Louise Wattis
Teesside University, Criminology, Faculty Member
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Historically, women linked to prostitution have been represented pejoratively in media and crimino-legal discourses which persist in reinforcing marginality and stigma, and legitimating violence against sex workers. The early part of this... more
Historically, women linked to prostitution have been represented pejoratively in media and crimino-legal discourses which persist in reinforcing marginality and stigma, and legitimating violence against sex workers. The early part of this chapter explores these concerns before drawing upon research findings from oral history interviews focusing on participants’ memories of victims. Here I present an alternative set of representations to remedy the invisibility and hyper visibility which often defines the framing of sex workers as victims. While research findings reveal the Othering of women with participants engaging in both conscious and unconscious victim blaming, accounts also highlight more in-depth and humanizing recollections often shaped by social and spatial proximity which connect women to locality and community.
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This chapter explores the social and historical context of the Sutcliffe case, identifying how narratives of political and economic crisis in 1970s Britain combine with cultural conditions associated with northern England such as economic... more
This chapter explores the social and historical context of the Sutcliffe case, identifying how narratives of political and economic crisis in 1970s Britain combine with cultural conditions associated with northern England such as economic decline, deindustrialisation and working-class masculinity to form the backdrop to these murders and the police investigation. The chapter also draws on the concept of hauntology to highlight how space and place are transformed by violent events. In conclusion, the chapter argues that although misogyny and violence against women may demonstrate culturally-specific features linked to class and locality, patriarchal violence nevertheless transcends the local. Having said that, it is argued that locally and historically-specific conditions can expand understandings of the social and situational nature of violence and murder.
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In the concluding chapter I reiterate the value of crime history and studying key criminal events as a lens onto a wider range of criminological issues. For instance, this book’s focus on the Yorkshire Ripper case has inspired the... more
In the concluding chapter I reiterate the value of crime history and studying key criminal events as a lens onto a wider range of criminological issues. For instance, this book’s focus on the Yorkshire Ripper case has inspired the exploration of crime, place and history; feminist history; gender, structure and serial murder; and the framing of female victims across representational schemas. The chapter also emphasises the value of an interdisciplinary approach which integrates popular criminology, crime history, academic criminology and cultural studies to develop the criminological imagination. Feminist analyses have been pivotal to this project and I conclude by stressing the importance of these perspectives, whilst also acknowledging the tensions and contradictions provoked by an engagement with feminist knowledges.
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Introduction: After being popular across other countries for many years, the number of school breakfast clubs in the UK has expanded dramatically since the late 1990s. They are viewed as being able to make a positive contribution in terms... more
Introduction: After being popular across other countries for many years, the number of school breakfast clubs in the UK has expanded dramatically since the late 1990s. They are viewed as being able to make a positive contribution in terms of meeting the educational, care and health needs of children – particularly those in greatest need from poorer backgrounds. But research in this country on the effectiveness of school breakfast provision remains limited and largely anecdotal. Donald Simpson, Carolyn Summerbell, Robert Crow and Louise Wattis report on a study that evaluated the impact of two school breakfast clubs from a health perspective.
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Sutcliffe murders before considering the criminological value of revisiting this infamous case involving the murder of thirteen women by Peter Sutcliffe. It is argued that exploring... more
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Sutcliffe murders before considering the criminological value of revisiting this infamous case involving the murder of thirteen women by Peter Sutcliffe. It is argued that exploring this case expands understandings of crime, history and place, violence against women, feminist history, struggles over the representation of prostitution/sex work, as well as a closer meditation on the figure of the victim as represented across a range of texts. In addition, the chapter also identifies the book’s methodological and theoretical approach as feminist cultural criminology, which stresses the importance of an engagement with history, academic criminology, cultural studies and popular criminology alongside the recognition of the role of gender in shaping violence and its representation.
