Foreword: The Sensitive, thus Controversial, Theme of Honour

Before delving into the subject of this article, the following clarifications will help avoid any possible misunderstandings, given the theme’s delicacy.

1. (1) Coupled with an Orientalistic concept of honour is the highly widespread misconception that honour and Islam are an inseparable and binomial.Reference Chesler³ After nearly 20 years of oblivion, recurrent cases of honour killings in the immigrant communities of several Western European societies have once again brought to the fore the theme of honour. Since these crimes were committed by Muslim social actors, some experts on this issue have formulated a simplistic hypothesis by which honour and its forms of violence, especially against women, are inherent to Islam. Given my experience as a forensic anthropology expert, I have always challenged this statement because I have repeatedly dealt with court cases involving people from other religions. The latest, and probably most sensational case, regarded an attempted honour killing in which a father of Syrian-orthodox Christian faith with Swiss citizenship tried to kill his daughter’s Bosnian-Muslim fiancée in accordance with the customary practice in force in Tur Abdin, i.e. his homeland in southeast Turkey,Reference Björklund⁴ by which marrying a Muslim is socially unacceptable and a serious offence to the entire family’s prestige, as well as to his own honour as a father. Furthermore, there are Islamic societies, such as those of Southeast Asia (Malaysia and Indonesia), in which any form of honour killing is and has always been unknown. Therefore, in some cases religion can be an instrument, but not the actual underlying cause, of conflicts of honour.

2. (2) Another misconception that must be debunked is the one linked to feminist conceptions of honour, i.e. that males alone enacting violence against females is inherent in certain social practices in connection with honour. Undoubtedly the victims of honour crimes are mostly women, yet we ought to bear in mind that in blood feuds (such as those between families, extended family groups or tribal communities) the conflicts aimed at restoring honour involve exclusively adult males. Indeed, as was evidenced in cases that have occurred in Albanian-speaking communities, including those that migrated to Western Europe, women are protected by norms of customary law, and thus are excluded from the retaliations that often entail a long string of honour killings.

3. (3) Anthropologists should never step into the shoes of a moralist or a jurist, even if the representations and social practices they are studying are repugnant or criminally prosecutable. This article, therefore, makes use of an interpretative approach in line with Clifford GeertzReference Geertz⁵ and originally put forward by Max Weber.Reference Weber⁶ Thus, an interpretative analysis tries to find the meaning underlying the actors’ actions, however appalling these may seem to the anthropologist. Interpreting must not be confused with justifying, as aptly put in the French saying ‘comprendre ce n’est pas tout pardonner’.

The Concept of Honour

Of all anthropologists, probably Julian Pitt-Rivers is the one who sought to find an exhaustive definition of honour. He did, however, acknowledge that its characterisation has to consider various dimensions as the phenomenon is so complex. Based on his fieldwork experience in Spain, and on a dichotomy put forward by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he suggests distinguishing the two following aspects:

1. (a) Honour can be understood as a feeling or, more accurately, a specific state of consciousness based on a certainty that there’s nothing to be self-reproachful about and that consequently one can and indeed has a right to feel proud. This aspect considers only the ‘individualistic’ dimension, since the sole judge of one’s own honour is the subject, that is, oneself. This characterisation smacks of a voluntaristic moral philosophy that social scientists cannot adopt unquestioningly.Reference Pitt-Rivers⁷

2. (b) The second aspect refers to concrete behaviour as a manifestation of the just-mentioned state of consciousness. Therefore, this state is relevant only if courses of action are considered in relation to their reception and appraisal by the actor’s own society. Consequently, honour has always something to do with demonstration, competition, and above all reputation.

This view is ultimately held by Peristiany, too, who describes honour as one of the ‘universal aspects of social evaluation’.Reference Peristiany⁸ According to Peristiany’s generalising perspective, the actor who makes a claim to honour must display specific acquired and/or ascribed qualities. In other words, the actor has to comply with the strict, socially-guaranteed norms of a code acknowledged by the community.

Honour and the Competition for Status and Reputation

Honour as an aspiration and validation of status is redefined daily. Therefore, the reputation of a person and/or a group is not a constant: honour can grow, but can also be lost. Such a ‘market quotation’ of one’s own honour, always subject to change – in extreme cases every day – produces fierce feelings of rivalry between groups and persons in terms of status.

Empirical evidence shows that societies in which the social logic of honour plays a major role are shaped by their conflictual character. In other words, these social formations may be defined as systems of social relations between competing individuals and groups in the public sphere. In this sense, these patterns of thought are constantly and almost obsessively dominated by the notion that society outside one’s own group (for example family and kin) is made up of potential rivals who must be unconditionally outdone. This is the only way to maintain and maximise honour, reputation, and status.

