Article

Punishment & Society

2014, Vol. 16(4) 406–427
Death by family: Honor ! The Author(s) 2014
Reprints and permissions:
violence as punishment sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1462474514539537
pun.sagepub.com
Mark Cooney
University of Georgia, USA

Abstract
Occurring in a broad range of non-western and western countries, violence committed
against women in the name of family honor has been viewed in several ways, including as
a crime, as gendered violence, or as a violation of human rights. But from a purely
explanatory point of view, family honor violence is most profitably viewed as a type of
social control, specifically penal social control. As punishment, honor violence appears
to obey the same principles as other forms of punishment. Drawing on the theoretical
strategy of pure sociology, the present article highlights two such principles: punishment
increases with the social distance and social inferiority of the offender. These twin
principles help to explain a broad range of facts about when and where family honor
violence will occur, and how severe – in particular, how lethal – it will be.

Keywords
family punishment, honor violence, violence against women

Punishment is of two principal types: legal and non-legal. Of the two, legal pun-
ishment administered by state officials attracts the lion’s share of scholarly and
popular attention. Yet informal punishment is surely far more frequent. For every
person fined, placed on probation, incarcerated, or executed many more are likely
scolded, deprived of goods or services, have their pocket money or pay docked,
placed in time out, sent to the Principal’s office, demoted, fired, assigned unpleasant
tasks, shunned, jeered, expelled, or beaten. The disproportionate emphasis is
understandable – legal punishment is more public and better documented. But it
is not justifiable: the study of punishment cannot privilege one form over another.
The present article seeks to provide some balance by addressing the social condi-
tions underlying an increasingly prominent (though not necessarily increasingly

Corresponding author:
Mark Cooney, Department of Sociology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602–1611, USA.
Email: mcooney@uga.edu

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

Cooney 407

frequent) species of non-legal punishment: violence against women in the name of

family honor. Those conditions, it will be argued, are some of the same principles
that appear to underlie variation in punishment more generally.
Honor is a type of social status based not on wealth, leadership, participation, or
education, but on force (Black, 2011: 71). Typically associated with masculinity,
challenges to honor require a violent response or risk of loss of social standing.
Violence directed toward enhancing or defending honor is of two main types. The
more common form arises out of contests of dominance and physical courage, and
usually involves men (see, for example, Nisbett and Cohen, 1996; Peristiany, 1966;
Spierenburg, 1998). The second type – the subject of this article – primarily targets
women for disobedience, especially unauthorized sexual relationships, and is said
to be committed to uphold the honor of a family or other group, and especially its
male members (see, for example, Kardam, 2005; Van Eck, 2003; Wikan, 2008).1
Perpetrated primarily by fathers, brothers, and husbands, family honor violence2 is
concentrated today in a band of countries from north-west Africa to south Asia
and their emigrants in other countries including those of Western Europe and
North America.3
While most family honor violence (hereafter simply ‘‘honor violence’’) is not
lethal, a substantial number of people are bludgeoned, stabbed, strangled, inciner-
ated, shot, or otherwise killed in its name. According to a widely cited United
Nations estimate, ‘‘throughout the world, perhaps as many as 5,000 women and
girls a year are murdered by members of their own families’’ for reasons of honor
(UNFPA, 2000: ch. 3).4 Yet many cases are likely under-reported, camouflaged as
suicides, accidents, disappearances, or deaths from natural causes (Wikan, 2008:
77–78). And some cases are even over-reported – predatory killings for gain
cloaked as honor killings, which traditionally have benefitted from community
approval and reduced legal sanctions (Van Eck, 2003: 35–36). Whatever the
exact number, the great majority of the slain are women, though men too may
be killed by the women’s families (see, for example, Warraich, 2005: 80).5
The literature conceptualizes honor violence variously: as a crime, as gendered
violence, as a violation of human rights, as a discursive formation (see, for exam-
ple, Gill, 2011; Hoyek et al., 2005; Jafri, 2008; Meetoo and Mirza, 2007). Honor
violence is all of these things but to explain when, where, by, and against whom it is
committed, the behavior is most profitably viewed as a form of social control – a
response to deviant behavior (see Black, 1983). Specifically, it is a form of punish-
ment. To the parties themselves (as distinct from external observers), honor vio-
lence is inflicted by the family to punish wrongful conduct, actual or alleged,
against the family. As a Pakistani scholar wrote in a local newspaper, ‘‘what we
may think is a murder or a crime against the state, in the honor value system is not
a crime at all. On the contrary, it is an act of punishing those who violate the honor
code’’ (Shah, 1998 quoted in Pope, 2012: 29).6 A corollary is that the definitions of
‘‘offender’’ and ‘‘victim’’ are different on the ground than they are at the level of the
state (see Black, 1998: xv). For the state, the punishing party is the offender and the
target of punishment is the victim; for the parties the opposite is true: the punishing

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

408 Punishment & Society 16(4)

party is the victim and the target of punishment is the offender. Since the object here
is to explain the conduct as it occurs on the ground, the indigenous terms are used.
Data for the present analysis are drawn from a growing body of research litera-
ture that includes case studies (e.g. Glazer and Abu Ras, 1994; Wikan, 2008),
community studies (e.g. Gill et al., 2012; King, 2008), country studies (e.g.
Amnesty International, 1999; Faqir, 2001), and cross-national studies, both quali-
tative (e.g. Husseini, 2009) and quantitative (Chesler, 2010). Of particular import-
ance are ethnographic reports of honor offenses and their handling (Ginat, 1997
[1987]; Kardam, 2005; Wikan, 1982; see also Van Eck, 2003). These studies suffer
from the usual limitations of the genre: small numbers of unsystematic observa-
tions conducted in locales of uncertain representativeness. Yet they also highlight
the reality of actual cases revealing, in particular, a crucial and frequently over-
looked point: many honor violations do not result in violence. Although some
women are assaulted or killed, many others are warned, sent away, or dealt with
in some other way short of violence. Among those subject to violence, however,
considerably more is known about incidents at the upper end of the spectrum –
honor killing. Hence, this article focuses on the characteristics of cases that attract
the most severe punishment (death).7 Note, though, that even for honor killing,
there are, in the words of a systematic review, ‘‘many gaps and deficiencies in the
literature’’ (Kulczycki and Windle, 2011). Consequently, the argument should be
read as a set of hypotheses awaiting further investigation rather than definitive
conclusions.

Honor crime and punishment

Honor killings have been recorded in some 30 countries across the globe (Chesler,
2010). These countries differ significantly in many ways, including their histories,
customs, and cultures. Hence, any discussion of honor killing as a particular species
of conduct quickly encounters the risk of over-generalization.8 Still, just as western
nations, for all their contrasts, share some sociological characteristics so countries
with higher rates of honor violence exhibit some common features of their own.
One such characteristic is the prominence in certain communities (villages, towns,
regions) of a form of social status derived from a combination of male courage,
female submissiveness, and group autonomy. In such communities, an ideology,
idiom, and imagery of honor binds individuals and groups together with shared
moral standards, but it also drives them apart when accusations of breaching those
standards are voiced.

