence or exploitations. But
that came out of really a memory. I had one
(27:48):
of my first jobs. I was like a busboy waiter
at a hotel where we we would stay there. It
wasn't a community every day, it's that the resort kind
of place you go stay there. We lived in both
would have been stalls for horses that were converted and
(28:12):
the first night I got there, we would have roommates
and I my roommate guy they called Billinger out of
uh it was a boxer, but Dollinger was a famous
American criminal, escaped the law for a long time, was
finally shut down at the Biograph Theater. And this guy,
(28:35):
he told me, somebody's gonna come up to you and
they're gonna ask you to borrow some money. And it's
not gonna be a lot of money, and you're gonna
think I got the money. You know. They'll ask me
for a dollar, two dollars and you're gonna think, well,
I need to have friends here. I don't know people.
I'll give him the money. Don't give them them. If
(28:59):
you give the money, And I mean, he didn't explain
a lot. I don't think if I recall, right, but
I what I came to understand is that if I
give this guy the money the first day I'm there
the rest of the summer because of the summer jol.
The rest of the summer, I'm going to be looking
(29:20):
to that guy to get paid back, and he's not
going to pay me back. And so what's going to
happen is he's going to be robbing me the whole summer.
Like it starts out as a loan, but then it
turns into robbery. It's a dominance thing, not that he
(29:44):
needs a dollar or two dollars, it's that that dominance
in a world of mails, and we were all males
of fails. Well that's a masculine thing, and you know,
when you get into masculine things, you're never very far
from sexuality. So the next day, in fact, this guy
comes up to me. He's not a big guys, not
(30:06):
an intimidating guy, and he says, hey, Jack, and I'm
a little short, and you give me a buck. I
want to get amber with them. And I said, you
know what, I was just about to ask you, because
I'm sure too. And that's say Bill. Because they were
a judge juvenile delinquents, and the head waiter would recruit
(30:29):
these guys from the judge in the Lower East Side
of Manhattan, and this would be the way they would
avoid jail come out to do this work. So these
were interesting guys. It was a good instructor summer, but
that I always had that in mind when I was writing,
like Waves of the Badass. You know what, you know
these events when somebody goes in and punches somebody, or
(30:51):
somebody goes in and steals something around. So that's not
what this is about. Really. The real thing to explain
is the attractions of the waves of the badness, of
dominant of how you can do something. And it only
has the power this kind of asking a person for
money and not paying it back. It only has power
if the other people understand you're doing something bad and
(31:13):
you're getting away with it. That's where you generate the
power the rule that you should pay back. Otherwise it's
robbery that allows this guy with a little phrase, hey
can you give me a buck? Can you lend me
a buck? Can you not lend the guy a buck?
And that innocent little phrase becomes a summer long robbery. Yeah,
(31:37):
and it comes worse and worse every day.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
I can't help hearing stick up and waves Badass without
thinking about pulp fiction the film, which I think both
both have made reference to, aren't.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
They Yeah, yeah, you know a lot of people, yeah,
creating culture, movies, writing scripts, writing books. The responsor to
always symbol They're not getting it from me, It's just
(32:11):
I'm getting it from the same place they are from
the world the you know, people who were living whom
it's motivating. The Joe Peshi character, I think he's very
you know, the people doing the streets that whole series
of movies. They are very respond These are people, but
(32:31):
these are very much like people are new from New York.
They were responding to the Saint and I the same
dramatic and dramatics of everyday life.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Thank you, And if it's like, go with you. I
just wanted to ask you two more things, one one
at one end of the scale and one at the
other end of the scale. So I wonder the scale
you talk about the sneaky thrills, okay, which students always
interested in. Do you mind just explaining what that means
and some examples if that's okay?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, you know, I asked my students and at uc
C L A H anonymously described to me any uh
kind of thefts that you did a little transgressions and
what they were about. And over a couple of years
(33:21):
I got dozens and dozens of these reports. Some of
them were franklin bullshit, you could tell, but others were detailed,
and they all they fit together in that the people
were off and shoplifting, stealing something. Ah. I remember one
(33:47):
of the reports was getting a pizza up the back
of the truck. I remember the account. We weren't even hungry,
but that was the tastiest piece of the ever did
just to say, oh, is actually the transgression that was
the attraction. It's the whole drama of had I pass
(34:12):
as looking normal when I'm in this store? It's not
just the thing. In fact, the things some up and
thrown away. It's neglected. They had the money in their
pocket to buy if they want. It's not like they're
really poor. And that's what Even if they are rule,
it's not like they needed this thing. So what is
really a think here? Well, what's really a thick is
(34:34):
shown that you can get away, you can be seen
as normal while you have these dan thoughts. And so
people are approaching sexuality. You know, if people know what
you're thinking all the time, if they really, if everybody
really knew what you were thinking all the time, I mean,
my god able to because what you're thinking, well, you couldn't,
(35:00):
you couldn't defend it. So it's very important for you
to realize. I remember when my own kids were young
and they would do these embarrassing things, and I kept hoping,
why don't they get to the age already when they
have to hide this stuff I don't even want to
know about, you know. But so eventually now they're pretty
good at hiding from they will they became pretty good
(35:24):
at hiding stuff from me. That's what's its fake. You know,
this is a Huberty Adolesson pre adolescent edge of adolessons
in adolescens kind of phenomenon. And then you know, it
can payed off. And that's one of the reasons that
these crimes vandalism as well are very graffiti. Okay, you
(35:50):
come at night when nobody's looking, you put your name
up and you disappear. Okay, there's something in you you
want known, but you don't want people seeing it that
it's you. It's come. I want to be known but
not known. Yeah, your name up everywhere. Ah. But on
the other hand, you don't want them to identify with
(36:10):
you and arrest you. So there's a tremendous attraction in
ad less or proving you to get away with it.