These observations indicate that honour and shame societies, which quite clearly, beyond any religious belonging, stretch from Latin America (Ecuador and Brazil in particular) to the entire Mediterranean basin and from the Middle East to Bangladesh, are permeated from top to bottom by a system of social relationships grounded in rivalry and conflict between individuals and groups. This is due to the simple fact that the major attribute of social prestige consists of displaying one’s personal or collective ability to predominate over others in the public sphere.

The latter observation spells out the crux of the theme sketched in this section. Honour is an instrument of social differentiation because it is through honour that the never-ending attempt is made to document both personal superiority and that of one’s own group in the social sphere.

However, the fierce competition for honour also implies an extraordinary fear of social demotion, which in turn is an indicator of the extremely developed attention to stratification and ultimately to hierarchical structure for members of these societies. The claim to social and moral superiority (together with a fear of social decline), that is, honour as an instrument of social differentiation, considerably increases the importance of that social institution which in everyday language is called public opinion.

Public opinion, which ultimately determines the position of individuals and groups in the social hierarchy based on their honour, also plays a prominent role as an organ of control in these cultures. ‘Public opinion’ constantly redefines the ‘good name’ of the honourable, just as subtle rumour establishes the ‘shamelessness’ of a person or a group. In societies where the importance of honour is crucial there are hardly more popular conversations than the ones dealing with the ‘good name’ of individuals and collectives. Correspondingly, rumour is a favoured strategy to undermine the reputation of potential rivals.

On the subject of honour as an instrument of social differentiation, the importance of the media through which ‘public opinion’ as social control articulates itself must also be stressed. There are specific social spaces in which the construction or destruction of reputation, of status and hence of honour is carried out. Here, one’s good name can be displayed while the good name of others, especially rivals, is thoroughly scrutinised and examined. Simultaneously, in the very same social spaces, on the one hand rumours are circulated through gossip, and on the other rumours about victims are neutralised by those affected through exemplary behaviour.

In contests for honour as processes of social differentiation, what is at issue is the achievement of a specific social position and its acknowledgement by other members of society. Neither the claim to social and moral superiority, nor the fear of social decline can be attributed solely to the effect or mechanical reproduction of handed-down models, since these attitudes are constitutive elements of a ‘politics of reputation’.Reference Bailey⁹

As instruments of social differentiation, actors conform in their behaviour not only because they have internalised the system of norms, but also in order to ‘administer’ their good name as skilfully as possible in the presence of the judging organs of social control. Accordingly, the actor does not have to be absolutely convinced of the moral rightness of the code of honour. What is more relevant to him is the acknowledgement of his own ‘social identity’; i.e. the individual’s actions and attributes that allows societal ‘public opinion’ to recognise the position he occupies in the dichotomous order of the ‘honourable’ and the ‘shameless’.

Put more concretely: the actors feel and are considered dishonoured or ‘shameless’ only when the damage to honour becomes public. Likewise, the ‘shameless’ person will recover his honourableness only when he demonstrates publicly that he can defend his reputation after an affront. Whether this is a matter of fact or the product of an unfounded rumour is relatively unimportant. Members of these societies can certainly not be considered as typically ‘other directed’ persons in Riesman’s sense. With respect to honour, however, the extremely vigilant attention to one’s own ‘social identity’ as a ‘rational politics of reputation’ is based on a meticulously exact emphasis on external formalities.

The outstanding significance of a ‘politics of reputation’ as a rational calculation for the skilful management of status, position, and honour, raises the question of the role of ‘façade’ or ‘mask’. Accordingly, in the social logic of honour, knowing how to safeguard the ‘façade’ is a definite plus, while letting the ‘mask’ fall because you’re unable to keep it in place is a social disaster.

Reference to the ‘façade’ or the ‘mask’ as a calculated presentation of self in public is further evidence that honour can never be based on the idea of an egalitarian social order, thus confirming the assumption that the actors themselves ultimately consider honour to be an instrument of social differentiation.

Thus far, honour has been investigated in relation to the struggle for reputation, status, and position. There could be a legitimate impression that the emphasis was on forms of competition, which could be defined as ideal, without having sufficiently taken into account the material implications of the phenomenon of honour. Thus, we must agree with Bourdieu when he states that honour represents a ‘symbolic capital’,Reference Bourdieu¹⁰ which can be invested in the material sector.

Honour and the Struggle for Recognition

A pervasive conflictual aspect characterising relations between individuals and groups is typical of societies where the social logic of honour plays a major role. Therefore, the social logic of honour is permanently linked with the struggle for recognition of position, status and reputation of one’s self or ourselves with reference to significant others. Yet, according to a modernistic conception of society, honour is not only an archaic phenomenon, but also an obstacle to social cohesion due to the bitter struggles for recognition.