The offense
Honor conflicts are traditionally said to arise from violations of female chastity,
real or imagined (see, for example, Faqir, 2001: 69). Chastity requires women to
present an asexual self in everyday life, to be virgins on the wedding night, and
from then out, to have sex solely with their husbands (see, for example, Abu-Odeh,

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

Cooney 409

1996: 150). Beyond chastity, honor extends to relational propriety more generally:
in many communities, ‘‘social intercourse between unrelated men and women is
considered almost the same as sexual intercourse’’ (Akpinar, 2003: 432). But not all
breaches of chastity are even relational. Honor commands women to be subservi-
ent to men more broadly (Hasan, 2002: 3–31). Much honor violence punishes
autonomy rather than just improper relationships – a woman insisting on complet-
ing her education, abandoning an abusive husband, taking a job, or even dressing
_
as she wishes (see, for example, Hasan, 2002: 4; Ince et al., 2009: 539; Pope, 2012:
63). Surveying the honor killing of 230 individuals reported in English-language
media around the world, 1989–2009, Chesler (2010) found that 58 percent of vic-
tims were slain for being too independent or ‘‘western’’. What exactly is dishonor-
able and why it varies across social settings is an important question that will not
be pursued here.9 The present analysis holds constant the conduct deemed to be the
dishonorable, proposing that the same offense may attract penalties of widely
varying severity in different cases.
The honor violated in honor conflicts is that of a group, usually a family.
Committed by or on behalf of a group, the collective nature of honor violence
differentiates it from the defense of individual honor raised by jealous or jilted men
who kill wives or girlfriends in certain Latin American countries, or the individu-
alistic violence of intimate partners in western societies (see, for example, Chesler,
2009; Pimentel et al., 2005). Honor violence is further distinguished from western
family violence by being more premeditated (killings are often planned at a family
meeting), one-directional (female-on-male incidents are rare), and severe (even a
rape leaves a woman vulnerable to punishment) (see, for example, Idriss, 2011: 3;
Payton, 2011: 73).
Honor violations have serious social consequences, sharply reducing a family’s
social standing – particularly that of its male members. A dishonored family may
be excluded from community activities, bear the brunt of mockery and gossip, and
experience difficulty finding marriage partners. But lost honor can be regained (see,
for example, Sev’er and Yurdakul, 2001: 974). As Pitt-Rivers (1966: 29) stated in a
classic essay, ‘‘the ultimate vindication of honor lies in physical violence’’. Hence, a
woman who dishonors her family may be beaten or even killed to restore the
family’s status. ‘‘‘Now we can walk with our heads held high,’ eighteen-year old
Anal said after her sixteen-year old brother had killed their sister’’ (quoted in
Wikan, 2008: 20).
Like most scholarship on violence, the literature on honor violence tends to
select on the dependent variable and focus on those cases that did result in assault
or homicide. Hence, it often conveys the impression that most honor offenses
trigger violence, even death. They do not. As in every system of punishment, sanc-
tions for honor offenses are gradated. The ethnographic record makes clear that
families react to dishonor in a variety of ways, including by tolerating the offense,
issuing a warning, arranging a marriage, expelling the woman to another location,
and seeking compensation from the man’s family (Antoun, 1968; Ginat, 1997
[1987]; Kardam 2005; Van Eck, 2003; Wikan, 1982). The central question then

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

410 Punishment & Society 16(4)

is: what explains the severity of the family’s punishment? In particular, when will
the family inflict capital punishment?
Most theories of punishment are of little assistance. Virtually all such theories
address aggregate-level patterns: variation in the severity of punishment across
groups, such as cities, states, or countries (see Garland, 1990). They do not explain
the case-by-case variation that forms the focus of the present inquiry: differences in
the probability and severity of punishment across individual conflicts. A notable
exception is the work of Donald Black and others, rooted in Black’s distinctive
theoretical perspective known as pure sociology (or ‘‘Blackian theory’’).

Pure sociology
Pure sociology explains social behavior with its position and direction in social
space, its social geometry. Social space is multi-dimensional. Interactions between
individuals and groups have a direction and distance in each dimension. Theft
committed by a poor man against a wealthy man, for instance, has an upward
direction in vertical space; the greater the wealth gap between them, the greater the
vertical distance of the theft. A directive issued to citizens by an authoritarian
government travels farther downward in organizational space than one issued by
a democratic government. The sexual assault of a wife or girlfriend spans less
relational distance than that of a stranger. And so on.
Variation in social space is associated with variation in conduct. Change the
relative elevation (status) of actors or the social distance between them and their
behavior changes as well. Beginning with Black’s (1976) seminal work on law, this
line of thinking has generated a considerable body of theory (see Campbell, 2011;
Senechal de la Roche, 1996). Most of the work has addressed forms of social
control, specifying the geometrical conditions under which conflicts attract, for
example, avoidance (Baumgartner, 1988), informal therapy (Tucker, 1999), or
ethnic hostility (Cooney, 2009a).
Drawing on Black’s (1983) insight that much crime is a form of social control (or
the management of conflict), the pure sociology of violence has been a particularly
active field. Pure sociologists have isolated the geometrical conditions underlying
various types of violent conflict management. These include violence among indi-
viduals (suicide and homicide), between groups (feuding), and between groups and
individuals (rioting, lynching, vigilantism, terrorism, and genocide) (Black, 2004a,
2004b; Campbell, 2009; Cooney, 1998; Manning, 2012; Phillips, 2003; Senechal de
la Roche, 1996).
Honor violence is a species of group-on-individual, or collective, violence.
Hence, some of the variables that explain collective violence should also explain
honor violence. The type of collective violence closest to honor violence is what
Senechal de la Roche (2001: 133–136) calls a communal lynching, in which a highly
solidary community assaults or kills an insider, such as a recidivistic thief, liar,
killer, or alleged witch. But there are differences: in honor violence, the group
inflicting violence is not the community as such but the social unit on which the

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

Cooney 411

community is based – the family. A lynching is typically perpetrated by a group of

people acting jointly, but honor violence is typically perpetrated by an individual
acting alone, though as an agent of a group.10 And while a lynching group is
typically an ad hoc collection of individuals who come together for a single pur-
pose, honor violence is committed by a more permanent group whose activities
extend well beyond social control of its members. For these reasons, honor violence
most closely resembles punishment – a group disciplining one of its own (Black,
1990: 78–79). Honor violence bears a particular likeness to legal punishment. Both
are triggered by offending conduct (actual or alleged), both target the individual
deviant (rather than surrogates), both are inflicted by a group to which the offender
owes allegiance, and in both, the most intense form is lethal. From an explanatory
perspective, honor killing is thus best seen as a less formal, more communal, type of
capital punishment.11
The pure sociology of punishment finds its most developed statement in
Black’s (1993) theory of moralism (the making of enemies).12 The theory explains
variation in the frequency and severity of punishment with a small number of
general principles. Two such principles, both of which can be applied to honor
violence, are:

