Citation

Websdale N. J. Contemp. Ethnogr. 2010; 39(4): 388-420.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0891241610371112

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article reports the case of a young military police officer who murdered his fiancée. The dominant wisdom is that men kill their female partners as an expression of their power and control or because their power and control is ebbing. Employing a sociological imagination and Avery Gordon’s notion of haunting, the author draws on feminist and social psychological discourses to highlight the contextual importance of the power relations of gender and the central role of shame and humiliated fury in the killing. The contextual importance of power relations and the central role of shame and humiliated fury constitute necessary but not sufficient conditions for the commission of intimate-partner homicide because such killings also involve inexplicable forces. The author discusses some of the practical and theoretical implications of the findings.