The Montreal Massacre: A Story of Membership Categorization Analysis
By Peter Eglin and Stephen Hester
()
About this ebook
The Montreal Massacre: A Story of Membership Categorization Analysis adopts an ethnomethodological viewpoint to analyze how the murder of women by a lone gunman at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal was presented to the public via media publication over a two-week period in 1989. All that the public came to know and understand of the murders, the murderer, and the victims was constituted in the description and commentaries produced by the media. What the murders became, therefore, was an expression of the methods used to describe and evaluate them, and central to these methods was membership category analysis — the human practice of perceiving people, places, and events as “members” of “categories,” and to use these to explain actions.
This is evident in the various versions comprising the overall story of the Massacre: it was a crime; it was a tragedy; it was a horror story. The killer’s story is also based on his own categorial analysis (he said his victims were “feminists”). The media commentators formulated the significance of the murders in categorial terms: it implicated a wider problem, that of violence against women, and thus the reasons for the murders were shown to be categorial matters.
As a contribution to sociology, and as a demonstration of the significance of ethnomethodology for understanding social life, the book reveals the methodical and particularly categorial character of how sense is made of events such as this and how such methodical and categorial resources are central to human interaction.
Related to The Montreal Massacre
Related ebooks
May '68 and Its Afterlives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Narrative Criminology: Understanding Stories of Crime Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen Theorists on Society and Politics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReading Rape: The Rhetoric of Sexual Violence in American Literature and Culture, 1790-1990 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Geography of Genocide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrison and Social Death Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTerrorism: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Compassionate Temperament: Care and Cruelty in Modern Society Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Smart Culture: Society, Intelligence, and Law Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDemocracy and the Political Unconscious Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Spectacular Favela: Violence in Modern Brazil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide: Identity and Moral Choice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sublime of the Political: Narrative and Autoethnography as Theory Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Socialist Peace?: Explaining the Absence of War in an African Country Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSeriously!: Investigating Crashes and Crises as If Women Mattered Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRadical Cosmopolitics: The Ethics and Politics of Democratic Universalism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAll That Hollywood Allows: Re-reading Gender in 1950s Melodrama Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCommunity, Cosmopolitanism and the Problem of Human Commonality Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMemory, Trauma, and Identity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complexity of Evil: Perpetration and Genocide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFeminist Philosophy and the Problem of Evil Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFeminist Generations: The Persistence of the Radical Women's Movement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Civic Action Works: Fighting for Housing in Los Angeles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPolitical Criticism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Telling Stories: The Use of Personal Narratives in the Social Sciences and History Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Literary Executions: Capital Punishment and American Culture, 1820–1925 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFraming Abuse: Media Influence and Public Understanding of Sexual Violence Against Children Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOrganisational Anthropology: Doing Ethnography in and Among Complex Organisations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEmpire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKeepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Crime & Violence For You
Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight (2nd Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHouse of Secrets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Introduction to Conducting Private Investigations: Private Investigator Entry Level (02E) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Worse Than Slavery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence | Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil You Know: Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And The Mountains Echoed Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No More Police: A Case for Abolition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mass Supervision: Probation, Parole, and the Illusion of Safety and Freedom Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Violent Abuse of Women: In 17th and 18th Century Britain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bloodbath Nation Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poison Tree: A True Story of Family Terror Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Regarding the Pain of Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Stone Unturned: The True Story of the World's Premier Forensic Investigators Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Death Row, Texas: Inside the Execution Chamber Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chasing the Scream: The Inspiration for the Feature Film "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Montreal Massacre
0 ratings0 reviews