1. Punishment increases with social distance.

2. Punishment increases with social inferiority.13

Social distance
Social distance includes relational and cultural distance. Relational distance is the
degree to which actors’ lives are intertwined (Black, 1976: 40–41). Cultural distance
is the degree to which actors’ cultures (language, religion, customs, etc.) are distinct
(Black, 1976: 74). Social distance is minimal when actors know one another intim-
ately and share a culture. Social distance is maximal when the actors are total
strangers and cultural aliens to one another.
Holding constant the offense, punitive social control tends to increase as the
offender and victim grow more distant (Black, 1976, 1993). Thus, in assault, rape,
theft, and other criminal cases, social distance between the parties generally aggra-
vates punishment (see Baumgartner, 1992: 131–136). An analysis of the handling of
homicide cases around the world and across time, for example, found that punish-
ment, both legal and popular, typically increases in severity when the victims are
strangers and cultural outsiders (Cooney, 2009b: chs 5, 8). The evidence includes
rigorous statistical studies of the US death penalty, which show that, even after
controlling for a host of additional variables, the ultimate legal punishment is
significantly more likely to be inflicted for the killing of strangers and members
of minorities (Baldus et al., 1990). Conversely, social closeness tends to mitigate
punitiveness. For the same conduct, relational intimates and cultural insiders

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

412 Punishment & Society 16(4)

usually attract the least severe penalties (e.g. Cooney, 2009b: 133–144;
Lundsgaarde, 1977).
At first glance, honor killing appears to depart radically from these patterns as
the offender and victim (the family) are highly intimate and culturally homoge-
neous. Sample on the independent variable, however, and the null cases – honor
conflicts that do not result in killings – come into focus. So viewed, social closeness
helps to explain a key finding previously noted: that only some honor conflicts
result in honor killings.14

Closeness and mitigation

The occasions on which women could be killed far outweigh those in which they
are actually killed. Despite what the members of an honor culture might say about
killing automatically following the revelation of an honor offense, qualitative
research from settings as diverse as Morocco, Pakistan, Turkey, Israel, Holland,
and Sweden reveals otherwise. In reality, families are slow to inflict the ultimate
penalty (see, for example, Davis and Davis, 1989: 78). Even among highland
Pakistanis – who appear to be among the strictest in matters of honor – discovery
of an illicit affair does not necessarily lead to an immediate killing: the woman’s
family may wait and see what transpires before deciding to execute her (Knudsen,
2009: 101–103). Families everywhere tend to look first for a solution short of
homicide that is consistent with the maintenance of their social ranking. Thus,
family members may deny the infraction, refusing to recognize that it has occurred
until the evidence becomes overwhelming or it becomes the subject of gossip (see,
for example, Onal, 2008: 54–68). They may warn her not to get further involved
with a man with whom she has been seen (see, for example, Onal, 2008: 189). They
may try to persuade her to break off a relationship that has already started (see, for
example, Ginat, 1997 [1987]: 135). They may arrange an abortion if she is pregnant
(see, for example, Ginat, 1997 [1987]:155). They may attempt to suppress news of
the incident, or lie about what happened (see, for example, Kardam, 2005: 38).
They may banish her from the household (see, for example, Davis and Davis, 1989:
78). They may arrange a marriage to the lover or some other man (see, for example,
Ginat, 1997 [1987]: 158–159, 175). They may seek compensation from the man’s
family (see, for example, Van Eck, 2003: 171–172). Or they may beat or threaten to
kill her (see, for example, Akpinar, 2003: 435–436). Some threats are real, but
others appear to be just for show. Family members will sometimes bluff, putting
on a public display designed to demonstrate their moral resolve even as they seek to
avoid killing if at all possible (e.g. Ginat, 1997 [1987]: 163). A case among Israeli
Arabs recorded by Ginat (1997 [1987]: 165) provides a rare glimpse of a family’s
backstage efforts to find a solution short of murder:

Halima’s mother told me she had told all the family that should the need arise, she
herself would kill her daughter. ‘‘You are all working, and shouldn’t go to prison.
I am an old woman and will only be sentenced to a short term of imprisonment.’’

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

Cooney 413

The mother explained what she meant by ‘‘should the need arise’’: ‘‘If the family
had pressured me to have her killed, I would have thought of a solution. Naturally
I intended to do everything to avoid killing her. I thought by announcing that
I personally would kill her, it would prevent my family from telling me the family’s
honor is soiled.’’ Then the mother added, with a smile, ‘‘I am an old woman who has
seen a lot and learned a lot. I have seen girls murdered, and on the other hand can
show you girls that have had forbidden sex, committed adultery and yet live
unharmed.’’

Note, though, that the social distance principle only holds up to a point. If the
parties are separated by large expanses of relational and cultural distance, little
severity is like to ensue. Where the woman has already moved away and reduced or
eliminated contact with her family or where she has long converted to a new cul-
ture, then she has, in effect, moved into a different world. As such, she is likely
out of reach for sanctions, if indeed not exempt from them altogether. Black (1976:
40–46, 74–78) proposes that the relationship between law and social distance is
curvilinear. The ultimate relationship between social distance and punishment for
breaches of honor appears to describe the same shape.

Distance and severity

Honor offenses are somewhat more complex structurally than most offenses in that
they have two offenders – the man and woman. The social distance between a
woman and her family depends directly on her relationship with her family and
indirectly on his relationship to her and her family. Thus, a woman who becomes
involved with a socially distant man increases the combined distance between the
offenders and her family. Such an offense attracts more punishment than an intim-
ate offense. A woman who takes up with an outsider is therefore at greater risk
than one who takes up with a man from the same village or town (see, for example,
Blum and Blum, 1965: 49–50; Onal, 2008: 34, 236). In one incident in south-eastern
Turkey, for example, a woman who had eloped with a man was shot and killed by
her father in part because he was a ‘‘foreigner’’ – a resident of a nearby city rather
than the village in which the family resided (Pope, 2012: 46). A woman who
chooses a man from outside her own clan may similarly be in greater danger
(see Scott, 2008: 9). By contrast, pairing off with a relationally close man is less
likely to result in execution. In a case in an Arab village in Israel, a woman started a
relationship with her husband’s younger brother. Although one of her brothers
warned her about her behavior, the conflict was resolved peaceably by the husband
divorcing his wife and her marrying his brother (Ginat, 1997 [1987]: 180).
Cultural distance appears to have the same effect. Violations of cultural bound-
aries – religious, linguistic, racial – are a familiar motif in the back story of honor
killings, regardless of where they occur (see, for example, Fisk, 2010; Husseini,
2009: 117–121, 151, 153). A liaison with a culturally distant man increases the
cultural distance between the woman and her family and attracts more punishment

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

414 Punishment & Society 16(4)

than a liaison with a culturally close man (see, for example, Chakravarti, 2005:
314–316; Ginat, 1997 [1987]: 188–189). For instance, in Turkey, a Kurdish woman
who takes a Turkish lover is at greater risk than one who takes a Kurdish lover
(Kardam, 2005: 34–35). Among Dutch Turks, it is more dangerous for an unmar-
ried woman to form a relationship with a Dutch man than a Turkish man (see, for
example, Van Eck, 2003: 122–126). And it is more dangerous if she, a Muslim,
forms an attachment to a non-Muslim, especially if her family is devout (Van Eck,
2003: 203, 207).
Social distance, then, helps explain why some honor offenses result in homicide
but most do not. So too does a second principle of punishment: social status or, in
geometrical terms, social inferiority.

