Under the Nazi regime in Germany (1933-1945) a calculated killing of chronic “mentally ill” patients took place that was part of a large biopolitical program using well-established, contemporary scientific standards on the understanding of eugenics. Nearly 300,000 patients were assassinated during this period. Nurses executed this program through their everyday practice. However, suspicions have been raised that psychiatric patients were already assassinated before and after the Nazi regime, suggesting that the motives for these killings must be investigated within psychiatric practice itself. My research aims to highlight the mechanisms and scientific discourses in place that allowed nurses to perceive patients as unworthy of life, and thus able to be killed. Using Foucauldian concepts of “biopower” and “State racism,” this discourse analysis is carried out on several levels. First, it analyzes nursing notes in one specific patient record and interprets them in relation to the kinds of scientific discourses that are identified, for example, in nursing journals between 1900 and 1945. Second, it argues that records are not static but rather produce certain effects; they are “performative” because they are active agents. Psychiatry, with its need to make patients completely visible and its desire to maintain its dominance in the psychiatric field, requires the utilization of writing in order to register everything that happens to individuals, everything they do and everything they talk about. Furthermore, writing enables nurses to pass along information from the “bottom-up,” and written documents allow all information to be accessible at any time. It is a method of centralizing information and of coordinating different levels within disciplinary systems. By following this approach it is possible to demonstrate that the production of meaning within nurses’ notes is not based on the intentionality of the writer but rather depends on discursive patterns constructed by contemporary scientific discourses. Using a form of “institutional ethnography,” the study analyzes documents as “inscriptions” that actively interven in interactions in institutions and that create a specific reality on their own accord. The question is not whether the reality represented within the documents is true, but rather how documents worked in institutions and what their effects were. Third, the study demonstrates how nurses were actively involved in the construction of patients’ identities and how these “documentary identities” led to the death of thousands of humans whose lives were considered to be “unworthy lives.” Documents are able to constitute the identities of psychiatric patients and, conversely, are able to deconstruct them. The result of de-subjectification was that “zones for the unliving” existed in psychiatric hospitals long before the Nazi regime and within these zones, patients were exposed to an increased risk of death. An analysis of the nursing notes highlights that nurses played a decisive role in constructing these “zones” and had an important strategic function in them. Psychiatric hospitals became spaces where patients were reduced to a “bare life;” these spaces were comparable with the concentration camps of the Holocaust. This analysis enables the integration of nursing practices under National Socialism into the history of modernity. Nursing under Nazism was not simply a relapse into barbarism; Nazi exclusionary practices were extreme variants of scientific, social, and political exclusionary practices that were already in place. Different types of power are identifiable in the Nazi regime, even those that Foucault called “technologies of the self” were demonstrated, for example, by the denunciation of “disabled persons” by nurses. Nurses themselves were able to employ techniques of power in the Nazi regime.

With a religious psychological perspective this paper focuses on how religion is communicated during an investigation, and how religion might include in the decisions and the implementation of committed honor killings. This study pinpoints the question if it´s reasonable to unilaterally declare honor killings with culture, which is based on a distinction between culture and religion. The study is done on a court case where the offender confessed to a murder that is categorized as a so-called honorable motives. The material consists of interrogation reports during the investigation and several notes written by the offender before the murder. With a broad definition of religion the text material is analyzed with the theory of attribution. The study shows that religion is communicated to a large extent and in varying ways by the offender. Several aspects of religion are associated with honor. In this specific case religion appears as an important part of what has led to and justified the act, both before and after the act. The interrogator frequently communicates by a distinctive cultural understanding.

The aim of this study was to analyze society's efforts for girls who are victims of honorrelatedviolence and oppression. More specifically its aim was to examine what efforts thesociety can offer girls who are exposed to honor-related violence and oppression, and howsocial services and shelters cooperate on issues of honor. We have chosen to focus on girlswho are victims of honor-related violence, but we are aware that even boys and men face thisproblem. The study was conducted using a qualitative approach through interviews. Tocomplete the study we have conducted eight interviews throughout Sweden. We haveinterviewed staff at three different social services and four different shelters. This was toexamine how society operates with honor-related problems but also to investigate how thedifferent services and activities interact. The key findings that emerged from our study arethat girls from honor cultures find themselves in a dilemma when they decide to seek helpbecause of violence and oppression. On one hand, they are unable to live by familyconstraints while on the other hand they do not get the possibility of total freedom if they fleethe home. Society's efforts today include protection, support and guidance for these girls, butaccording to our informants, this is not enough. They feel that what is missing is an effort tohelp the girls after their stay at shelters because they often become isolated when they begin anew life, in a new city, all alone.

