RT Article
T1 Familiar felons: gendered characterisations and narrative tropes in media representations of offending women 1905-2015
JF Crime, media, culture
VO 18
IS 2
SP 242
OP 264
A1 Sandman, Tua
LA English
YR 2022
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1836531257
AB This article contends that contemporary writings on the representation of offending women provide a simplified outline of ‘available’ representations. To nuance and further complicate our understanding, this study lays bare the most salient media characterisations of women perpetrators in Swedish press. In contrast to much previous research, it covers various offence types and an extensive period of time (1905-2015) and moves away from the focus on mega-cases and cases of extreme deviance. First, the study illustrates that characterisations are contingent and that there is a greater variety in ‘available’ representations than previous research suggests. The characterisations rather tend to move between and beyond the categories of bad, mad and sad. Second, the study makes visible the narrative continuities (across cases and over time) and analyses the social and cultural work of gendered characterisations. While steering attention to sense-making and the construction of familiarity, the article complicates the assumption that women’s deviance primarily or necessarily is represented as otherness.
K1 Crime and media
K1 Sweden
K1 Gender
K1 Historical criminology
K1 women and crime
DO 10.1177/17416590211005512