Been a Heavy Life: Stories of Violent Men
ISBN: 9780252092183
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of Illinois Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Violence in men; Abusive men; Criminal behavior;

In this groundbreaking work, Lois Presser investigates the life stories of men who have perpetrated violence. She applies insights from across the academy to in-depth interviews with men who shared their accounts of how they became the people we most fear--those who rape, murder, assault, and rob, often repeatedly. Been a Heavy Life provides the discipline of criminology with two crucial frameworks: one for critically evaluating the construction of offenders' own stories, and one for grasping the cultural meta-narratives that legitimize violence. For social scientists generally, this book offers a vivid demonstration of just how dynamic and contingent self-narratives are.

Lois Presser is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

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