The American Ritual of Violence: A Cultural Analysis of Mass Shootings at Schools in the United States

Abstract

This thesis uses anthropology to explore why young white men commit mass shootings in schools in the United States in an effort to prevent future mass shootings. Existing scholarship on the topic comes from the fields of psychology, sociology, and criminology. While anthropologists study violence more generally, there has been limited consideration of violence in the context of school shootings. In an attempt to further the anthropological exploration of why young white men commit mass shootings in schools, this project concentrates on three areas: Foucauldian discourse analysis on hegemonic masculinity content created by school shooters; the ritualization of the process to commit a school shooting informed by Roy Wagner’s scholarship on ritual theory analysis; and an exploration of the body as a site of meaning when paired with a gun in the creation of hegemonic masculinity. Evidence considered includes the online posts of school shooters from message boards, YouTube commentary sections, websites, and remnants of their journals and manifestos. The discourse was coded into primary themes that revealed the young men who became shooters experienced social isolation, felt attacked by society, and spent an overwhelming amount of time imagining violent massacres. We must offer these young men opportunities to reintegrate into society before their feelings of victimization set in and they view violence as their only pathway to hegemonic masculinity. It might require writing a new origin story of the American man, one that does not solely depend on the exercise of violence and power to both identify and elevate itself above all others at any cost.