This study is conducted in order to obtain information on the causes and methods of killings grounded by honor, and through which processes and by whom these killings are realized. The rationale behind honor killings is based on a primitive understanding of justice. The relatives of the killed person assume the honor of their family, clan etc. is cleaned, and justice achieved. What may be the reasons of the persistence of such an understanding of justice in present day? In trying to answer this question, the meaning and perception of the concept of honor, the social and historical roots of the honor killings, how these killings come about, the role and impacts of these killings in society are examined.

This study, through a questionnaire and in-depth interviews, aims to to make a sociological analysis of female criminals in the Denizli Open Prison, including their demographic characteristics, family structures, committed crimes and the factors that led to their criminal acts. The questionnaire, composed of 57 questions, has been evaluated in the SPSS program, and in-depth interviews were done with 6 female criminals for a detailed analysis of why the female criminals committed crimes and the factors that led to their behavior. In the study, the concept of crime is accepted as a social fact. The educational backgrounds, ages, families and subcultures of the women have been examined and the dynamics of female criminality in Turkey have been cross-examined within the limits of sampling. In the course of the study, it was found that concepts of honor, domestic violence and patriarchal structure have been key concepts of female criminality, and female criminality in Turkey can be understood in terms of these phenomena

'Honour', an undefined notion in a patriarchal society like Pakistan, is used as a tool to justify the crime of murder. Violence in the name of honour is not a new phenomenon. Historically, it has been justified in the name of culture but the scope of this tradition has broadened with time and there is an enormous increase in the number of its victims. This cultural notion is interpreted in a way to control women's sexuality and to keep women subordinate to men. Honour killing is not legally sanctioned but the judiciary, the administration and the society often condone it one way or the other. In the tribal areas of Pakistan where such murder is not considered a crime, honour killing is a punishment for those who contravene against the traditional honour code. / The wide acceptance of honour killing has made women suffer as a whole against their basic rights; human, constitutional and Islamic. This thesis focuses on the judicial redress against the crime of honour killings, which could be achieved by proper administration of justice. It contests that to control the crime in the patriarchal society of Pakistan, legislative measures are not enough. There is a dire need to eliminate the inadequacies of the administration of justice. The State could build a judicial framework to eliminate the inequality and discrimination against women. The judiciary could play an important role in bringing justice to the victims and in curbing this heinous crime.

Why do ordinary individuals participate in mass violence perpetrated against civilians? That is the question I will attempt to answer in the following paper. I consider these men ordinary to the extent that the majority was not socially deviant. Looking at the case of Nazi Germany, two groups stand out as good case studies: the SS Einsatzgruppen and the SS cadres in the Death camps. The following analysis will focus on the motivations of these men to commit mass murder. I argue for a causal sequence of action, beginning with the onset of Nazi ideology, further followed by the dehumanization of the victim and the brutalization of the perpetrator. I will demonstrate how the ideology present during German interwar society influenced these men into participation. Dehumanization and brutalization are complimentary factors that push these men into action.

Under the Nazi regime in Germany (1933-1945) a calculated killing of chronic “mentally ill” patients took place that was part of a large biopolitical program using well-established, contemporary scientific standards on the understanding of eugenics. Nearly 300,000 patients were assassinated during this period. Nurses executed this program through their everyday practice. However, suspicions have been raised that psychiatric patients were already assassinated before and after the Nazi regime, suggesting that the motives for these killings must be investigated within psychiatric practice itself. My research aims to highlight the mechanisms and scientific discourses in place that allowed nurses to perceive patients as unworthy of life, and thus able to be killed. Using Foucauldian concepts of “biopower” and “State racism,” this discourse analysis is carried out on several levels. First, it analyzes nursing notes in one specific patient record and interprets them in relation to the kinds of scientific discourses that are identified, for example, in nursing journals between 1900 and 1945. Second, it argues that records are not static but rather produce certain effects; they are “performative” because they are active agents. Psychiatry, with its need to make patients completely visible and its desire to maintain its dominance in the psychiatric field, requires the utilization of writing in order to register everything that happens to individuals, everything they do and everything they talk about. Furthermore, writing enables nurses to pass along information from the “bottom-up,” and written documents allow all information to be accessible at any time. It is a method of centralizing information and of coordinating different levels within disciplinary systems. By following this approach it is possible to demonstrate that the production of meaning within nurses’ notes is not based on the intentionality of the writer but rather depends on discursive patterns constructed by contemporary scientific discourses. Using a form of “institutional ethnography,” the study analyzes documents as “inscriptions” that actively interven in interactions in institutions and that create a specific reality on their own accord. The question is not whether the reality represented within the documents is true, but rather how documents worked in institutions and what their effects were. Third, the study demonstrates how nurses were actively involved in the construction of patients’ identities and how these “documentary identities” led to the death of thousands of humans whose lives were considered to be “unworthy lives.” Documents are able to constitute the identities of psychiatric patients and, conversely, are able to deconstruct them. The result of de-subjectification was that “zones for the unliving” existed in psychiatric hospitals long before the Nazi regime and within these zones, patients were exposed to an increased risk of death. An analysis of the nursing notes highlights that nurses played a decisive role in constructing these “zones” and had an important strategic function in them. Psychiatric hospitals became spaces where patients were reduced to a “bare life;” these spaces were comparable with the concentration camps of the Holocaust. This analysis enables the integration of nursing practices under National Socialism into the history of modernity. Nursing under Nazism was not simply a relapse into barbarism; Nazi exclusionary practices were extreme variants of scientific, social, and political exclusionary practices that were already in place. Different types of power are identifiable in the Nazi regime, even those that Foucault called “technologies of the self” were demonstrated, for example, by the denunciation of “disabled persons” by nurses. Nurses themselves were able to employ techniques of power in the Nazi regime.

