"Thou shalt not kill" is arguably the most basic moral and legal
principle in any society. Yet while some killers are pilloried and
punished, others are absolved and acquitted, and still others are
lauded and lionized. Why? The traditional answer is that how
killers are treated depends on the nature of their killing, whether
it was aggressive or defensive, intentional or accidental. But
those factors cannot explain the enormous variation in legal
officials' and citizens' responses to real-life homicides. Cooney
argues that a radically new style of thought--pure sociology--can.
Conceived by the sociologist Donald Black, pure sociology makes no
reference to psychology, to any single person's intent, or even to
individuals as such. Instead, pure sociology explains behavior in
terms of its social geometry--its location and direction in a
multidimensional social space.
"Is Killing Wrong?" provides the most comprehensive assessment
of pure sociology yet attempted. Drawing on data from well over one
hundred societies, including the modern-day United States, it
represents the most thorough account yet of case-level social
control, or the response to conduct defined as wrong. In doing so,
it demonstrates that the law and morality of homicide are neither
universal nor relative but geometrical, as predicted by Black's
theory.
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