Family Life: a comparative perspective on ‘crimes of honour’

In this book, which is the result of a seminar that took place in London in 2003, researchers from Middle East and Latin America came together to compare and analyse ‘honour crimes’ within these various contexts. Although the social contexts on these continents are quite different – Islamic or Catholic countries, besides other cultural differences – the outcomes of the researches are similar: women who were killed either by their husbands or by their own kin. The aim was to demystify such crimes. If, as many researchers in Latin America show, the use of ‘honour’ is a rhetorical device that actually covers other issues, its use in the countries of the Catholic tradition have similarities to its use in countries with a Muslim tradition. This book discusses these crimes both in a general and specific sense, focussing on Case law in Latin America, conjugal violence, honour killings in Turkey and Sweden, crimes of honour in Lebanon, and femicide in Costa Rica (just to name a few). It includes a chapter by Hoda Rouhana that discusses the WLUML perspective on ‘honour crimes’ (p. 389-403).