Abstract
Homicide, Gender and Responsibility offers an eloquent, nuanced and sophisticated collection of essays problematizing the multi-layered interplay and connectedness between gender, law and responsibility in relation to homicide in various fields (private/public) and within local and global contexts (UK/Australia/Canada/Ireland). The book takes a critical look at, and examines, one of the most common forms of lethal violence, homicide, and its different constructions through the conceptual lens of gender and key notions of responsibility.
In their introductory chapter the editors explain the scope, rationale and structure of the book. As they argue, by taking Cockburn’s (2004) and Kelly’s (1988) work on ‘continuum of sexual violence’ as a starting point, they aim at understanding homicide as a form of violence occurring along a continuum of violence and shedding light on ‘how gendered understandings and experiences of violence permeate representations of responsibility’ (p. 3). The book consists of two parts, each comprising four chapters and a final chapter summarizing key points and editors’ thoughts on the collection’s contribution.
Part I explores the gendered functions and response of law to domestic homicide showing that ‘legal narratives cannot capture complexities, nuances, ambiguities in women’s lives’ (p. 6) and this is, as the editors state, the reason legal reform is not always helpful and effective. In Chapter 1 Annette Ballinger revisits the case of Ruth Ellis and the gendered assumptions that underlined her treatment in the criminal justice system. The author explains that in essence Ruth Ellis was denied the defence of provocation because she took full responsibility for her actions and thus did not conform to stereotypical (patriarchal) beliefs and assumptions about femininity, passivity and vulnerability. It is argued that for legal change to be effective law needs to be re-gendered and this would involve challenging the masculine concepts of rationality and responsibility and creating new legal subject positions that accommodate women’s complex realities and experiences. In the same line in Chapter 2 Julie Stubbs closely examines intimate partner homicide, its characteristics and underlying gendered patterns. She stresses that gender remains a critical explanatory factor but that we need an intersectional theoretical framework covering different aspects such as race, class, sexuality and disability in order to provide a fuller and more nuanced understanding of this form of lethal violence. In Chapter 3 Myrna Dawson offers the impetus to start discussing the role and impact of (gendered) stereotypes regarding intimacy and intimate partner lethal violence on sentencing and punishment. Similarly, in Chapter 4 Kate Fitz-Gibbon examines 26 cases of child-perpetrated homicides in Victoria (Australia) and identifies the masculinity-based discourses used by the judiciary to construct and allocate responsibility. She points out the inherent contradictions of these discourses (e.g. dangerous and vulnerable youths) and suggests developing a more nuanced legal discourse for children who commit lethal violence.
Part II looks at less explored fields of lethal violence and the extent to which these can help us gain insight into the role of gendered understandings in the allocation of responsibility. Using two case studies, Sandra Walklate and Ross McGarry investigate in Chapter 5 the possible contributory role of combat stress and military masculinity in the occurrence of lethal violence in wartime and explain how the neoliberal conception of the individual as an accountable military subject is often employed to deflect the state’s responsibility. In Chapter 6 Anette Bridgedal Houge explores the gendered ways perpetrators in direct murder and sexual violence cases at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) were portrayed through primary legal actors’ narratives. The author insightfully remarks on the use of a wider repertoire of narratives to explain wartime sexual violence (e.g. sexual violence as the result of personal urges not as violence per se), echoing similar neutralizing narratives used for sexual violence cases in periods of peace. In Chapter 7 Alison Gerard and Tracey Kerr critically examine the securitization of migration and the ‘embodied effects’ of migration management through the case study of an Iranian refugee who was murdered in an Australian-funded detention centre on Manus Island (PNG). The authors argue that the ‘blurred and ambiguous legal matrix governing offshore detention centres’ (p. 143) makes it difficult to locate responsibility and develop appropriate legal remedies and safeguards. In Chapter 8 David Doyle and Joe McGrath examine workplace fatalities and deaths in custody and discuss the difficulties in assigning criminal responsibility when prosecuting large companies/organizations. The authors maintain that while the recent UK law of corporate manslaughter helps guide organizations on their behaviour, it may also be useful to deal with these fatalities as serious public health issues allowing the development of achievable strategies that focus more on prevention.
Overall Homicide, Gender and Responsibility is an engaging, meticulously crafted and coherent collection of essays on homicide. This book adds to our conceptual and contextual understanding of lethal violence by shedding light on the gendered assumptions underlying the constructions and allocation of blame and responsibility. Importantly, it invites the reader to reflect on what ‘truths’ are acknowledged, implied or silenced and who is made visible or invisible in the available socio-legal narratives and discourses commonly used to make sense of homicide. As such it fills a gap in existing literature and builds up on previous work on gender-based lethal violence (see, for example, Daly and Wilson, 1988; Dobash and Dobash, 2015). It will certainly be of interest to academics, researchers, legal practitioners, policy-makers and anyone who is interested in challenging their taken-for-granted notions about homicide and responsibility.