Social inferiority
Social inferiority is the degree to which an offender’s status is beneath that of the
victim.15 ‘‘Status’’ has several dimensions, including wealth, organization, and
respectability (reputation for non-deviance) (Black, 1976). The theoretical principle
proposes that the lower the status of an offender relative to that of the victim, the
more severely he or she is punished for the same conduct (Black, 1976). Evidence
from across time and space provides strong support. For instance, communal pun-
ishment, such as lynching, is far more frequent and severe in a downward than an
upward direction (see, for example, Senechal de la Roche, 1997: 56–58). In families,
schools, and workplaces, too, punishment invariably flows more freely downwardly
more than upwardly (see, for example, Tucker, 1999: 38–49). Punishment by the
state is little different: the probability and severity of legal penalties imposed for
property, violent, and victimless offenses alike tend to vary negatively with the
relative status of the accused (see, for example, Baumgartner, 1992: 142–148).
The likelihood of a death sentence, for example, depends on the status of both
offender and victim. The greater the offender’s social inferiority, the more likely a
crime is to result in a sentence of death, all else the same (see Cooney, 2009b).
Honor offenses recapitulate the general pattern: the lower the status of the
offender, and the higher the status of the victim, the more severe the punishment.
Consider, first, the offender, for whom two forms of social status are particularly
important: those based on gender and moral reputation, respectively.

Patriarchy
The most glaring form of social inferiority underlying honor killing is patriarchy –
the social subordination of women along economic, cultural, functional, relational,
legal, and other lines. Despite often considerable local diversity, the literature
reveals a consistent tendency in honor communities to separate and stratify the
sexes into firm and hierarchical social categories – to equate biology with destiny
(see, for example, Baker et al., 1999; Sev’er and Yurkdakul, 2001; Welchman and
Hossain, 2005). Thus, societies are generally ‘‘patrilineal, patrilateral, and

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

Cooney 415

patrilocal: descent is traced through males, the preferred form of marriage is

between children of brothers, and preferred residence after marriage is in the house-
hold of or nearby the groom’s family’’ (Davis and Davis, 1989: 84). Male offspring
are favored: ‘‘the arrival of a baby boy is a cause for lavish celebrations, but female
newborns rarely elicit such enthusiasm’’ (Pope, 2012: 39). Growing up, boys enjoy
considerably greater freedom, and are groomed to assume a dominant role in the
family and community, that begins with keeping ‘‘a sharp eye on [their] older
sisters’’ (Kocturk, 1992: 72). For girls, by contrast, the world contracts as they
grow older (Gregg, 2005: 229). Girls often receive less schooling than boys and
consequently have higher rates of illiteracy (see, for example, Faqir, 2001: 66;
Ikkaracan and WWHR, 1998: 67; Sev’er and Yurdakul, 2001). After puberty,
girls are typically required to wear loose clothing and conceal their hair, and
may be required to wear a veil. They should ‘‘avoid any contact with the opposite
sex until marriage’’ (Eisner and Ghuneim, 2013: 407). Families usually marry off
daughters at a young age, particularly in under-developed rural areas (Ikkaracan
and WWHR, 1998: 69). On marrying, a woman typically goes to live in her hus-
band’s home, where she is subject to the authority of her husband and, import-
antly, her mother-in-law (see, for example, Pope, 2012: 50). In adulthood, women
and men often remain largely segregated, each inhabiting different physical spaces
or the same spaces at different times (e.g. King, 2008: 320–321; Van Eck, 2003: 28–
29). Outside the home, in the public sphere – the world of work, politics, law,
and religion – men dominate. Women occupy fewer positions than men, espe-
cially positions of leadership (Ghanim, 2009: ch. 6). Cross-national data consist-
ently reveal a larger gender gap in countries with higher rates of honor killing
than in other regions of the world, particularly in the realms of economic
participation and opportunity and political empowerment (Hausmann et al.,
2013: 12–13, 18–24).
Women in communities of honor are by no means wholly devoid of influence,
however (see, for example, Moghadam, 2007; Sadiqi and Ennaji, 2011). The degree
of subordination of women varies considerably by region: male domination is
much stronger among some groups (e.g. impoverished rural Afghanis) than
among others (e.g. wealthy Jordanian urbanites). It varies by age. Older women
often acquire a greater overt say in their own lives and that of the family (see, for
example, Gregg, 2005: 339–341). It varies by social class: for example, ‘‘male
authority decreases in Turkish families where the couple has high levels of
income and education’’ (Kocturk, 1992: 82). But it remains high everywhere com-
pared to the western world. And it appears to continue to survive, carried on
by younger people. In a nationally representative 1997 survey of unmarried
16–19-year-olds in Egypt, 92 percent of boys and 88 percent of girls agreed that,
‘‘A wife needs her husband’s permission for everything.’’ Over 80 percent of both
boys and girls alike thought the husband alone should be the breadwinner; less
than 2 percent of either sex thought men should cook or wash clothes or bathe the
children. These results did not vary by socioeconomic status or by region of the
country (Mensch et al., 2003).16

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

416 Punishment & Society 16(4)

The extent of the gender gap matters in honor conflicts. The more pronounced
gender inequality is, the greater the vulnerability to honor killing: ‘‘Women who
are unemployed, illiterate and live in impoverished conditions have a higher risk
than others of becoming a . . . victim’’ (Patel and Gadit, 2008: 688). Women in
highland Pakistan or Iraqi Kurdistan are more at risk than women in rural
Morocco (Davis and Davis, 1989: 118–125; King, 2008: 319–324; Knudsen,
2009: 98–104, 130–134). Younger women (15–25) everywhere appear to be at
greater risk than older women (see, for example, Kulwicki, 2002: 80).
Patriarchy also helps to explain one of the most salient facts about honor killing:
men are killed much less often than women. Although the man may be more at
fault (as in rape), he is punished less severely. His family generally backs him up;
her family is more likely to turn on her (but see Kardam, 2005: 37).
How the woman’s family’s responds to an unauthorized relationship will
depend, however, in part on the man’s social status. A downward relationship
(from the woman’s family’s perspective) lowers the social elevation of her offense
– and becomes more serious. Thus, her family is likely to punish a liaison with a
man from a poorer, less influential, family more severely than one with a man from
a higher status family (Chakravarti, 2005: 312–314; Kardam, 2005: 34, 43; Kressel,
1981). The consequences of a higher-status liaison are much more favorable for
her: ‘‘If a girl flees to a rich family, she will live’’ (Onal, 2008: 255).17 But relatively
few women can likely escape through high status relationships. As a young Turkish
woman lamented: ‘‘Where there’s money all our customs are forgotten. When
there’s money no one wants to kill the girl. They don’t want a poor husband.
But we move in poor circles, where are we supposed to find the rich husbands?’’
(Onal, 2008: 45–46). On the other hand, a wealthier family may not want to accept
a poorer woman, especially one tainted by dishonor. In a Turkish case, for exam-
ple, negotiations to have a rapist marry the woman he had dishonored ran
into difficulties, in part because her family was poorer than his. After the
proposed compromise was rejected, the woman was killed by her brother
(Kardam, 2005: 39).

