Homicide as conflict resolution

Homicide research at societal, subcultural, and interaction levels of analysis has not produced a comprehensive model for the killer‐victim transaction. But rules for organizing the experience of homicide can be generated from Simmel's definition of conflict as a “resolution of divergent dualisms” (1955:11). A model of homicide as a form of conflict resolution is demonstrated through interviews with a random sample of 35 adjudicated killers. Respondents’ definitions of homicide correspond to the conflict resolution model, with their verbal accounts, their socio‐psychological orientation to the victim at the point of the killing, their method of killing, and the general dynamics of the killer‐victim transaction, all varying as a resolution of a distinctive relationship, either between lovers, adversaries, or strangers. The situational definition casts homicide within the realm of normal behavior and at the same time delineates its distinctive features.