For this reason the prime movers of the French Revolution and their ideological descendants have sought to replace the social logic of honour with the one of dignity. In principle, dignity should guarantee equal recognition and treatment for everyone since all human beings are entitled to the same respect. Instead, honour and its pervasive conflictual aspect, engendered by the struggle for recognition, produce a society composed of individuals or collectivities belonging to different categories, not to mention the distinction in this context between the honourable and the shameless.

Dignity has not taken the place of honour; therefore, to this day honour cannot be regarded as a relic of times past, but rather as a socio-cultural model that coexists with and rivals dignity. Since honour in modernity has not been replaced by dignity, we can justifiably hypothesise the presence of a permanent dialectic between these two opposing paradigms of sociability, which ultimately furthers the dynamics of modern societies. The principle of dignity has somewhat curbed the conflictual aspect of honour based on the struggle for recognition, but it definitely hasn’t eliminated it.

Honour, therefore, cannot be downgraded to something archaic, obsolete and dying out. Consequently, the rhetoric of honour, with its specific expressions such as ‘I give my word of honour’ or ‘I swear upon my honour’ or ‘to lose face’, and its equally specific terms such as honourable (i.e. respectable), honorary of office, to honour (in terms of respecting someone or something), dishonourable (in terms of behaviour) is still a feature of the public management of reputation (in everyday life, as well), even in societies where an ethnocentric vision purports to be the most advanced and modern one.

We also need to mention that in countries such as Italy and France until a few decades ago, appalling honour killings were given preferential treatment with relatively minor charges. Based on the doctrine of the lex julia de adulteris, Zanardelli and Rocco, authors of the draft Italian criminal code which was in force up to the early 1980s, introduced these magnanimous mitigating circumstances for honour crimes. This broadly lenient approach remained in force until Article n. 442 was promulgated in 1981. In France, laws concerning minor charges for honour killings were repealed only in 1975 with the Napoleonic criminal code revision. In Spain and Portugal, the decriminalisation of honour crimes as a customary, legitimate sanction for adultery committed by one’s wife was repealed even later, i.e. only after these countries revised their respective criminal codes in the mid-1980s. The case of Turkey is particularly interesting. In terms of honour killings, the old penal code was amended in 2004. Before 2004, while the punishment for ordinary murders was life imprisonment or the death penalty, a person who had committed an honour killing was treated more leniently if the deed was a matter of honour. The reform of 2004 was connected to Turkey’s application to become a member of the European Union. However, the previous penal code introduced in 1926 and amended in 1936 was inspired by the Italian penal codes: the Codice Zanardelli (1889) and the Codice Rocco introduced by the fascist regime in 1930. In the case of Turkey, this meant a stunning concordance between the State legal system and the customary law system, which prevailed particularly in the eastern part of the country. However, the number of honour-related criminal cases continues to rise throughout this country. From 66 cases in 2002, the number grew to 264 during the first seven months of 2009 and this despite the mentioned reform of the penal code. Following Max Weber’s terminology, the situation after 2004 seems to show a rift between legality and legitimacy within the State’s law system.

Honour, therefore, cannot be exclusively viewed as a complex of archaic cultural phenomena from the past that may be classified as oddities that are dying out. This certainly applies to societies that – rightly or not – are regarded as ‘less modernised’ and more ‘socially backward’.

Yet most immigration societies in Europe and North America have had to acknowledge that the cultural idiom of honour, along with its specifically strategic actions, is still very relevant in significant communities that emigrated from the Mediterranean area and neighbouring regions, such as the Near and Middle East and Latin America. The undeniable increase of illegal social practices such as honour crimes, has especially kindled interest in behaviours that were regarded as definitively extinct. Honour, especially the one exported to immigration societies, is once again a challenge for legal systems.

Concerning Germany, over the last 20 years, one can detect an increasing number of honour-related killings, particularly amongst the Turkish immigrant community. Nevertheless, precise statistics on how many persons, largely women, die every year in honour-related killings, are hard to find, as many cases are never reported. A Turkish organisation has documented 40 honour-related killings in Germany from 1995 and 2004.¹¹ Generally speaking, an average of 10 honour killings occur in Germany per year. However, not all of these cases involve Turkish immigrants.¹²

In order to understand this, we need to consider various aspects that sustain the persistence of action strategies linked to the concept of honour.