Morality
Moral inferiority refers to differences in social actors’ moral status or ‘‘respectabil-
ity’’ (Black, 1976: 111). Respectability is known by a social actor’s reputation for
deviance. A respectable person has an unblemished reputation; an unrespectable
person has a record of prior offenses, and the longer and more severe the prior
record, the greater the unrespectability. Unrespectability increases the risk and
severity of punishment of all types, legal and popular (Black, 1976: 111–117;
Cooney, 2009b: ch. 6). The decisions of police, prosecutors, judges, and jurors
are invariably influenced by the defendant’s criminal history (see Baumgartner,
1992: 136–141). In US capital cases, for instance, the length and severity of the
defendant’s criminal record is one of the strongest predictors of a death sentence
over a term of life imprisonment (see, for example, Baldus et al., 1990: 319).

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

Cooney 417

Breaches of honor exhibit the same pattern. A woman from a respectable family
who has a bad name herself, especially a reputation for being sexually loose, is
more likely to be accused of an honor offense for the same conduct and less likely
to be spared, if accused. Among Turkish-Dutch, for example:

A daughter may be killed because her family considers her irredeemably

dishonorable . . . There is simply little to be gained by killing the male transgres-
sor; the girl might simply go on to tarnish her family’s namus (i.e. reputation for
chastity). In [one case], the girl had a bad reputation because the divorce from
her first husband had been at her instigation. She initially returned home to live
with her parents but then left again to move in with her boyfriend. When wed-
ding preparations were almost complete, she left her boyfriend. All of this may
have convinced [her family] that there was no hope of her behaving properly.
(Van Eck, 2003: 206)

Thus, even if a woman has no prior record of deviance, she may develop one
during the course of the conflict. Should she refuse to abide by her family’s solution
to the problem, such as marrying an older man, she will commit a further offense
likely to be viewed highly unfavorably. In a case in Sweden, for example, a young
woman of Kurdish descent had an affair with a man of Iranian descent without her
family’s permission. Her family cast her out, forbidding her to return to their town
of residence (Wikan, 2008: 112–113). In defying their order,

she was playing with fire . . . [She] threatened to split the system apart from the inside.
She was breaking every rule in the game, not only those concerned with sexual honor
and choice of husband. She violated her exile too . . . [She] had become a multiple
offender. (Wikan, 2008: 5)

Shortly afterwards, her father shot and killed her.

The prior deviance need not even be the woman’s own. A woman’s moral repu-
tation can be sullied by the notoriety of a female relative: ‘‘if the mother’s reputa-
tion is in any way tainted, the girl is tarred with the same brush’’ (Van Eck, 2003:
204). Thus, an honor offense committed by another female family member can
elevate a woman’s own risk of being killed. In an Israeli case, for instance, a girl
who lost her virginity at age 12 only narrowly escaped being killed at the hands of
her brother. Her younger sister, however, was not so fortunate when she became
pregnant at 14: she was strangled and then decapitated by their brother (Kressel,
1981: 149–150).
A woman’s moral reputation can also be tainted by deviance on the part
of her close male relatives. Of particular importance is her brother’s or
father’s reputation within the extended family group. Public accusations of dis-
honor – a factor stressed by Ginat (1997 [1987]) – appear to be often made by those
who have had prior conflicts with her close male relatives (see, for example, 1997
[1987]: 145).

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

418 Punishment & Society 16(4)

The lower the relative status of the woman, then, the more vulnerable she is to
being killed. But her social inferiority depends not just on how low is her status, it
also varies with how high is the status of her accuser: the family.

Organization
An important form of status in honor conflicts is organization – the capacity for
collective action (Black, 1976: 85). Groups, by definition, are more organized than
individuals.18 Among groups, centralization of decision making and corporateness
(unity) of action enhances organization. Just as more organized states (e.g. dicta-
torships) find and punish deviants with greater severity than less organized states
(e.g. democracies), so more organized families discipline with greater frequency and
strictness than less organized families.
Families in honor communities vary considerably among themselves but, com-
pared to their western counterparts, they tend to be highly organized in several
respects. An ideal typical description of the family in honor communities – from
which actual families will invariably deviate to one degree or another – would
include the following elements. Large, extended, and multi-generational, the
family group consists of a man, his brothers, and married sons, together with
the wives and children of the men (though not all may live under the one roof).
The family has a distinctive identity stretching back in time. Internally, ultimate
authority rests with the highest-ranking man. However, for all members ‘‘the col-
lective interests of the group tend to take precedence over their personal wishes’’
(Pope, 2012: 40). The group chooses the marriage partners of its offspring (with
varying degrees of input from the young men and women themselves) (see, for
example, Delany, 1991: 100–120). Marriage is endogamous (see, for example,
Delaney, 1991: 100–110; Kulczycki and Windle, 2011: 1452). Property is shared:
land and animals, in particular, are owned by the family rather than by its indi-
vidual members. Cousin marriage has the effect of keeping property within the
family, as the wealth transferred on marriage goes to kin instead of non-kin.
Importantly, the family is a corporate unit, acting as a single entity toward the
world. In turn, the world treats its members as interchangeable and mutually
responsible for each other’s actions. ‘‘Strong family unity means that an offense
to any member of the family is perceived to be a direct offence to all its members
and every family member has a right to intervene in the life of another member’’
_
(Ince et al., 2009: 548). Equally, ‘‘one family member’s shameful act brings dis-
honor on the rest of the family’’ (Abu-Lughod, 1999 [1986]: 65–66). Consequently,
‘‘in many cases, women members of the family are the ones who put pressure on
male members to kill other female members who are seen to be unchaste’’
(Faqir, 2001: 72).19
Organization, then, tends to increase the strictness with which families define
and respond to dishonor, especially that of their lower-ranking members. More
individualistic families, by contrast, generally treat honor violations with consid-
erably greater leniency. In an incident in the town of Sohar, Oman, for instance,

