Interrogating cultural narratives about ‘honour’- based violence

Abstract

On 3 August 2012, Shafilea Ahmed's parents were convicted of her murder, nine years after the brutal 'honour' killing. The case offers important insights into how 'honour'based violence might be tackled without constructing non-Western cultures as inherently uncivilised. Critiquing the framing devices that structure British debates about 'honour'based violence demonstrates the prevalence of Orientalist tropes, revealing the need for new ways of thinking about culture that do not reify it or treat it as a singular entity that can only be tackled in its entirety; instead, it is important to recognise that cultures consist of multiple, intersecting signifying practices that are continually 'creolising'. Thus, rather than talking purely about culture, debates on 'honour'-based violence should explore the intersection of culture with gender and other axes of differentiation and inequality.

Honour, Violence and Heteronormativity

“…Just as there has been an extended and sustained critique of the motivational impulse of 'hate' in hate crimes, 6 the use of 'honour' as an explanatory or taxonomic device in HBV has emerged as a critical point of debate in this newly-emerging field of enquiry (Baker et al 1999;Cooney 2014;Gill 2008;Gill and Brah 2014;Payton 2014;Roberts, Campbell and Lloyd 2014). Honour can be a positive individual attribute and a negative social resource but, in discussions of HBV, a primary distinction is made between the 'status' crimes of individualised interpersonal violence (such as intimate partner violence) and the 'honour' crimes of collective familial violence (such as HBV).…”

“…These incidents -and arguably all hate crimes against gay men and lesbians -represent a form of collective (or social) punishment that mirrors the violence meted out to remedy a (perceived) transgression in sexual or gender codes of conduct in HBV cases (Asquith 2012a;Cooney 2014). When considered through these conceptual and empirical outliers, the efficacy of HBV exceptionalism is questionable, especially in light of its Islamophobic construction as a predominantly Muslim practice (Gill and Brah 2014 …”

“…However, in viewing HBV solely through men's violence, without the integration of a much richer understanding of the normative power of gender and sexuality for both men and women in the existing research on HBV, the outcome is the exceptionalising of HBV as a distinct cultural practice. Irrespective of the intent of the explanatory model -in Gill's case (2008Gill's case ( , 2011Gill and Brah 2014) the use of 'violence against women' is strategically deployed to minimise the cultural imperative aligned with HBV and in Roberts, Campbell and Lloyd (2014) to posit a situational theory of planned behaviour -the outcome is the same. Even though Roberts (2014) attempts to account for violence against men in his conceptual framework, as with Gill's (2008Gill's ( , 2011 What we know of HBV from the institutional knowledge of Roberts and colleagues from the London Metropolitan Police Service is generated from a rich source of case files, investigations and frontline policing encounters.…”

“…Shifting the debate to practices of heteronormativity also enables us to make links between different forms of interpersonal violence and ensures we do not get mired in a particularly dangerous form of cultural relativism that feeds into and reinscribes Islamophobic and orientalist constructions of intrafamilial violence. Belfrage et al 2012;Gill 2008Gill , 2011Gill , 2014Gill and Brah 2014;Meetoo and Mirza, 2011;Payton 2014;Roberts 2014;Roberts, Campbell and Lloyd 2014;Welchman and Hossain 2005. 4 See for example, Gill's (2009) study of English media reports of honour based violence, and Jiwani's (2006) consideration of the ways in which Canadian media recognise certain expressions of violence and ignore others.…”

‘We need “culture-bridges”: professionals’ experiences of sex education for pupils with intellectual disabilities in a multicultural society

“…Such societies and settings are frequently kinshiporganised, which implies that sexuality and reproduction are collective concerns, often policed through notions of honour (ibid). However, concepts of honour and the discourses they employ can lead to a stigmatisation and demonisation of the Other, through associations with 'backwardness', violence and sexual barbarism as associated with nonethnic Swedes (see Gill and Brah 2014). Because of this, in this paper we use the term 'honour-related experiences' (HRE) to describe experiences not only connected to violence and oppression.…”