10
MAR
15
Defining Honour
...as a catalyst for Honour-Based Violence (HBV) is mostly about unlearning things we thought we knew.
When most people talk about honour, they are talking about a socially-mandated code of conduct to which members of the social group must adhere. These codes vary from group to group, and are not helpful in understanding what motivates violence by a group against one of its own, because they are:
- Too micro in scope to explain the behaviour of the group as a whole (psychology versus sociology).
- Too culturally-specific*, to be useful in understanding the social dynamics of HBV.
- Too ossified to be part of a living social dynamic.
Baxter (2007)** offers a more dynamic but unwieldy definition of honour:
“…rather than a “code”, which implies a
system of rules and regulations, honor is a
wide- ranging, dynamic, multi-stranded
ideology about “right living.”
Baxter's definition avoids both the binary classifications of good-versus-evil and the ossification of codes that help in one context and harm in another, but the strength of her definition is also its weakness. If violation of a group ideology about "right living" can motivate violence against a group member, how then can we determine what is "right living" in a particular context?
By examining behaviours that most societies consider honourable, we can see a common thread:
- The soldier that marches off to war, risking his life to protect the safety of the family he leaves behind is considered honourable;
- The pedestrian who finds a wallet and returns it with all its contents to its owner is considered honourable;
- Even a thief who who goes to prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family is considered honourable.
Each of these examples is a person who willing takes the risk, the loss, the punishment, for the benefit of another. We can deduce that self-sacrifice is a component of honour
...but who must benefit from the self-sacrifice be for the act to be honourable? The prisoner who steals the loaf of bread to feed his family takes it out of the mouths of the baker's children. The baker cannot consider this honourable.
(continued...)
* I don't like the word "culture" either, which I consider a thought terminating cliché, but that is another post entirely.
** Baxter, Diane, “Honor Thy Sister: Selfhood, Gender, and Agency in Palestinian Culture” (2007) 80:3 Anthropological Quarterly 737–775.
10
MAR
15
Self-sacrifice for whom?
Since it is the social group poised on violence that judges the "honourability" of the self-sacrifice, it must therefore be the group that benefits from it. That also allows for competing behaviours to be honourable to one group and dishonourable to another. Consider topics in which widely differing behaviour is considered honourable, like abortion.
- Society 1 has an abundance of natural resources but no natural defences. It exists under perpetual threat of attack from its neighbours, who covet those resources.
This society will need a surplus of able-bodied members capable of defending its borders. And it must produce more children than are needed for peace-time tilling of soil and crafting of goods.
In this society, the bearing of (surplus) children will be an honourable thing, even if childbearing put sits members at risk.
- Society 2 has an abundance of citizens and vast natural defences but few arable lands. There are treacherous mountains and scorching deserts that invading armies must cross to pose a threat to its seat of power. But feeding its burgeoning population is a challenge.
This society will need only as many members as are necessary for peace-time activities, and a small surplus for contingencies.
In this society, the bearing of (surplus) children will be a dishonourable thing, as it puts the society at risk.
Thus, the needs of the group define what is honourable to that group:
- Any action that benefits the group at the expense of the individual is honourable.
- Any action that benefits the individual at the expense of the group is dishonourable.
These become the behaviours each group will reward or punish as need arises, bt not ever transgression is met with the same degree of violence. How do we predict which transgressions will motivate violence and which ones will not?
(continued...)
10
MAR
15
How far is too far?
We know from HBV files that these crimes involve the participation (whether active or passive) of multiple members of the group, which means they are premeditated.
- Aqsa Parvez's family had a meeting to determine how to deal with her insistence on involving outside third parties in their "family issues".
- Hamed Shafia, who would later claim to have been too young to be responsible for his actions, was tasked (by his parents) with planning the murder of his sisters and his father's first wife.
- (The group of 20+ people who showed up at a courthouse to stone a heavily pregnant Farzana Parveen to death could not have done so spontaneously and independently. The very public murder had to be planned.)
If HBV is always a group targeting an individual, what separates actions that prompt violent reprisal from those actions that do not?
Let's start by eliminating any explanations that are not true in all cases (the FALSE POSITIVES).
1. GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE
43% of the targets of HBV crimes in Germany are male (Oberwittler & Kasselt, 2013).
