ABSTRACT
From the mid-1980s to the present day, the idea of the victim, and the material structures through which victimisation is defined, have increasingly been shaped and influenced by cultural forces. Globally, groups campaigning for victims' rights have grown in size and scale, the mass media focus on victims has further intensified and criminal and legal processes have increasingly factored in the interests of victims. The mass media has historically been identified as an important source of information about crime and a vehicle through which victimisation is rendered visible. While risk and fear became commonly used lenses of analysis in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, in more recent times, the concept of resilience has risen to prominence in political, media and policy circles. This chapter comments on the continued politicisation of the victim in society and revisits the possibility of incorporating deeper layers of cultural analyses into victimology.
