The field of perpetrator studies has traditionally focused on the criminal behavior, the historical context of this act, and the repression by criminal (inter)national law, or treatment of perpetrators by transitional justice institutions. Perpetrator studies address past and present issues related to perpetrators and perpetration. Moreover, it is more generally interested in fundamental questions including terminology, motivation, ideology, agency, processes, and dynamics, as well as issues related to prevention. At the same time, the field has always been interested in the status and significance of the perpetrator as a discursive formation in legal, political, historical, philosophical, and cultural settings. Hence, research in this field is navigating between both the study of “perpetration” of acts that bears inherent negative characters and entails a specific social reaction (such as punishment or prevention), and the criticism of the very label of “perpetrator” as a limited and ambiguous category, heavily influenced by legal positivism as well as political or economic strategies.
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