The present research investigated paternal filicide in South Africa. It aimed to understand the factors underlying fathers killing their child/children. Study one explored paternal filicidal offenders' processes of construction, construing of events leading to the filicide, and meanings of their lived experience of killing their child/children. Study two examined the filicidal offenders' extended families' construction processes, construing of events before the killing, lived experience and construing of filicide, and construing of the filicidal offenders' construing of the filicide. Four paternal filicidal offenders and nine family members of the offenders who had different backgrounds (i.e., age, racial, ethnicity, cultural, educational, occupational, and the nature of the filicide) were purposively sampled and recruited into the research. Personal construct theory (Kelly, 1955) underpinned this research. A semi-structured individual interview which was structured according to the Experience Cycle Methodology (ECM) interview proforma (Oades & Viney, 2012), Perceive Element Grid (PEG) (Procter, 2002), and the ABC model (Tschudi, 1977), were administered to the filicidal and family participants. Data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009) and personal construct analytic methods (diagnostic construct analysis, PEG, ECM, and the ABC model). The analysed themes suggest that filicide might co-occur with familicide and attempted suicide by the offender in some instances. While in many filicidal cases intimate/marital problems might be contributing factors, in a few cases filicide might be accidental in which it might not be precipitated by intimate/marital discord. Most filicidal offenders who tend to only construe their partners/wives and intimate/marital relationships in terms of positive construct poles might slot rattle when encountering invalidations of constructions. The encountered problems might trigger threat, anxiety, in which the problems are experienced as unconstruable, and anger which might lead to hostility. The filicidal offenders might lack constructions to deal with the issues which might result in unaddressed problems which might lead to a sense of being overwhelmed and feelings of hopelessness. The filicidal offenders might broaden or delimit their perceptual field or fluctuate between constriction and dilation to construe and cope with the situation. They might exceed their inhibition ability which might result in the avoided issues and inhibited feelings exploding in violence. The extended family members might not intervene in the couples' problems, if intervening might be possible, because of an unawareness of issues as a result of submergence and constriction in which they avoid construing the couples' problems, limit their views to issues, and minimise the seriousness of the construed problems. Psychological support, personal construct family therapy and Employee Assistance Program, might help the filicidal offenders cope with their intimate/marital problems, and therefore might prevent filicide. Considering the implications of the filicide on the offenders' identities, relations, and relationships, and also the relationships of their families, intervention programs such as Restorative Justice and sport might help the offenders re-establish their sense of self, find commonality and sociality while rebuilding the damaged relationships.

This study examines the ideological inflection of the ‘farm killings’ discourse in the Eastern Province Herald articles published in August 1998. ‘Farm killings’ is a media frame which was applied to a spate of killings of people on the country’s farms since 1994. Heightened and sustained media attention on the ‘farm killings’ has lifted the phenomenon from the other ‘run-of-the-mill’ murder crimes, and located it firmly as a matter of public concern and a subject of a broad political and economic debate. In this study I investigate the media coverage of the ‘farm killings’ within the context of these debates. The cultural studies approach to the study of the media provides a fruitful theoretical framework within which this study is located. The ideological examination of the articles is done using the critical linguistics method - a brand of reflexive, interpretative style of analysis which enables a sustained examination of media texts within their social, cultural and historical context. This study’s conclusions pose a challenge to the ‘Fourth Estate’ role often claimed for the media. In particular, it denies that the Herald objectively, fairly and truthfully reflected the experience on the farms during the period of this study. Its main finding is that the newspaper instead, constructed a particular understanding of the killings characterised by subtle racism, bias and partiality.