Gender, Race, and Homicide: Precarious Gesture and Bringing the Generalized Other Back In

Abstract

Work on homicide has increasingly moved to cultural analysis that reframes basic sociological concepts like structure and value. In addition, symbolic interactionist work has increasingly focused on cultural structures. This study contributes to both efforts, framing homicide as variation in performances for group boundary production, that is, for the social distribution of prestige. Does gender and race identity represent different ways of performing homicide? The study uses Supplementary Homicide Reports, 2009 of the Unified Crime Reports data that the US Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation prepares. The study examines four direct effects of boundary production, namely black male, black female, white male, and white female statuses. It includes five performance regularities, gender and race, age, relationship to victim, condition of the homicide, and weapon used. The cross-classified analyses show cultural boundaries that associate with gender and race statuses. The study tests urban and southern residences of homicidal offenders using enter hierarchical logistic regressions and finds support for the hypothesis that cultural performances produce boundaries for geo-economic and geo-historical identifications.