ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the wider social, cultural and historical contexts and structures within which serial killing takes place, and which are typically ignored in accounts of serial killers that tend to emphasize the individual pathology, biography or dysfunctional family background of offenders. The chapter shows how, for instance, rather than deviating from them, the activities of serial killers often reflect processes of modernization, such as planning crimes according to a means/ends rationality, having a tendency to instrumentalize relationships, and adopting a ‘mission-oriented’ approach that seeks to rid society of disparaged groups in accordance with Enlightenment and modernist thinking about progress and social betterment. Serial killing is also analyzed in the context of the mass media in modern society, where, it is argued, a symbiotic relationship exists as serial killers revel in their fame, notoriety and celebrity status, which, in turn, provides a source of newsworthy fascination for the press and general public. Consumption and the rise of consumer culture is another key feature of modern society providing a context in which to examine serial killers and serial killing. Here, it is proposed the unified, centered modern self is destabilized by consumer capitalism, which gives rise to a new kind of self: a postmodern consumer self. The serial killer is regarded the extreme version of this new kind of self, which is free to consume wantonly, unrestricted by the state and other institutionalized constraints and controls of modernity.
