| This dissertation considers how men who have perpetrated violence talk about themselves and explores how the interview enters into and shapes such talk. The research is based on qualitative interviews with 28 men who committed assault, robbery, driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI), rape and/or murder. The dissertation probes the men's identities, on the view that identity is best understood in narrative form---a perspective that has circulated from literary studies to the social sciences.;In each of the narratives the narrator was portrayed as morally decent. It was the protagonists depicted in the narratives who were criticized. Two central narrative themes emerged, both oriented toward the global purpose of accounting for one's deviance. These concerned (1) whether one's moral self has changed over time or has been relatively stable; and (2) the heroic struggles that have comprised one's life.;Some men claimed to have journeyed from essential goodness to moral decline and back to goodness. Yet the majority of the men presented a stable moral self, one that was generally decent throughout the life course. Claims of consistent moral decency strained plausibility in the face of past violence. For this reason, such claims demanded the use of various tactics for improving coherence.;All of the narrators depicted their lives as oriented around some heroic struggle. The protagonist was depicted as a lone warrior battling internal and external foes. The struggle against criminal justice authority was particularly common and tended to overshadow all other struggles described by the narrator.;Narration was shown to be a project that actively involves narrator and audience. As such, the research interviews themselves were sites of identity construction. Research participants actively used the interview as a resource for narrating the trajectories and struggles that contribute to identity. The dissertation suggests that identities are partly shaped in and by face-to-face interaction including the research interview. The research points the way to identity reconstruction through work on narratives, for the sake of reducing violent action. |
