Honor Related Violence

A New Social Psychological Perspective

Robert Ermers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351718547
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Honor related violence is generally associated with crimes committed by people from the Middle East and adjacent areas. Perpetrators sometimes justify their deeds saying they 'had to' restore their honor. Theorists have argued that men from these populations exclusively correlate honor with the behaviour of their womenfolk, which they use as a pretext to further oppress and dominate women. Due to large-scale migration, western societies have become acquainted with honor related violence and honor killings.

In this book, Robert Ermers addresses a number of questions related to honor related violence, including the use of predominantly negative frames regarding the cultural and social background of non-westerners and immigrants. In many publications, including the press, crimes committed by non-western individuals are often attributed to their cultural background rather than specific contexts or circumstances, in contrast to western cases. Vague and insufficiently defined concepts such as 'honor' and 'culture' strongly contribute to this bias.

Honor Related Violence deals with honor and honor related violence, their background and contexts, what honor is, and what it is not. It examines stigma in relation to honor and based upon stigma research, reliably explains, analyses, and predicts honor related violence. The book argues that people all over the world can be stigmatized, excluded and ostracized when they commit misbehavior, and therefore find themselves in a state of dishonor which can lead to honor related violence. A timely intervention into the psychology of honor related violence, this is an essential resource for students and researchers in the fields of social psychology, sociology, law, criminology and anthropology.

1

The Context of this Book

Introduction

Honor related violence has been defined as a serious problem within non-western communities, especially but not exclusively, concerning people in the Middle East and adjacent areas. The background of honor related violence is generally believed to reside in gender inequality, certain cultural traditions and concepts of honor in regions where honor is deemed important. Yet the use of a model based upon a broad definition of honor related violence is problematic. For non-western communities, one problem is that the term ‘honor based’ is more or less a meaningless, all-purpose term. A second problem is that entire cultures can be and already are subjected to different forms of stereotyping; bearers of a given culture are denied agency and reduced to potential victims or sources of violence.

A promising research perspective is to investigate the relationship between violence on the one hand and notions from social psychology as stigmatization, ostracism and rejection on the other. From this perspective, it makes sense to consider dishonor as more or less equivalent to these notions. Honor then is the opposite of dishonor: a reputation for morality, and I suggest to understand honor in this way in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There are two contexts in which individuals can be exposed to stigma because of immoral behavior: when they are believed to be conducted in a morally deviant way, or when they are believed to omit certain behavior.

1.1In Search of a Model

Honor related violence and honor crimes have been described as a cultural practice of certain populations in which the honor motive is used as an instrument, a pretext, of men to control women—sometimes in relation to religious principles.¹ For example, the Parliamentary Assembly of the EU in a 2003 resolution has related ‘so-called’² honor crimes against women in the name of honor to ‘archaic, unjust cultures and traditions’.³ Since the beginning of the new millennium there have been numerous initiatives to combat honor related violence in non-western countries, especially in the Middle East and adjacent areas (see Figure 1.1). Western governments have been developing programmes to combat this type of violence among immigrant populations in which the focus is on the protection of women and girls.

Figure 1.1:The Middle East and adjacent areas

1.1.1Risks of Vague Definitions

Yet a recurring problem in the discourse are the various and vague definitions of honor and honor related violence. Many argue that honor is related to a man’s status in his community: by being chaste and obedient women enhance the man’s honor and contribute to their power; men whose womenfolk are not chaste lose their honor.⁴ Other ways of suppressing women, such as female genital mutilation and forced marriages, have also been related to the specific honor concept of non-western populations.

In this context scholars such as Dustin and Phillips have expressed their concern that ‘honor’ will become a convenient header that collects ‘all forms of domestic violence and child abuse within minority ethnic communities […]’.⁵ Because of the broad definitions and associations, and even doubt of the entire concept expressed by the label ‘so-called’, it is almost impossible to categorize and implement general policies to prevent violence with this motive and prosecute suspects.

A definition of honor on the abstract level of culture, to my mind, is likely to be counterproductive in a number of ways. First, it contributes to stereotyping of populations and minorities on both macro and micro levels. Second, when a given culture has been officially declared archaic, unjust and misogynistic, individual carriers of that culture can be looked upon not as human beings in their own right, but as either potential perpetrators or victims. There is a risk that the focus on the combination of ‘culture’ and the gender bias leads to stereotyping. Both suspects and victims are denied agency, the competence of an individual of acting based upon concerns beyond the immediate situation.⁶ They allegedly act according to the unwritten laws of their culture: ‘[i]n such discourses, culture is credited with a compelling power to direct and drive behavior—as if it is culture rather than people that kills’.⁷ Third, when the dangers for honor related violence are already thought to reside on the macro level of culture, there is little room left for the development of specific criteria regarding the urgency and danger on an individual case level, and to formulate appropriate measures for prevention, prosecution, protection and a fair trial. Fourth, when a phenomenon has been linked to a culture, it can only be combated by changing that same culture, which, if possible at all, is a long-term and gradual process.

In this book I intend to show that current perceptions of honor and, therefore, honor related violence are not accurate, which to my opinion has lead to a number of fundamental misinterpretations of the phenomenon in non-western communities. In accounts and studies of honor related violence many scholars argue that honor related violence is the outcome of a peculiar, exotic type of honor among non-western populations, which serves to oppress women. Yet the impact of misbehavior on family members can relatively easily be explained in terms of moral deviance and its vicarious effect on affiliates of the deviant. According to social psychological theories, any morally deviant individual, regardless of gender, may incur a negative social impact on their family. Families of which a member trespasses important moral norms do not fear a decrease of their relative social status in their communities, but rather getting a reputation of unreliability, and untrustworthiness, and hence stigma, social rejection and ostracism, or social death. The violence that in some instances evolves from the stress that accompanies these outcomes, honor related violence, is directed against the individual who is regarded as the cause of the family’s social problems.

