A Narrative Approach to Women’s Lawbreaking

Abstract

This paper argues for the value of narrative criminology for feminist explanations of women's lawbreaking. Contemporary theories note the significance of material gendered inequalities, however narrative offers a way to include discursive aspects of gender. Drawing on recent developments in narrative criminology, this article analyses how women may 'talk themselves into' lawbreaking. Analysis draws on interviews with three women with diverse experiences in the drug trade, and shows how drug trafficking was narrated as impossible, meaningful, and inevitable. A narrative approach therefore offers ways to understand how for some women, under some circumstances, lawbreaking may become meaningful. Narrative criminology offers ways to incorporate both material and discursive facets of gender into contemporary explanations of women's lawbreaking.

“The times have changed, the dope has changed”: Women's cooking roles and gender performances in shake methamphetamine markets*

“…These women performed gender using matriarchal control. That is, these women built their cooking environment around displays of femininity that emphasized caretaking, interpersonal skills, and emotional maintenance, and they shared similarities with the feminine business model observed by Grundetjern (2015) and respectable femininity described by Fleetwood (2014bFleetwood ( , 2015. These women held firm control over their households and the cooking process.…”

Criminal Narrative Experience: Relating Emotions to Offence Narrative Roles During Crime Commission

“…Narrative analysis has been used in a number of other recent studies and its potential for understanding the way harmful and criminal actions are motivated and sustained has been demonstrated through work on crack cocaine use (Copes, Hochstetler, & Williams, 2008), drug dealing (Sandberg, 2009), white-collar crime (Klenowski, Copes, & Mullins, 2011), street violence (Brookman et al, 2011), cannabis use (Sandberg, 2012), mass murder (Presser, 2012), terrorism (Sandberg, 2013;Joose, Becerius and Thompson, 2015), drinking (Tutenges & Sandberg, 2013), violence (Brookman, 2015), decision-making strategies of carjackers who steal cars using violence (Copes, Hochstetler & Sandberg, 2015) and female lawbreaking in relation to cocaine trafficking (Fleetwood, 2015). Sandberg et al (2014) analysed Anders Breivik's acts to reveal how the perpetrator was influenced not only by political rhetoric, but also by the cultural script of a school shooting.…”

Telling stories of terrorism: a framework for applying narrative approaches to the study of militant's self-accounts

“…In this sense, narratives are much more than post hoc justifications but rather are constitutive of, or shape, experience (Presser, 2010, p. 434). Given that we experience the world narratively, as the protagonist of our own ever-changing story, it becomes clear that 'a life is not "how it was" but how it is interpreted and reinterpreted, told and retold' (Bruner, 1987, p. 31see also Fleetwood, 2015;Presser, 2009, p. 184). This position also circumvents an inherent tension in viewing narrative as a record or interpretation of experience; the expectation that an individual's story will necessarily be the same in each retelling despite the dynamic nature of human life (Polletta, 2006, p. 3).…”

“…Despite the importance of culture, individuals always have a say in negotiating meaning. In this light, narratives that help fashion meaning should be thought of as reflective of both structure and agency; simultaneously reflective of existing structures, since social positioning and experience make available particular kinds of discourses but at the same time a consequence of individual imagination (Fleetwood, 2015;Presser & Sandberg, 2015b;Sandberg & Pederson, 2009).…”

“…From those historical and cultural narratives that underlie and form the basis of connection for entire peoples or nations to those told between friends or family members, stories are ubiquitous. Research that has focused on studying stories in the context of their telling has shown the value of this approach for explaining participation in social movements (Polletta, 2006;Polletta et al, 2011) as well as violence and crime (Fleetwood, 2015;Presser, 2009;Presser & Sandberg, 2015b). However, there are few studies of the flow of narratives in social spaces that explicitly link to participation in political violence.…”