Jack Katz

Seduction, the Street and Emotion

David Polizzi, David Polizzi

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781787560741
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is a timely re-introduction to the work and life of one of criminology's most respected theorists, Jack Katz, exploring the current relevance of this important author and highlighting his work to a broad audience.
The scholarship of Jack Katz, as evidenced in his seminal Seductions of Crime and otherwise, has over the past three decades offered an alternative philosophical perspective to the study of crime and criminal behavior that is not defined by quantitative method or approach. Katz has radically altered the focus and range of contemporary criminology in a way that few if any other scholars have done and his work been foundational in the development of cultural criminology, itself now a high-profile alternative criminological perspective.
Through a diverse range of chapters from recognized authors in the field – including a major new interview with Jack Katz himself, in which he describes the development of his ideas, work, and growth as a researcher – contributions take up aspects of his work from a variety of perspectives and discuss and expand its contemporary relevance to the discipline of criminology.
This book will appeal to postgraduate students and scholars in the areas of criminology, cultural criminology, critical criminology, phenomenology, and sociology.

Chapter 1

Introduction

David Polizzi

Katz (1988), in his seminal text Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil makes the following introductory observation that is perhaps more relevant today than it was when it was first offered in 1988.

The study of crime has been preoccupied with a search for background forces, usually defects in the offenders' psychological backgrounds or social environments to the neglect of the positive, often wonderful attractions within the lived experience of criminality. The novelty of this book is its focus on the seductive qualities of crime: those aspects in the foreground of criminality that make its various forms sensible, even sensually compelling, ways of being. (p. 3)

The “novelty” to which Katz eludes and the fundamental distinction, which it uncovers relative to the focus and study of positivistic criminology, is simply that the experience of crime is considerably different from the static background forces normally employed in the study of the same. From this perspective, the seductive qualities of crime reveal a specific phenomenology, a specific subjective engagement between individual, other, and the social world that provides this encounter its specific lived significance. However, such a focus does not reject the influence that background forces can play within the phenomenology of crime, only that criminal behavior cannot be reduced to these more generalizable characteristics or factors; and it is from this more critical perspective that Katz's work retains its contemporary importance and significance.

As Katz maintains, the focus on static factors traditionally related to criminal behavior is simply incapable of recognizing what actually motivates an individual suddenly to commit a criminal act. “To believe that a person can suddenly feel propelled to crime without independently verifiable change in his background, it seems that we must almost believe in magic” (Katz, 1988, p. 4). However, the magic to which Katz eludes is, of course, not magic at all; rather, it is the all too human capacity to be seduced or compelled into action, criminal or otherwise; a capacity that is not reducible to the sum total of measurable objective risks or other static background factors.

From the perspective which Katz offers, the criminal act must be viewed as an existential response to one's specific engagement with the social world that reveals its own specific phenomenology and meaning. Though certain characteristics may reflect a degree of shared commonality between individuals engaged in more or less the same criminal activity, the experience from which these behaviors emerge do not. The “reasons” for homicide, robbery, or any other type of criminal act really will not be found by simply calculating the sum total of associated risk factors relative to this crime; rather, this “logic” is revealed in the immediacy of human interaction that now calls the individual to act.

Katz has insightfully argued throughout the scope of his work that to understand the meaning of crime, one must begin by exploring how the individual perpetrator constructs this aspect of their lived experience. Whether one is compelled or seduced to act from anger, humiliation, shame, or some configuration of moral outrage, the meaning of that interaction will emerge from the various lived meanings that now compel this individual to respond. The specificity of that response will be determined by the specific meaning this situation has for the individual and the meaning generating process which he or she inhabits.

I recall a former forensic client describing how he would respond if he was to return home and find a girlfriend in bed with another man. He said,

If I came home and caught her in bed with someone else, I wouldn't get mad. I would tell her that she has one hour to take her shit and get out. He can help her if he wants, but they better not be there when I get back. Why would I get mad and go to jail for her; I can find another woman.

This same individual also told me that “I would look around my apartment each morning before I left, wondering if I was going to see it later that night.”

In each of these brief descriptions, we are given a specific glimpse into how this individual constructs the meaning of his experience from the perspective he provides. Though one would perhaps expect a much different response when directly confronting the infidelity of a romantic partner, that expectation simply does not carry the same significance for this person. Witnessing his girlfriend's hypothetical infidelity would immediately end their relationship; it would not, however, immediately require that he act violently toward her or her new suiter. Violence is promised, but not as an immediate response to this act.