In Canada, we have largely defined male victims of HBV out of existence. Though Aqsa and her brother Waqas were both subject to arranged marriages that neither of them wanted, it is easier to see Aqsa as a target of forced marriage than to see Waqas that way. This may be because the consequences of an arranged marriage were not the same for each of them. Marriage was unlikely to prevent Waqas from pursuing an education and career (if he had wanted to do so), as it threatened to do for Aqsa.
This bias in our statistical methods means that we do not count HBV crimes against men as HBV. And any bias in the research methods will necessarily follow into the remedies supported by that research.
(continued...)
10
MAR
15
How far is too far?
2. RELIGIOUSLY-MOTIVATED VIOLENCE
Analysis of English-language reporting of HBV shows that almost all HBV crimes reported in Canada are committed by Sikh and Muslim men. (For comparison, almost all HBV crimes in India are committed by Hindus.)
It is interesting to note that Punjabi, Urdu, and Hindi do not use the words "honour-based violence" to describe these crimes: they are merely murders.
Until 1980, Italy did have legislation that described murders commonly understood to be honour crimes as Delitto d'Onore. The legislation awarded a reduced sentence to fathers, husbands and brothers, who caught their daughters, wives, and sisters in a sexual act with a man who as not their husband.
In theory, Delitto d'Onore applied only crimes of passion that were committed before the prefrontal cortex of the accused could stop the act. But in practice, it was used to excuse murders that were committed days or months later.
The earliest HBV case in Canada in which the defence attempted the Delitto d"Onore defence was R. v. Tripodi, in which the accused sponsored his wife and children to immigrate to Canada, having already been advised by a relative that his wife has been unfaithful to him, and had aborted the pregnancy that resulted from that affair. He argued that while he had previously forgiven his wife for the affair, when she confirmed it to him in person a few days after her arrival in Canada, he was unable to stop himself from spontaneously killing her. Understandably, he was convicted for her murder.
Such delitti must have been sufficiently common for Italy to need for specific legislation* to address such murders. And Italy being a primarily Catholic country, it is a safe assumption that almost all HBV crimes in Italy were committed by Catholics.
...and yet, apart from Tripodi, (who raised the question of honour in the defence) there is no indication that Catholics are commonly accused of HBV in Canada.
The rates at which adherents to any particular religion commit HBV in their country of origin is reflective of their presence in that country. Rather than reflecting a qualitative difference between Italians in Italy and Italians in Canada, this suggests that (once again) Canada has defined HBV crimes committed by anyone other than Sikhs and Muslims out of existence.
Having defined certain types of HBV out of existence, no truth claims can be made from the rates at which men of certain demographics are accused of HBV in Canada.
(continued...)
*Delitto d"Onore was repealed around the same time that divorce and abortion were legalized in Italy. With legal ways to avoid an unfaithful partner and any pregnancy that was the product of an affair, Italian men were able to control their murderous impulses.
10
MAR
15
How far is too far?
3. CONTROL OF FEMALE SEXUALITY
No one kills their child for marrying royalty, wealth, or celebrity. So what separates a woman who is celebrated for her choice from one who is target for her choice?
The explanation is socially-stratified endogamy, and social-climbing exogamy.
If the chosen partner's social status is higher than the group could have attracted otherwise, the woman's choice of partner will be celebrated.
If the chosen partner's social status is lower than the group could have attracted otherwise, the woman will be pressured to end her relationship with the unwanted suitor.
The group will first target the unwanted suitor to save the potential of future advantageous pairings. If that is not possible to be rid of the unwanted without also being rid of the woman, that will be the next step. (Farzana Parveen's family first sought to have her husband convicted of abduction. She was not targeted directly until she attended court to testify on his behalf.)
The issue is not who made the choice of partner for the group member, but whether the group is willing to be associated with the chosen partner.
(continued...)
10
MAR
15
How far is too far?
Since honour is defined in reference to the group poised on violence, so too must the threat that motivates HBV be defined in reference to the group, with existential threats being the most likely to end in murder.
Honour-based violence is:
- escalating violence
- by a group
- against dissenting/defecting members
- whose beliefs or behaviours
- present an existential threat to the socioeconomic structure of the group.
British soldiers court-martialed for cowardice during WWI, many of whom were minors, or suffering from what we now know to be post-traumatic stress (PTSD) were shot at dawn. Even if their officers were sympathetic to them, the fear was that allowing any soldiers to leave the field would prompt others to follow.
That is the mindset of groups who resort to HBV. They believe that they are stopping an exodus from the group ideology, which (if left unchecked) would result in the dissolution of the group...an existential threat.
Last updated 24Aug25
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