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

Cooney 419

a woman widely known to be a prostitute was neither condemned by her commu-

nity nor punished by her husband (Wikan, 1982: ch. 8). Significantly, kinship pat-
terns in the town ‘‘approach those found in modern Western industrial societies’’ in
that ‘‘patrilineal descent groups. . . do not in fact emerge as corporate and poten-
tially mobilizable bodies’’ (Barth, 1983: 112, 131). What matters most, however, is
the degree of organization of the family in the particular case, not the organization
of families in general. For instance, in a case among Israeli Bedouin, after an
unmarried woman became involved in a sexual relationship her life was in jeop-
ardy. However, her father worked for wages in a Jewish settlement and hence ‘‘was
no longer dependent on his extended family for maintaining a common herd.
He was thus able to ignore the decision of the family group and save his daughter’’
(Ginat, 1997 [1987]: 153).
Cases of this kind are increasingly common. A major reason that 25 of the
27 publicly known cases of dishonor in three rural Arab villages (1988–1995) did
not result in an honor killing is the general weakening of the traditional extended
co-liable family:

As more individuals of any particular group enter the wage labor market and build up
ties and commitments outside the collective responsibility framework of the co-liable
group, they will prefer ways of settling disputes that (a) will not put them or their
families in danger, and (b) will not disturb their outside working relations by having to
return to attend a co-liable group meeting. (Ginat, 1997 [1987]: 192)

More individualistic still are the families of the world’s wealthiest nations. In
modern USA and Europe, adults primarily make their own relational, marital,
employment, and life-style decisions, acting as autonomous individuals rather
than as members of a corporate group. Offspring establish their own families,
rather than being part of the husband’s extended family. Family units are smaller,
less enveloping, more nuclear, more temporary – and more lenient (Baumgartner,
1988: 21–71). Unmarried pregnancies and births are extremely common, but honor
killing is unknown. Over 40 percent of births are to unmarried women in the
United States, Netherlands, and Denmark, and over 50 percent in France,
Norway, Sweden, and Iceland (Ventura, 2009). The pregnancy of an unmarried
woman might still stigmatize her and her family. But even when it does, the woman
is rarely beaten or driven away, much less killed by her family.

Conclusion
The contemporary sociology of punishment tends to takes an unduly narrow view
of its subject matter, seldom extending its gaze beyond the boundaries of state
penalties (Garland, 2005). Yet most punishment is not inflicted by legal officials,
but by private social actors – individuals, groups, organizations. And most pun-
ishment is not violent. When violent punishment does occur, its eligibility for legal
sanctions tends to obscure recognition of its indigenous nature. Instead of being

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

420 Punishment & Society 16(4)

seen as punishment, it usually becomes categorized and understood as crime

(Black, 1983).
Honor violence exemplifies these patterns. To many, the beating and killing of
women in the name of family honor is a criminal act, pure and simple. But on the
ground, honor violence is punishment, not crime. If the goal is to explain the behav-
ior, honor violence, both lethal and non-lethal, is best seen in that light – as
a punitive response to deviant conduct that varies across cases in severity. So
viewed, honor violence is geometrical, targeting the down and the distant,
obeying two principles that appear to be found in systems of punishment more
generally.
Consistent with Black’s (1993) theory of moralism, social inferiority and social
distance each enhance the probability and severity of punishment for dishonor.
Together, they do so even more. Combined, they create a type of ‘‘vertical seg-
mentation’’ that seems to be particularly hospitable to punishment (Black, 1990:
78–79). For in many honor communities the sexes appear to be not just unequal
but relatively distant, relationally and culturally, from one another as well. Once
again, generalization is vulnerable to local refutation, but, compared to western
societies, the distinction between male and female tends to be unusually clear and
sharp. Men and women dress and adorn themselves differently, present them-
selves differently, and occupy different spaces. They perform dissimilar tasks and
discharge dissimilar duties. Even within families the sexes maintain a measure of
distance, interacting primarily among themselves. Their worlds are largely separ-
ate.20 Consequently, men and women are, on average, somewhat less socially
close than their counterparts in societies with more blurred gender lines. The
difference is merely one of degree – men and women in Europe and North
America, too, have separate activities and spaces. But the greater gender dis-
tance within honor communities, in tandem with their greater gender inequality,
creates an environment that renders women unusually vulnerable to severe
punishment
The social inequality and distance of the woman and her family by no means
explains all that must be explained. Other factors matters as well. For instance,
third parties, such as family and community members, can tip the balance
between life and death, and their contribution needs to be considered at some
point. So too does the nature of dishonor itself – what conduct will be treated as
dishonorable? Nonetheless, the twin principles of social distance and inferiority
yield a powerful and parsimonious set of hypotheses for explaining many of the
key facts of honor violence – when it will and will not occur, where it will and
will not be found, by whom it will and will not be committed, who will and will
not be a likely target, and, in each case, how severe it will and will not be. As
more and better data emerge, researchers can test these conclusions: honor vio-
lence is most likely and lethal when a highly subordinated woman with a record
of deviant (independent) conduct who is a member of a highly organized family is
accused of an unauthorized relationship with a lower status stranger and cultural
outsider.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

Cooney 421

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Donald Black, Roberta Senechal de la Roche, and the
anonymous reviewers for their comments on prior drafts.

Notes
1. Some languages have separate words for male and family honor, including
Arabic (‘‘sharaf’’ and ‘‘ard’’) and Turkish (‘‘şeref’’ and ‘‘namus’’) (Van Eck,
2003: 19–21).
2. Also known as ‘‘honor-based violence’’ (HBV) or ‘‘so-called honor violence’’.
3. Many human societies appear to have had family honor violence (see Goldstein,
2002). Today, such violence occurs mainly, but not exclusively, in rural areas and
among Muslims (see, for example, Amnesty International, 1999: 7; Chesler, 2010;
Wikan, 2008: 70–71).
4. According to Fisk (2010), ‘‘many women’s groups in the Middle East and South-
west Asia suspect the victims are at least four times the United Nations’. . . figure’’.
5. Male victims appear to be relatively rare in the Middle East (see, for example,
Hasan, 2002: 11–15). They are more common in other regions, such as Sindh
Province, Pakistan. There, a familiar form of honor killing is known as ‘‘karo-
kari’’: both the offending man (karo or ‘‘black man’’) and woman (kari or ‘‘black
woman’’) are slain (see, for example, Patel and Gadit, 2008).
6. Most types of modern violence are both crime and punishment (see, for example,
Campbell, 2009; Manning, 2012; Senecahl de la Roche, 1996). For a detailed
description of those competing perspectives in a historical context, see Garland’s
(2005) analysis of public torture lynchings in southern states.
7. Like all forms of punishment, honor violence may deter others from committing
similar violations (see, for example, King, 2008: 322). Deterrence is not, however,
addressed in the present article.
8. Honor killing itself varies in important respects across honor communities – for
example, in whether a husband may kill his adulterous wife or must leave it to her
natal family to do so (see, for example, Hasan, 2002: 9–10).
9. Given the breadth of conduct that may be treated as dishonorable, female honor
appears ultimately to be a matter of rejection of authority (Black, 2011: 175, note
90). This issue is addressed in Cooney (2014).
10. Senechal de la Roche (1996: 115) proposes that the degree of organization of such
groups increases with the continuity of the deviant behavior.
11. Treating honor violence as punishment rather than as collective violence has
another advantage as well. Most honor offenses – especially those involving
merely mild acts of dishonor – likely do not lead to violence but to sub-violent
penalties such as warnings, deprivations, or exclusion. Although data limitations
currently confine discussions of honor penalties to beatings and killings, a theory of
the social control of honor must be broad enough to apply in principle to violent
and non-violent penalties alike.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

