Thinking Allowed - 22/04/2009

Laurie Taylor explores the latest research into how society works. Laurie discusses the history of murder, from duelling to drive-by killings, with Pieter Spierenburg, author of A History of Murder: Personal Violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present and Joanna Bourke, author of An Intimate History of Killing. Why was the murder rate higher in the Middle Ages than it is now? What factors have pushed the practice of killing men down the social order and should we worry about the first increase in the murder rate for over 200 years? Laurie also hears of the surprise of Antje Bednarek, a German sociologist pursuing an ethnography of Young Scottish Conservatives. She had not realised that tracking them down would be such a tricky business.