This chapter explores how the history of feminist activism and the development of feminist theory and research coincided with the Sutcliffe murders. It highlights how the murders galvanised local feminist activism in West Yorkshire in... more
This chapter explores how the history of feminist activism and the development of feminist theory and research coincided with the Sutcliffe murders. It highlights how the murders galvanised local feminist activism in West Yorkshire in response to the murders and police and media treatment of many of the victims. The chapter analyses alternative histories from the time which critique feminist activism as insensitive to race whilst other commentators claim that sex workers and their advocates were denied any voice within feminist debates at the time. The latter section of the chapter draws upon research findings to unpack the dominant fear narrative surrounding the murders, revealing the complexity and ambiguity of fear experiences both in the context of this case and beyond.
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This article explores how working mothers negotiate the often competing spheres of paid work and unpaid domestic and care work. Drawing upon qualitative data from a varied sample of women, it discusses the impact of workplace demands on... more
This article explores how working mothers negotiate the often competing spheres of paid work and unpaid domestic and care work. Drawing upon qualitative data from a varied sample of women, it discusses the impact of workplace demands on home life, women’s attempts to contain the domestic sphere so as not to disrupt paid work, and the emotional conflicts inherent to combining dual roles. In addition, the article applies Bauman’s concepts of order and disorder to women’s experiences of work–care negotiation. Whilst it is recognized that Bauman’s work largely ignores gender, his discussion of solid modernity with its emphasis on order and the transition to liquid modernity with its emphasis on disorder provide a useful theoretical lens through which to illuminate women’s accounts of managing dual roles.
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Page 1. Page 2. Combining Work and Family Life: Removing the Barriers to Women's Progression. Experiences from the UK and the Netherlands. Wattis, Louise Yerkes, Mara Lloyd, Susanna Hernandez, Manuela Dawson, Louise Standing,... more
Page 1. Page 2. Combining Work and Family Life: Removing the Barriers to Women's Progression. Experiences from the UK and the Netherlands. Wattis, Louise Yerkes, Mara Lloyd, Susanna Hernandez, Manuela Dawson, Louise Standing, Kay 2006 ...
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This chapter analyses serial murder on a number of levels. Firstly, it acknowledges the dominance of psychologically-informed perspectives on serial killing in both the academic and popular imagination. The discussion then moves on to... more
This chapter analyses serial murder on a number of levels. Firstly, it acknowledges the dominance of psychologically-informed perspectives on serial killing in both the academic and popular imagination. The discussion then moves on to explore approaches which stress the importance of history, social structure and culture in explaining the proliferation of serial murder and the growing ubiquity and fascination with the figure of the serial killer in US and British culture in late modernity. The latter part of the chapter then examines feminist structural and cultural analyses of femicide and serial murder. The chapter concludes by arguing for greater integration between feminist approaches and social structural approaches which privilege class and the political economy as a means of theorising and accounting for the proliferation of serial murder in late capitalist societies.
The literature on the aetiology of serial killing has benefited from analyses which offer an alternative perspective to individual/psychological approaches and consider serial murder as a sociological phenomenon. The main argument brought... more
The literature on the aetiology of serial killing has benefited from analyses which offer an alternative perspective to individual/psychological approaches and consider serial murder as a sociological phenomenon. The main argument brought to bear within this body of work identifies the socio-economic and cultural conditions of modernity as enabling and legitimating the motivations and actions of the serial killer. This article interrogates this work from the standpoint of a gendered reading of modernity. Using the Yorkshire Ripper case, it emphasizes how in addition to the political economy, gender relations and masculinity shape the dynamics of serial murder and its representation.
This next chapter expands upon the discussion of victims and representation to consider themes of gender, victimhood and representation as they appear within popular criminology. Focusing on depictions of the Sutcliffe murders in four... more
This next chapter expands upon the discussion of victims and representation to consider themes of gender, victimhood and representation as they appear within popular criminology. Focusing on depictions of the Sutcliffe murders in four works of true crime and crime fiction, the discussion will explore a number of themes relating to objectification and violence against women, as well as portrayals of sex workers and the police as they appear in the chosen texts. In doing so, the chapter assesses the criminological and political potential of these texts by considering if they offer more progressive and complex representations of women, victims and violence. Conversely, arguments which highlight the way in which these representations may merely reproduce and reinforce women’s objectification and subordination are also explored.
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This book contains papers from a conference organised for undergraduates at the University of Chester in November 2004.
