This paper identifies the explanatory narratives used by perpetrators of male-male homicide in Buenos Aires (Argentina) to make sense of this crime. Drawing upon narrative criminology and masculinities theories, this study enquires into the rationalisations of perpetrators, considering their emic terms, rationalities and stories. Fieldwork was conducted between 2016 and 2020, and a convenience sample strategy was employed for participant recruitment. The analysis is based upon seventy-three narrative-biographical interviews with offenders, and field observations in prisons and homes of former convicts. The corpus was analysed following an inductive thematic coding strategy using Atlas.Ti. Eight narratives were typified, considering how men talked about agency and change, and the explanatory locus of the stories: ‘rebel’, ‘affected’, ‘idiot’, ‘either him or me’, ‘repeating the story’, ‘gang’, ‘betrayed’ and ‘victim’. These accounts revealed two paradoxes about violence perpetration storytelling and its discursive management: men can commit a homicide and present themselves as not responsible for it and, simultaneously, they use, reconfigure and negotiate expert theories and scientific labels to explain away, excuse and justify lethal violence. This study argues that accounts are not merely neutralisation strategies, but the rationalisations of the perpetrators’ experiences, and the foundation for how they relate to and inhabit penal institutions. This paper contributes to the understanding of how those explanations shape past and future actions, and how masculinities, biographical processes and violence performance are interconnected.

中文翻译：

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为什么？男男凶杀案的肇事者如何解释罪行

本文确定了布宜诺斯艾利斯（阿根廷）男性-男性凶杀案的肇事者用来解释这一罪行的解释性叙述。本研究借鉴叙事犯罪学和男性气概理论，探讨犯罪者的合理化，考虑他们的主语、理性和故事。在 2016 年至 2020 年期间进行了实地调查，并采用了方便样本策略来招募参与者。该分析基于对罪犯的 73 次叙事传记访谈，以及在监狱和前罪犯家中的实地观察。语料库_在使用 Atlas.Ti 的归纳主题编码策略之后进行了分析。考虑到男人如何谈论代理和变化以及故事的解释轨迹，共有八种叙事：“反叛”、“受影响”、“白痴”、“他或我”、“重复故事”、“帮派” 、“背叛”和“受害者”。这些叙述揭示了关于暴力犯罪讲故事及其话语管理的两个悖论：男人可以犯下凶杀案并表明自己对此不负责任，同时，他们使用、重新配置和协商专家理论和科学标签来解释、借口和证明致命暴力。本研究认为，账户不仅是中和策略，而且是犯罪者经历的合理化，以及它们如何与刑事机构相关和居住的基础。