422 Punishment & Society 16(4)

12. For Black, punitiveness is one of four dimensions of moralism, the others being
formalism (applying explicit rules), decisiveness (deciding one side is right and the
other wrong), and coerciveness (propensity to use force).
13. These principles refer to both the relationship between the principal parties and the
relationship between third parties (e.g. judges) and the principals. Since honor
violence is inflicted by the victim of the original offense, the relationship of the
principals is paramount. Here I consider only the principals.
14. Collins (2008) argues that violence in general is rare, though for a different reason –
because it violates the tendency to reciprocal entrainment that is the basis of human
interaction. However, the emotional difficulty of committing violence does not
prevent some family members from killing in the name of honor, sometimes in a
highly violent manner.
15. The term ‘‘social inferiority’’ refers solely to the relative position of the
parties in a multidimensional social space; it neither states nor implies any value
judgment.
16. Similarly, a more recent (non-random) survey of ninth-grade students in Amman,
Jordan, found that about 40 percent of boys and 20 percent of girls believed that
killing a daughter, sister, or cousin who has dishonored the family is justified
(Eisner and Ghuneim, 2013).
17. A liaison with a disreputable man – one who conceals his married state, for example
– is more dishonorable as well, though that may make him, rather than her, the
target of an honor killing (see, for example, Van Eck, 2003: 118–122).
18. In geometrical terms, groups occupy a higher elevation in the organizational
dimension of social space.
19. For an extreme example of how women may support the practice of honor killing,
see Kocturk (1992: 57–58) (a woman kills her husband because he did not punish
her for having an affair).
20. Israeli Bedouin have a derogatory word (‘elq) for a man who pays too much atten-
tion to his womenfolk and who spends too little time doing what he should do –
meeting with his agnates (Kressel, 1992: 42).

References
Abu-Lughod L (1999 [1986]) Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society
(updated). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Abu-Odeh L (1996) Crimes of honor and the construction of gender in Arab societies.
In: Yamani M (ed.) Feminism and Islam: Legal and Literary Perspectives. New York:
New York University Press.
Akpinar A (2003) The honor/shame complex revisited: Violence against women in the
migration context. Women’s Studies International Forum 26(5): 425–442.
Amnesty International (1999) Pakistan: Violence against Women in the Name of Honor.
Amnesty International Index Number ASA 33/017/1999. Available at: http://
www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA33/017/1999/en/5d9201f4-e0f2-11dd-be39-
2d4003be4450/asa330171999en.pdf (accessed 14 May 2014).

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

Cooney 423

Antoun RT (1968) On the modesty of women in Arab Muslim villages: A study in the
accommodation of traditions. American Anthropologist 70(4): 671–697.
Baker NA, Gregware P and Cassidy MA (1999) Family killing fields: Honor rationales
in the murder of women. Violence against Women 5(2): 164–184.
Baldus D, Woodworth G and Pulaksi CA (1990) Equal Justice and the Death Penalty:
A Legal and Empirical Analysis. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.
Barth F (1983) Sohar: Culture and Society in an Omani Town. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Baumgartner MP (1988) The Moral Order of a Suburb. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Baumgartner MP (1992) The myth of discretion. In: Hawkins K (ed.) The Uses of
Discretion. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Black D (1976) The Behavior of Law. New York: Academic Press.
Black D (1983) Crime as social control. American Sociological Review 48(1): 34–45.
Black D (1990) The elementary forms of conflict management. In: of Justice Studies
School and State University Arizona (eds) New Directions in the Study of Law,
Justice, and Social Control. New York: Plenum Press.
Black D (1993) Making enemies. In: The Social Structure of Right and Wrong. San
Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Black D (1998) Prologue. In: The Social Structure of Right and Wrong (revised edition).
San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Black D (2004a) Violent structures. In: Zahn M, Brownstein HH and Jackson SL (eds)
Violence: From Theory to Research. Newark, NJ: LexisNexis/Anderson Publishing.
Black D (2004b) The geometry of terrorism. Sociological Theory 22(1): 14–25.
Black D (2011) Moral Time. New York: Oxford University Press.
Blum R and Blum E (1965) Health and Healing in Rural Greece: A Study of Three
Communities. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Campbell B (2009) Genocide as social control. Sociological Theory 27(2): 150–172.
Campbell B (2011) Black’s theory of law and social control. In: Rosenfeld R (ed.)
Oxford Bibliographies Online: Criminology. Oxford University Press.
Chakravarti U (2005) From fathers to husbands: Of love, death and marriage in North
India. In: Welchman L and Hossain S (eds) ‘Honor’: Crimes, Paradigms and Violence
against Women. London: Zed Books.
Chesler P (2009) Are honor killings simply domestic violence? Middle East Quarterly
16(2): 61–69.
Chesler P (2010) Worldwide trends in honor killing. Middle East Quarterly 17(1): 3–11.
Collins R (2008) Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Cooney M (1998) Warriors and Peacemakers: How Third Parties Shape Violence. New
York: New York University Press.
Cooney M (2009a) Ethnic conflict without ethnic groups: A study in pure sociology.
British Journal of Sociology 60(3): 473–492.
Cooney M (2009b) Is Killing Wrong? A Study in Pure Sociology. Charlottesville, VA:
University of Virginia Press.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