His willingness to withhold a violent response is fundamentally predicated on his demand that the offending individuals not be in his apartment when he returns. From this perspective, the true meaning of this experience for him is not actually situated in the initial encounter; rather, he locates its significance in the future concerning the warning he gives to his girlfriend. It is important to note that though this discussion was clearly a hypothetical clinical exercise, this was not an individual who was in any way adverse to the use of violence. In fact, violence was a not regular companion in his life, but was an action reserved for those situations deemed appropriately resolved by its use. The situation of an unfaithful lover, for this individual, did not seem to rise to that level.

Similarly, when this same individual wonders if he will see his home that evening, he does not appear so concerned that he begins to rethink his involvement in his criminal lifestyle; rather, the uncertainty of that return becomes a result to be determined later and one that is firmly predicated upon the network of events of his more immediate now. In each of these brief observations, intention, meaning, and the structure of lived experience molds these events in such a way to give them their all too human character. Background factors may certainly play a role in this constructive process but are unable to provide a more in-depth understanding of how these meanings are subjectively structured by individual experience.

Per Katz's construction of the experience of criminality, it is also important to recognize how this process helps to understand those individuals, who being “normally” predisposed to criminal behavior, act much differently in specific encounters. I recall a former client who described the following experience. While walking in his neighborhood one day, he witnessed an interaction between a drug dealer and a teenage girl attempting to negotiate sex for drugs. He stated,

Dave though I had seen many deals like this, some of which I was part of, I didn't see her as an addict; I saw her as a human being and though I was not responsible for her addiction, I was responsible for others like her, and decided that I couldn't sell drugs anymore.

What these brief reflections describe is how the immediacy of human interaction, situated within very specific social contexts, becomes meaningful for the individual from the point of view of their own subjective lived experience. Taken from this perspective, the meaning of criminal behavior can only be discovered if we are willing to enter the “logic” and emotion revealed by the performance of this act. Infidelity is only resolvable with violence, if that is the meaning I give to that event. Though I may contemplate the potential loss of something important to me, such a loss may not be significant enough to live my life differently, or I may unexpectedly encounter a familiar situation and have it change my life.

What is perhaps the most important insight throughout Katz's work is the way in which he grounds the phenomenology of criminal behavior within the larger context of social relationality and social meaning. To understand the act of criminality from this perspective is to also recognize that human existence is fundamentally social, and as a result, fundamentally vulnerable to a co-constituting meaning generating dynamic, which resides in the in-between of human experience. Humiliation, anger, or apathy would lose much of their emotional force absent some degree of social interaction or social engagement.

As a result, Katz's (1988, 1999) work continues to pay close attention to the inseparable reality of cognitive process and affective experience. For Katz, criminal behavior is never reducible to either an exclusive cognitive function or a singular episode of impulsive acting out; rather, this phenomenology reveals the intertwining of cognition and emotion, which ultimately results in the meaning provided by the individual. As such, the phenomenology of criminal behavior remains a highly personal act, whose specific contours and meaning are reflective of a specific interaction between an individual and the world.

Even as the discipline of criminology continues to remain steadfast in its belief and embrace of statistical measurement and generalizable data, the work of Jack Katz is as relevant today as it was in 1988. Criminal behavior remains for the most part an unpredictable human event, which is fundamentally predicated upon the relationship between an individual and the social world. Though traditional background factors certainly play some role, the power of that influence will always depend upon the various ways in which they are made meaningful for the individual in question. What was perhaps tolerable yesterday is not allowed today, and some degree of criminality will likely result.

About This Book

In Chapter 2, Keith Hayward sits down for a conversation with Jack Katz; however, rather than situate this encounter within the more familiar and traditional context of qualitative interviewing, Hayward takes a much more unstructured approach to this process and simply follows the flow of their conversation. As a result, Katz provides insightful observations concerning his intellectual development that begins in law school and continues through his study of sociology, criminality, and the phenomenology of emotional life.

Katz briefly traces the various overlapping trajectories of personal experience and professional observation as they help him to form his understanding of the world. He states that his decision to turn his back on becoming a lawyer was due to his unwillingness “…separate public and private life and I would have no choice but to do that if I practised law” (Hayward, 2020, p. 10).

