Intimacy and Murder in Everyday Life Based on Court Desicions

Intimate relationships are theoretically personal, but social and political transformations make them an issue of public concern. Thus, currently in Russia, sexuality has become a very actualised theme as it has been widely discussed when the law banning dissemination of information about ‘non-traditional’ orientation was introduced. In this dissertation, I look at how British sociologist Anthony Giddens’ thesis about transformation of intimacy is reflected in current intimate and sexual interactions in Russia. In this work, my main research concern focuses on one of the harshest forms of intimate violence, murders of non-heterosexual subjects because of negative attitudes towards their sexuality. I rely on qualitative methods as my main methodological tools for collecting and analysing data because they offer a deeper understanding of social phenomena. After reviewing advantages and disadvantages of various qualitative methods, I opt for sociological study of documents. As a result, I analyse 43 texts of sentences issued by the Russian courts in respect to cases under article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code (intentional murder). My research allows rigorously analysing and describing in details those social conditions that lead to actions normally qualified by lawyers as murder and normally understood by sociologists as reflections of more general power relations in a given society. From this analysis of court materials, I conclude that it is not entirely relevant to talk about transformation of intimacy because this notion is rather an obstacle of any societal transformation. Phenomena marked as ‘intimate’ fall under a veil of secrets and obscurity of the ‘private’ space. Yet, it is in the privacy that all the conditions are created for both: manifestations of various forms of sexuality on the one hand; and commitment of murders motivated by negative feelings about someone’s sexuality on the other hand.