424 Punishment & Society 16(4)

Cooney M (2014) Family honor and social time. Unpublished paper, Department of
Sociology, University of Georgia.
Davis SS and Davis DA (1989) Adolescence in a Moroccan Town: Making Social Sense.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Delaney C (1991) The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village
Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Eisner M and Ghuneim L (2013) Honor killing attitudes among adolescents in Amman,
Jordan. Aggressive Behavior 39(5): 405–417.
Faqir F (2001) Intrafamily femicide in defence of honor: The case of Jordan. Third
World Quarterly 22(1): 65–82.
Fisk R (2010) The crimewave that shames the world. The Independent, 7 September.
Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-
the-crimewave-that-shames-the-world-2072201.html.
Garland D (1990) Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Garland D (2005) Penal excess and surplus meaning: Public torture lynchings in twen-
tieth-century America. Law and Society Review 39(4): 793–834.
Ghanim D (2009) Gender and Violence in the Middle East. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Gill A (2011) Reconfiguring ‘honor’-based violence as a form of gendered violence.
In: Idriss MM and Abbas T (eds) Honor, Violence, Women and Islam. Abingdon:
Routledge.
Gill AK, Begikhani N and Hague G (2012) ‘Honor’-based violence in Kurdish com-
munities. Women’s Studies International Forum 35: 75–85.
Ginat J (1997 [1987]) Blood Revenge: Family Honor, Mediation and Outcasting.
Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
Glazer IM and Abu Ras W (1994) On aggression, human rights, and hegemonic
discourse: The case of a murder for family honor in Israel. Sex Roles 30(3/4):
269–288.
Goldstein MA (2002) The biological roots of heat-of-passion crime and honor killings.
Politics and Life Sciences 21(2): 28–37.
Gregg GS (2005) The Middle East: A Cultural Psychology. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Hasan M (2002) The politics of honor: Patriarchy, the state and the murder of women
in the name of family honor. Journal of Israeli History 21(1–2): 1–37.
Hausmann R, Tyson L, Bekhoouche Y and Zahid S (2013) The Global Gender Gap
Report. Geneva: World Economic Forum.
Hoyek D, Sidawi RR and Abou Mrad A (2005) Murders of women in Lebanon:
‘Crimes of honor’ between reality and the law. In: Welchman L and Hossein S
(eds) ‘Honor’: Crimes, Paradigms and Violence against Women. London: Zed Books.
Husseini R (2009) Murder in the Name of Honor: The True Story of One
Woman’s Heroic Fight against an Unbelievable Crime. Oxford: Oneworld
Publications.
Idriss MM (2011) Honor, violence, women and Islam – an introduction. In: Idriss MM
and Abbas T (eds) Honor, Violence, Women and Islam. Abingdon: Routledge.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

Cooney 425

Ikkaracan P and Women for Women’s Human Rights (WWHR) (1998) Exploring the
context of women’s sexuality in eastern Turkey. Reproductive Health Matters 6(12):
66–75.
_
Ince O, Yarali A and Özsel D (2009) Customary killings in Turkey and Turkish mod-
ernization. Middle Eastern Studies 45(4): 537–551.
Jafri AH (2008) Honor Killing: Dilemma, Ritual, Understanding. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Kardam F (with contributions from Alpar Z, Yüksel I and Ergün E) (2005) The Dynamics
of Honor Killings in Turkey: Prospects for Action. Ankara: Population Association.
King DE (2008) The personal is patrilineal: Namus as sovereignty. Identities: Global
Studies in Culture and Power 15(3): 317–342.
Knudsen A (2009) Violence and Belonging: Land, Love, and Lethal Conflict in the North-
West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.
Kocturk T (1992) A Matter of Honor: Experiences of Turkish Women Immigrants.
London: Zed Books.
Kressel GM (1981) Sororicide/filicide: Homicide for family honor. Current
Anthropology 22(2): 141–152.
Kressel GM (1992) Shame and gender. Anthropological Quarterly 65(1): 34–46.
Kulczycki A and Windle S (2011) Honor killings in the Middle East and
North Africa: A systematic review of the literature. Violence against Women
17(11): 1442–1464.
Kulwicki AD (2002) The practice of honor crimes: A glimpse of domestic violence in
the Arab world. Issues in Mental Health Nursing 23(1): 77–87.
Lundsgaarde HP (1977) Murder in Space City: A Cultural Analysis of Houston
Homicide Patterns. New York: Oxford University Press.
Manning J (2012) Suicide as social control. Sociological Forum 27(1): 207–227.
Meetoo V and Mirza HS (2007) ‘There is nothing ‘‘honorable’’ about honor killings’:
Gender, violence and the limits of multiculturalism. Women’s Studies International
Forum 30(3): 187–200.
Mensch BS, Ibrahim BL, Lee SM and El-Gibaly O (2003) Gender-role attitudes among
Egyptian adolescents. Studies in Family Planning 34(1): 8–18.
Moghadam VM (ed.) (2007) From Patriarchy to Empowerment: Women’s Participation,
Movements, and Rights in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse: University Press.
Nisbett RE and Cohen D (1996) Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the
South. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Onal A (2008) Honor Killing: Stories of Men Who Killed. London: SAQI.
Patel S and Gadit AM (2008) Karo-Kari: A form of honor killing in Pakistan.
Transcultural Psychiatry 45(4): 683–694.
Payton J (2011) Collective crimes, collective victims: A case study of the murder of
Banaz Mahmod. In: Idriss MM and Abbas T (eds) Honor, Violence, Women and
Islam. Abingdon: Routledge.
Peristiany JG (ed.) (1966) Honor and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

426 Punishment & Society 16(4)

Phillips S (2003) The social structure of vengeance: A test of Black’s model. Criminology
41(3): 673–708.
Pimentel S, Pandjiarjian V and Belloque J (2005) The legitimate defense of honor, or
murder with impunity? A critical study of legislation and case law in Latin America.
In: Welchman L and Hossein S (eds) ‘Honor’: Crimes, Paradigms and Violence
against Women. London: Zed Books.
Pitt-Rivers J (1966) Honor and social status. In: Peristiany JG (ed.) Honor
and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Pope N (2012) Honor Killings in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Sadiqi F and Ennaji M (2011) Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Agents of
Change. Abingdon: Routledge.
Scott J (2008) Introduction. In: Onal A Honor Killing: Stories of Men Who Killed.
London: SAQI.
Senechal de la Roche R (1996) Collective violence as social control. Sociological Forum
11(1): 97–128.
Senechal de la Roche R (1997) The sociogenesis of lynching. In: Brundage W (ed.)
Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South. Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, pp. 48–76.
Senechal de La Roche R (2001) Why is collective violence collective? Sociological
Theory 19(2): 126–144.
Sev’er A and Yurdakul G (2001) Culture of honor, culture of change: A fem-
inist analysis of honor killings in rural Turkey. Violence against Women 7(9): 964–998.
Shah N (1998) Honor killings: Code of dishonor. Dawn November: 19–25.
Spierenburg P (ed.) (1998) Men and Violence: Gender, Honor and Rituals in Modern
Europe and America. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.
Tucker J (1999) The Therapeutic Corporation. New York: Oxford University Press.
UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) (2000) The State of the World Population.
Available at: http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2000/english/index.html.
Van Eck C (2003) Purified by Blood: Honor Killings amongst Turks in the Netherlands.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Ventura SJ (2009) Changing Patterns of Nonmarital Childbearing in the
United States. NCHS data brief, no 18. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for
Health Statistics.
Warraich SA (2005) ‘Honor killing’ and the law in Pakistan. In: Welchman L and
Hossain S (eds) ‘Honor’: Crimes, Paradigms and Violence against Women.
London: Zed Books.
Welchman L and Hossain S (eds) 2005 ‘Honor’: Crime, Paradigms, and Violence against
Women. London: Zed Books.
Wikan U (1982) Behind the Veil in Arabia: Women in Oman. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Wikan U (2008) In Honor of Fadime: Murder and Shame. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015

Cooney 427

Mark Cooney is a professor of sociology and an adjunct professor of law,

University of Georgia, USA. His work addresses conflict and its management,
primarily from the perspective of pure sociology. Among the topics he has written
on are law, apology, and violence (with particular reference to the role of third
parties).

Downloaded from pun.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 21, 2015