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High-profile crimes : when legal cases become social causes / / Lynn S. Chancer



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Autore: Chancer Lynn S. <1954-> Visualizza persona
Titolo: High-profile crimes : when legal cases become social causes / / Lynn S. Chancer Visualizza cluster
Pubblicazione: Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, 2005
Edizione: 1st ed.
Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (332 p.)
Disciplina: 364.1
Soggetto topico: Crime - United States - Sociological aspects
Crime - United States - Public opinion
Trials - United States - Public opinion
Crime and the press - United States
Crime in mass media
Mass media and public opinion - United States
Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-306) and index.
Nota di contenuto: Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface: The Larger Symbolism of Symbolic Cases -- Acknowledgments -- Part One. Presenting Provoking Assaults. From New York to Los Angeles -- Part Two. Exemplifying a Genre. A Tale of Two Crimes -- Part Three. From Differing Vantage Points. "Smith," "Tyson," "King," "Denny," and "Simpson" -- Part Four. Stepping Back -- Appendix A: Dates and Descriptions of Provoking Assaults -- Appendix B: Identifying the Top Twenty High-Profile Crimes, 1985-1996 -- Appendix C: Acknowledging Intellectual Debts and Distinctions -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index
Sommario/riassunto: O. J. Simpson. The Central Park jogger. Bensonhurst. William Kennedy Smith. Rodney King. These are more than crimes and criminals, more than court cases. They are cultural events that, for better or worse, gave concrete expression to latent social conflicts in American society. In High-Profile Crimes, Lynn Chancer explores how these cases became conflated with larger social causes on a collective level and how this phenomenon has affected the law, the media, and social movements. An astute and incisive chronicle of some of the most polarizing cases of the 1980s and 1990s, High-Profile Crimes shows that their landmark status results from the overlapping interaction of diverse participants. The merging of legal cases and social causes, Chancer argues, has wrought ambivalent effects on both social movements and the law. On the one hand, high-profile crimes offer important opportunities for emotional expression and raise awareness of social issues. But on the other hand, social problems cannot be resolved through the either/or determinations that are the goals of the legal system, creating frustration for those who look to the outcome of these cases for social progress. Guilt or innocence through the lens of the media leads to either defeat or victory for a social cause-a confounding situation that made the O. J. Simpson case, for example, unable to resolve the issues of domestic violence and police racism that it had come to symbolize. Based on nearly two hundred interviews, Chancer's discussions of the infamous Central Park jogger and Bensonhurst cases-as well as the rape trials of William Kennedy Smith and Mike Tyson, the assault cases of Rodney King and Reginald Denny, and, finally, the O. J. Simpson murder trial-provide a convincing, multidimensional and innovative analysis of the most charged public dramas of the last two decades.
Titolo autorizzato: High-profile crimes  Visualizza cluster
ISBN: 1-282-53749-0
9786612537493
0-226-10113-4
Formato: Materiale a stampa
Livello bibliografico Monografia
Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
Record Nr.: 9910813018203321
Lo trovi qui: Univ. Federico II
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