Whatever the hell it is, it's not that important.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
I think we've probably all done that one, haven't we.
And from from sneaky thrills. Right at the other end
of the scale, then is your section of cold blooded
senseless murder. It's called yeah. I mean, if we've, for example,
you know that the sneaky thrills, I think we can
all get our head around that. We can understand of
it trying to act like a badass doing the stick up,
you know, demonstrating masculinity. But I think it's a little
(36:47):
bit more difficult to understand why someone would commit such
an extreme act and what's the just you know, are
they trying to justify in some way or is it
is it something that's just gone beyond their control.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
You know what I've done since that book, I did
the one paper school intimate massacres. I call it it's
school shooting. So let's talk about that example, because it
becomes important to break down what the government or what
(37:28):
journalists consider all one category into the subcategory. So let
me talk about school shooting. Uh, there's lots of things
going on in school, and we have many more here.
You have some experience with us because availabilities, so rat
(37:49):
of many more of these things. But in some one
subset of them, what's going on what I call into
the massacres. That is, who are attacking others in places
that they think have a very intimate understanding of who
(38:13):
they are, and they're trying to destroy that undertone. So
that becomes that it's not that they're trying to achieve anything.
In fact, they often don't have much of a plan
to get away. And what's going on in that kind
of cold blood senseless what we call cold blooded senseless
(38:35):
murder is a destruction of the image that the attacker
things others, even if they don't even if they don't
even know the attack, they have this images and they're
trying to destroy them, and sometimes they destroy them. In
some of these events, they kill their mother, they kill
(38:58):
people very close to them who could give them different
accounts they are. They want to get rid of that version.
So without constructing anything new and.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Just going back to what you said right earlier, on
in the show that all of these kinds may mayle
dominated other than that sort of the demonstration of masculinity.
What else is going on there? How can we explain
or understand it through a gendered lens.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
We're talking now pretty much about physical steps and bios
and we think of that as male, and we think
of that as the associable poverty, lack of opportunity and
so forth. But why can't I corruption, broad theft, in
(39:50):
devious means that kind of taxes, shooting people, all kinds
of internet us say they will be much more common,
and the masculine dominates may not be the same, or
maybe people haven't really looked into it. The kinds of
(40:11):
crimes we're talking about, the kind of physical we break
into some place, when you're physically violent somebody, it's a
way of being masculine, that it's better with men than
it does with women. On the un hand, fraud, conspiracy,
(40:31):
a cheating may well be a different gender bats. So
I think it has to do with how these acts
fit into who you are in the rest of your life.
It's not like you do these things separate from the
rest of your life. This has to be an extension
of the rest of your line. So if we look
(40:56):
at what's called white collar time, we might find a
very different male or female and make those acts assist.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Thank you, Jack, Thank you. I always end by asking
if people want to find out more about your work
or read some more of your literature, how can they
get in touch or find out more about you?
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Well, you know you can my emile from U C.
L a Is and I have a female female and
you can find me on that. I have an article
that should be coming out in the next year, well
beyond the selections of the state, and you can look
(41:42):
for that, and that will particularly how my approach is
suspicious of government and of the state, and how so
much of criminology goes along with this state, and that
might be a kind of guide to how to read
(42:02):
the whole range of different contributions, perhaps specify brilliant.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Well, thank you, yeah, exactly, Thank you. I really really
do appreciate your time. Sorry, I said it'd be about
thirty minutes, so I've taken up more of your time.
So I really do appreciate you giving up your time
for me today, Jack, Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
The Sociology Show podcast relies on the kind contributions of
sponsorship and donations. If you enjoy the show, then you
can help with the hosting costs by donating as little
as five pounds on the go fundme page. Simply visit
UK dot GoFundMe dot com and search for the Sociology Show.
If you can donate, then you will be sent a
(42:50):
Sociology Show pen as a small thank you for your
continued support of the show.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Thank you for taking the time to listen to the podcast.
If you would like to con tack the show or
be interviewed, then please email The Sociology Show Podcast at
gmail dot com.
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