The Annual Review of Sociology
Online ISSN : 1884-0086
Print ISSN : 0919-4363
ISSN-L : 0919-4363
Special issue
Eugenic Thoughts and the Attribution of an Incident: Causal Observations of the Sagamihara Care Home Attack
Kenjiro Sakakibara
Author information
JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

2020 Volume 2020 Issue 33 Pages 34-43

Details
Abstract

This paper analyses people’s attribution of the Sagamihara care home attack in 2016, in which 19 disabled residents of a care facility were killed by a former employee, U. Three forms of causal observation are distinguished: societal, personal, and bodily attributions. Although some people suspected that U’s psychiatric condition was the likely cause, many organisations of/for disabled people ascribed the case to social attitudes that deny disabled people’s lives (“eugenic thoughts”). However, societal attribution is dysfunctional, in that it renders U’s rampage understandable in a performative way, impeding progress toward the unconditional inclusion of disabled people. Thus, attribution analysis, the approach adopted here, can explore the functions, implications, and effects of people’s causal observations.

Content from these authors
© 2020 The Kantoh Sociological Society
Previous article Next article
feedback
Top