This desire to resist a split existence is also recognizable in the academic work he would pursue. In Chapter 3, King and Maruna begin by attempting to situate the contemporary significance of Seductions of Crime, some 30 years after its original publication. What the authors contended is that Seductions of Crime, though certainly a celebrated contribution to the criminological theorizing of its day, has become “…an ideal foundation on which to build a future criminology in tune with the direction of travel in the field” (King & Maruna, 2020, p. 25). The authors argue that Katz's text has helped situate the theoretical ground for a variety of criminological theories, which reject more statistically guided approaches to our understanding of crime and criminal behavior.

As such, Seductions of Crime remains as much a challenge to the current discipline of criminology as it was when it was originally published. As the authors contend, “…nothing ‘real’ is ever black or white; no one is either all bad or all good” (King & Maruna, 2020, p. 25). Katz's work remains contemporary for the simple reason that the majority of the discipline still fails to recognize one fundamental point: that crime and criminal behavior is a human enterprise, which can only be truly understood by fully embracing that rather messy and inconvenient reality.

In Chapter 4, Baggaley and Shon provide a critical reexamination of the phenomenology of criminality offered by Katz with specific focus on the construct of righteous slaughter. The authors maintain that though the influence of Katz’ work is now well established, a number of areas still remain unexplored relative to the phenomenology that he offered. They point to three specific areas of focus: (1) the killings carried out by professional soldiers/police; (2) a need to expand the construct of righteous slaughter beyond interpersonal domestic violence; and (3) the need to explore the parallel factors related to killing and the refraining from killing.

The authors situate their reexamination of the construct of righteous slaughter by exploring the written accounts of professional soldiers, police officers, and other individuals, who describe their personal experience of being involved in a violent situation. These letters, published in the “I was there section” of The Soldier of Fortune magazine, provide a retrospective reflection concerning the meaning of these experiences from the point of view of those who have lived these events. Though the authors recognize the potential shortcomings of such data, they do provide insight into these phenomena. The authors then use these accounts as the vehicle by which to offer a revised configuration of righteous slaughter.

In Chapter 5, Polizzi applies the phenomenology of righteous slaughter to the current surge in domestic violence in the US, with specific emphasis placed on the murders performed by Dylann Roof, Richard Bowers, and Nicholas Cruz. The author begins by providing narrative accounts from news reports, Roof's jail journal, and the video narrative offered by Cruz that help to situate the context from which these acts of violence emerge. In each of the above episodes, violence is employed to correct a perceived threat or strain, which in some way is experienced by the individual as an assault on the self.

Polizzi begins by first exploring the construct of righteous slaughter and then applies it to the three brief case narratives offered in the beginning of the chapter. The author observes that in each of these cases, the violent perpetrator reveals a desire to “make things right” from the perspective they offer. In each example, righteous slaughter becomes predicated upon the socially constructed significance given these contexts by the killers. The need or demand that “I must kill” becomes filtered through narratives of anti-Semitism or anti-black racism, which help to “validate” these episodes of righteous slaughter.

In Chapter 6 Kaplan explores the construct of the “Doomed Antihero,” by which to better situate the phenomena of intimate massacre and home-grown jihadi violence.

My aim here is thus to elaborate on Katz’ new concept of intimate massacres by incorporating his earlier notions of righteous slaughter and the badass to show how mass killers – including some terrorists – convert shame into rage, “mean it” when the “pass a point of no return,” and take up a short and final identity of a “doomed antihero” on their way out of the world. (Kaplan, 2020, p. 76)

Kaplan maintains that the victims of mass killings, witnessed in a variety of examples of intimate massacre, are often similar to those targeted in certain episodes of terroristic mass killings. In each of these examples, the perpetrator takes on the role of the “doomed antihero,” who seeks to exact his lethal revenge on those who have caused him personal humiliation. As Katz (1988) observes, “Humiliation takes over the soul, by invading the whole body. The humiliated body is unbearable alive; one's very being is humiliated” (p. 25).

In Chapter 7, Lakhani and Hardie-Bick explore the phenomenology related to one's attraction to become involved in a terrorist organization. They argue that “…there needs to be more consideration of the attractions of belonging to a terrorist organisation and a more thorough appreciation of the experiences that attract people to terrorism” (Lakhani & Hardie-Bick, 2020, p. 92). Using previously collected empirical data from formerly violent extremists in the UK, the authors explore the subjective affective qualities related to the experience of criminal behavior or criminal acting out in their attempt to glean greater insight into the phenomenology of terrorism.

However, unlike other approaches focused on the role of affective experience in the performance of extremist violence, here the authors situate this process within the larger context of individual identity and meaning construction. From this perspective, the authors explore how this phenomenology, not only helps to recreate the self but also how this process provides the foundation by which these acts of violence...