Mark Cooney - Is Killing Wrong?

STUDIES IN PURE SOCIOLOGY

Donald Black, Editor

IS KILLING WRONG?

A STUDY IN PURE SOCIOLOGY

MARK COONEY

University of Virginia Press Charlottesville and London

University of Virginia Press

2009 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First published 2009

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cooney, Mark, 1955

Is killing wrong? : a study in pure sociology / Mark Cooney.

p. cm. (Studies in pure sociology)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8139-2826-5 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Murder. 2. Homicide. 3. Criminal psychology. 4. Criminal justice, Administration of. I. Title.

HV6515.C65 2009

364.1523dc22 2009001837

PREFACE

Right and wrong fascinate us. Their conflict provides a large part of our entertainment and education. Morality is the stuff of ancient myths, television documentaries, Hollywood movies, parental guidance, detective stories, courtroom dramas, learned debates, religious homilies, Shakespearean tragedies, and quotidian gossip. Part of the attraction lies in the very ambiguity of the central notions themselves. We know, for example, that what comes to be defined and treated as right and wrong are not entirely stable across societies or time periods: one tribe thinks nothing of infanticide, another abhors it; drinking alcohol is outlawed across the nation today, but tolerated a decade earlier. Yet we know relatively little about why morality varies. To say it varies because of culture is to say almost nothing at all.

Sociologists have long been interested in issues of morality. Today, their work is usually categorized under the rubric deviance and social control. But while theories of deviance abound, theories of social control are few and limited in scope. Sociologists have given far more thought to explaining variation in deviant behavior than to variation in sanctions for deviant behavior, to explaining why people do wrong than to explaining why others penalize conduct as more or less wrong. Fortunately, there is one major exception.

Over the past one-third of a century, sociologist Donald Black has developed a startlingly new theory of morality. He argues that morality varies not from culture to culture as much as from case to case. Moral variation is primarily found at the level of conflicts, and can be observed in the variable sanctions or penalties that law and popular justice mete out to wrongdoers. One person is harshly punished, a second does the same thing and gets off lightly, a third is rewarded and praised. What explains such variation, Black argues, is the social structure or geometry of casestheir location and direction in social space. Is the complaint directed upward (against status superiors) or downward (against status inferiors)? Are the parties close (e.g., intimates) or distant (e.g., strangers)? How do the social characteristics of third parties, such as witnesses, allies, judges, and jurors, augment or modify the cases core shape? Alter the case geometry, as known by the social identity of the parties, and the outcome will change as well.

Blacks conception of social geometry is an intrinsic part of a new theoretical system he has invented, known as pure sociology. Pure sociology explains social life without references to standard features of virtually every other social theory. It ignores the human mind. It ignores the ends or goals toward which people and groups are said to strive. It even ignores people as such: its subject matter is not the behavior of individuals but the behavior of social life.

Pure sociology, then, is more than a little weird. It is also more than a little improbable. It predicts, for example, that morality varies geometrically in the same way across all societies and at all times. It predicts that the same principles explain the severity of sanctions among nomadic hunter-gatherers and modern urban dwellers, among our ancestors ten thousand years ago and our descendants ten thousand years hence (if there are any).

Some evidence exists to support Blacks extravagant claims. But they have not been subjected to a systematic confrontation with the evidence on their own terms. That is the purpose of this book. I take a single form of deviant behavior and examine whether the sanctions visited upon those who commit it line up in the way Blacks theory predicts. The particular form of deviance I choose is homicide. Homicide and its penalties have been studied by anthropologists, historians, sociologists, criminologists, lawyers, and others, resulting in a body of research literature unprecedented in quantity and quality. Homicide has the additional advantage of being the offense least likely to conform to Blacks theoryits widely acknowledged gravity means it is the most likely to be handled in an even-handed manner. Homicide therefore provides the best and the sternest test of Blacks theory. If the theory is correct, the morality of homicide depends on its social geometry. But does it? Is killing, in fact, wrong?

This book has had an unusually lengthy gestation period. I first became interested in the penalties for homicide in the early 1980s when I undertook a cross-cultural study of the topic for my SJD dissertation at Harvard Law School. After completing the research phase of the project, I took a teaching position in the Department of Law at the University of Zimbabwe. Perhaps it was the distance, physical and social, from home, but my time in Zimbabwe, while personally rewarding, led to an intellectual reorientation, a disillusionment with the ephemeral and normative nature of traditional legal scholarship and a kindling of interest in the scientific character of sociology. On leaving Zimbabwe, I decided to enroll at the University of Virginia for a PhD in sociology. There, I finished my SJD dissertation and began PhD researcha series of interviews with men and women incarcerated for murder or manslaughter that focused on the formal and informal sanctions they and their family had suffered as a result of the homicide. After completing the dissertation and several papers, my attention then shifted, somewhat perversely, to homicide itself. I published a book and several articles on lethal violence. That work behind me, I found myself attracted once again to the original topicthe legal and popular response to homicide. With fresh eyes, I began to explore additional sources of information, reading widely in, for instance, the historical and human rights literatures in an effort to acquire the broadest possible familiarity with the subject. The present book is the culmination of my research.

Over the years I have received much help from many people. My greatest intellectual debt is to Donald Black, whose Sociology of Law course inspired my interest in sociology in general and pure sociology in particular. He supervised my two dissertations and has continued to provide a great deal of stimulation and support for this and other projects. Conversations with M. P. Baumgartner have always been enlightening and enjoyable. James Tucker has been a source of friendship and wisdom for many years. More recently, the two Scotts, Phillips and Jacques, have been good friends and great sounding boards. Others to whom I am grateful for penetrating comments on this and earlier work include Roberta Senecahl de la Roche, Barry Schwartz, Heath Hoffmann, and Callie Burt. The University of Georgia has provided a supportive environment for my endeavors, and I wish to mention, in particular, the three individuals who have headed the Department of Sociology since my arrival for various kinds of assistance they have provided me over the years: Gary Fine, Woody Beck, and William Finlay.