Therefore, I suggest that there are arguments to interpret honor related violence as a response to an existential fear caused by social processes of stigma, ostracism and rejection. This interpretation gives ample opportunities for the prevention of violence, prosecution of suspects and protection and care of victims. In the development of policies and measures, use can be made of an abundant scientific literature on stigma, rejection and ostracism and methods to help people coping with them.

From this perspective the underlying motive for horrendous crimes becomes, to some extent, understandable. Applied to the honor related research one could argue that finding a regular and general underlying motive somehow justifies the violence. However, the notion that regular motives can be found for otherwise terrible acts should not withhold us from discussing and evaluating them. Evolutionary psychologist McKibbin, in his research on evolutionary adaptations against rape, contends that this type of reasoning is a naturalistic fallacy: ‘the error of deriving what ought to be from what is’.⁸ Let me stress that finding justifications or legitimizations for the oppression of people, and criminal acts, including murder, is explicitly not the goal of this book.

In most cases of honor related violence, there are recurring patterns in the statements of victims, perpetrators and witnesses. Usually they refer to serious mistakes the victim allegedly made, which lead to social problems for people close to them. In this book I suggest that honor loss and dishonor in a general sense can be interpreted as relating to exclusion, stigmatization and ostracism.⁹

One documented case that also contributed to my own understanding is that of a Jordanian family whose social life was compromised after one daughter’s alleged misbehavior:

Her family [was] ostracized, with her eight sisters deemed unmarriageable by the neighbors, and her five brothers confronted with taunts in the street (see discussion p. 103f.).

While being bullied in the street and considered ‘unmarriageable’ can be interpreted as signs of shame, dishonor and disgrace, they are also real and tangible symptoms of stigmatization, ostracism and social rejection.

Phenomenons like these signify that one’s social life has halted, and have been found to cause stress and other psychological problems;¹⁰ they have been likened to ‘social death’. Western governments have developed policies against bullying in schools and workplaces after acknowledging the disastrous social and emotional impact.

Thusfar there are no indications these negative social responses do not exist in non-western populations, that they are less severe, or perhaps easier to bear. Therefore, I have the impression that there is a discrepancy between the presentation and interpretation of honor related violence in the public media, scholarly studies and political documents dedicated to honor related violence on the one hand and what occurs in real life on the other.

There are a number of reasons for which individuals can be stigmatized in their communities, one important reason being moral deviance. A moral stigma can by association extend to a deviant’s affiliates, most often family members. I suggest we accept the possibility the social problems the Jordanian family was confronted with were a social response to (alleged) moral deviance of one of their members, in this particular case their daughter/sister. Note that this does not mean the daughter in question actually ‘morally misbehaved’ or that I, or her relatives, believe she did. Yet there are indications the family was confronted with unbearable social consequences in their community, which tremendously affected their social and emotional lives.

In the course of this book, I will examine extant definitions of concepts like honor, social status, honor related violence and community, and discuss the backgrounds against which people used violence

1.1.2Two Ways for Incurring Stigma

In this book I argue that there are basically two ways one can cause one’s ‘in-group’ to become socially stigmatized, rejected and ostracized.¹¹ In both cases people express this in terms of dishonor and disgrace.

The first is the conscious transgression of important moral (sexual and non-sexual) norms of one’s community (or subcommunity). This transgression obviously has to become known outside one’s in-group, for long as other community members are not aware of an individual’s moral transgression, they will not stigmatize or reject him or her. The second way one can cause a stigma is because of the cowardice stigma.

The cowardice stigma befalls individuals in two partly overlapping circumstances: (1) the individual fails to proportionally respond to an undeserved insult or attack either on themselves or members of their group, or (2) to help or stand by other people in some danger when they, in other people’s eyes (and their own) ought to, in other words, a lack of loyalty and commitment. Because of role expectations, the cowardice stigma in a general sense is more likely to be attached to men than women. Men who are branded as cowards will be stigmatized, rejected and ostracized in their communities, and family members of men labeled as cowards are stigmatized by association.

The research on stigma, ostracism and rejection claims universal validity. All humans are capable of experiencing the same feelings and emotions (such as love, pride, anger, fear, shame, guilt, jealousy and so on) and on a deeper level can be triggered in similar ways. The same is true for social processes: people can be accepted, respected, loved, as well as rejected, isolated, ostracized and hated, and as a result will experience emotions of joy, love, affection, happiness, sadness, anger, jealousy, envy, greed or stress. Culture-specific—as well as personal and immediate—contexts determine both whether and how such triggers are perceived. As a result, emotional responses are more often than not determined by the emotional perception.

In recent decades firm and verifiable general theories on inclusion, exclusion, stigmatization, shame and ostracism have been elaborated. There cannot be any doubt these same processes also occur among people in the Middle East...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes On the Transcription of Arabic
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Context of this Book
• 2 Approaches to the Study of Honor
• 3 Dishonor and Stigma
• 4 Violence and Stigma
• 5 Blood Revenge
• 6 Honor Killing
• 7 Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Cases
• Turkish Terms
• Arabic Terms
• Terms from Other Languages
• General Index