• "Mark Cooney's Is Killing Wrong? is a masterful
application of pure sociology to the social response to homicide.
Drawing on voluminous historical, cross-cultural, and current social
science evidence, Cooney shows that the response to homicide, ranging
from praise to the death penalty, is tied to the social statuses
and relationships of victims, perpetrators, and third parties. This
book should be required reading for legal scholars, criminologists,
and sociologists who study homicide and its control, and anyone
who doubts that morality is a product of social structure."—Richard
Rosenfeld, University of Missouri, St. Louis, coauthor of Crime
and the American Dream
|
Is Killing Wrong?
A Study in Pure Sociology |
| |
| Mark Cooney |
| 256 pages, 6 x 9 |
| 2 figures, 2 tables |
| Cloth ISBN 978-0-8139-2826-5 • $39.50 |
| Studies in Pure Sociology |
| October 2009 |
 |
"Thou shalt not kill" is arguably the most basic moral
and legal principle in any society. Yet while some killers are
pilloried and punished, others are absolved and acquitted, and
still others are lauded and lionized. Why? The traditional answer
is that how killers are treated depends on the nature of their
killing, whether it was aggressive or defensive, intentional or
accidental. But those factors cannot explain the enormous variation
in legal officials' and citizens' responses to real-life homicides.
Cooney argues that a radically new style of thought—pure
sociology—can. Conceived by the sociologist Donald Black,
pure sociology makes no reference to psychology, to any single
person's intent, or even to individuals as such. Instead, pure
sociology explains behavior in terms of its social geometry—its
location and direction in a multidimensional social space.
Is Killing Wrong? provides the most comprehensive assessment
of pure sociology yet attempted. Drawing on data from well over
one hundred societies, including the modern day United States,
it represents the most thorough account yet of case-level social
control, or the response to conduct defined as wrong. In doing
so, it demonstrates that the law and morality of homicide are
neither universal nor relative but geometrical, as predicted by
Black's theory.
Mark Cooney is Associate Professor
of Sociology and Adjunct Associate Professor of Law at the University
of Georgia.
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