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The true crime genre has become synonymous with the serial killer. As such, other narratives dealing with different types of violent criminal subjects have been overlooked in academic and media analyses. The following article explores a... more
The true crime genre has become synonymous with the serial killer. As such, other narratives dealing with different types of violent criminal subjects have been overlooked in academic and media analyses. The following article explores a subgenre of true crime which has been overlooked—the life story of the violent criminal or “hardman biography.” However, in acknowledging the hardman, the discussion also reveals his presence across fact/fiction boundaries and a range of cultural terrain. Following a discussion of the cultural space this figure occupies, I turn my attention to hardman stories which exist predominantly in the local imaginary and focus on one such text which tells the story of a violent protagonist and cultures of crime and violence in the North of England in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In so doing, I focus on how this text animates cultures of violence and marginality left in the wake of deindustrialization and economic decline, combining this with relevant theore...
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ABSTRACT Deindustrialization wrought socio-economic and cultural change throughout the UK, Western Europe and the USA. Within some deindustrialized zones, multiple indices of deprivation rise significantly which presents complex and... more
ABSTRACT Deindustrialization wrought socio-economic and cultural change throughout the UK, Western Europe and the USA. Within some deindustrialized zones, multiple indices of deprivation rise significantly which presents complex and interrelated social problems including poverty, unemployment, poor quality private rented housing, complex physical and mental health problems, and crime. The austerity agenda further exacerbates these problems, cuts local support services, and further entrenches the myriad issues embedded in post-industrial communities. This paper draws on a funded research project in a deindustrialized town in the North East of England designed to measure the impact of migration on the settled community. The project found advantages to inward migration alongside increased community tension where poor neighbourhoods yet to recover from long-term deindustrialization saw a rapid increase of international migrants. These tensions represent competition for scarce resources amongst the fragmented multi-ethnic working class trying to get by in areas of “permanent recession”.
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Drawing upon qualitative interviews with women students, this article explores the meaning of ‘class’ and ‘studenthood’ at a ‘new’ university in a large post-industrial town in the north of England. Classed experiences were evident in the... more
Drawing upon qualitative interviews with women students, this article explores the meaning of ‘class’ and ‘studenthood’ at a ‘new’ university in a large post-industrial town in the north of England. Classed experiences were evident in the way interviewees interpreted the locale predominantly in terms of its ‘working-classness’ and the social problems associated with deindustrialisation. Findings support the accepted notion of a distinct student identity and perceived divides between students and local people based on spatiality, locality, class and student habitus, which also intersected with gender to produce ‘locally specific’ experiences of space and safety within this setting. However, the article confounds the middle-class student and working-class local dichotomy by exploring accounts from a varied sample of women in terms of age, class, ethnicity and domestic background, which reveal alternative university experiences and shifting class relations as a result of deindustrialis...
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This article examines a series of murders involving young women linked to sex work, which occurred in the same Northern town between 1998 and 2003. It explores the case on a number of levels. First, it situates violence, and these murders... more
This article examines a series of murders involving young women linked to sex work, which occurred in the same Northern town between 1998 and 2003. It explores the case on a number of levels. First, it situates violence, and these murders specifically, in the localised spaces of advanced marginality, which follow in the wake of deindustrialisation and economic decline. Second, the article links these murders to sex workers’ disproportionate vulnerability to violence as a result of social stigma and situational risk. However, informed by auto-ethnography and the growing recognition that there is potential for academic analysis within criminology to include the criminologist’s own emotional engagement, the discussion moves on to explore the author’s personal reflection on this series of murders derived from vicarious connection and proximity to victims. In addition, the author draws on the concepts of spectrality and haunting, which have gained currency across the social sciences, to ...
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This article explores safety concerns and fear of crime amongst women students attending university in a large town in the north-east of England. It acknowledges that gender as a social category is problematic; however, the article is... more
This article explores safety concerns and fear of crime amongst women students attending university in a large town in the north-east of England. It acknowledges that gender as a social category is problematic; however, the article is grounded in recognition of its significance in shaping experiences of fear, safety and space. The main aim is to explore how gender intersects