Contrary to assimilationist and integrationist concepts, immigrants from whatever country do not change their cultural identity in toto by taking on the values, rules and social practices of the host society, for the simple reason that, since they are experiencing a social and cultural transnational condition, they maintain actual and affective ties with their society of origin. Contacts with the country of origin have become easier and more affordable in the current era of globalisation thanks to computer technology, mobile phones and low-cost flights. Seasonal returns on vacation are no longer a dream, but rather a regular event, which, especially for immigrants from the Mediterranean and contiguous areas, occurs once or even more times a year. During these stays in their society of origin even second or third-generation immigrants will find, rediscover and come in close contact with the social practices of their original culture, such as the ones linked to honour. Paradoxically enough, the opportunities created by globalisation itself, which according to some social scientists would have created a worldwide, quasi-homogeneous culture along the lines of the western one,Reference Fukuyama¹³ have allowed the persistence of the code of honour of Mediterranean and contiguous societies in the immigrants’ countries of residence.

Contrary to the postmodern expectations of researchers who turn to methodological individualism, immigrants, especially those from regions at Europe’s margins, usually will not act as isolated individuals, but rather in accordance with family or relatives’ logics. To some extent, family or communities of relatives abide by ancestral canons still in force in the societies of origin, which are based on the notion of honour. These transnational communities act in accordance with powerful social control expectations, especially if the groups in question are not scattered but territorialised or anchored within well-defined social spaces in which they carry out their activities. Social control within the family or relatives’ group becomes a fundamental social guarantee for the continuity and reproduction of cultural models linked to honour.

It would be a mistake, though, to think that in the country of residence immigrants are, so-to-say, hemmed in by their own culture of origin, thus also governed by the rules of the code of honour. Most immigrants do not follow the code of honour blindly. An immigrant will act in accordance with his own culture of origin and in extreme cases will commit a crime such as an honour killing, not because he is Muslim, Sikh, Albanian, Turk or Sicilian, but rather because he fears being sanctioned and stigmatised by his significant others. He fears the annihilation of his social status and personal reputation, including the good name of his primary group (family and relatives) within the reference community, i.e. his society of origin. This loss of status often also implies negative economic consequences. Honour and its code are a system of concrete strategies intentionally put to use in everyday life. Thus, the culture of honour stops being a static entity that the actor cannot escape and becomes a pliant and flexible phenomenon. It proves to be cultural knowledge, and consequently an adequate action know-how. Therefore, the culture of honour is a social resource for individuals who will both use it to assess their own social situation and activate it in specific constellations in order to achieve what is regarded as an opportune goal. On the theme of honour in the Mediterranean area and bordering societies in relation to its criminally relevant aspects in western legal systems, we can observe that honour provides the actor with the means to assess the seriousness of the wrongs that he, his family or relatives have suffered and that have jeopardised their reputation as well as their social and economic standing. The code of honour also indicates the behaviours needed to restore the former social status, or uphold or improve an unsullied one.

The actual illegal practices enacted by the offended persons, however, are not so much dependent on a blind obedience to social rules, as much as on the assessment of the situation, Based on my experience as a forensic anthropology expert, even in a migratory context an honour killing is practically never an automatic act. Instead, the act is almost always well gauged, where culture is not so much a primary cause as much as an instrument put to use competently and rationally. In these cases it would be misleading to speak of crimes of passion or domestic violence.Reference Smartt¹⁴ To conclude, in line with Max Weber and Bourdieu we can state that the actors abide by a given rule to the extent that their interest in acting accordingly exceeds their interest in not conforming to the said rule.Reference Weber^6, Reference Bourdieu and Wacquant¹⁵ Even if interests are not universal and ought to be regarded, in a sense, as cultural products, actors are not trapped in their social and cultural habitus.

Conclusion: The Rift between State and Society

The persistence and ‘normality’ of violent practices linked to the concept of honour are ultimately linked to the inability of modern bureaucratic states to exert their monopoly on the use of physical force within their territory. This powerlessness of the State is noticeable in most societies of origin in which iron-bound rules of honour are still in force at a local level, although from a legal-institutional standing certain practices such as honour crimes are, in principle, indictable offences. When the population involved does not acknowledge the juridical power, the code of honour will almost inevitably maintain its meaningfulness. The legal systems of these states, which are regarded by their own society as alien and distant, present a structural weakness and a chronic lack of legitimacy, both of which are rooted in the state’s history. This gives rise to an anti-establishment culture grounded in negative experiences that the populations endured in the past. The outcome of this culture is a legal pluralism with concurrent, and at times even conflicting, rules between the state’s legal system on the one hand, and customary law defining the rules of honour on the other. Under these circumstances of legal dualism, as far as honour crimes are concerned, the two systems are incompatible. In fact, while state law in the countries of immigration, as well in the societies of origin, strictly prohibits honour crimes, customary law accepts it or indeed prescribes it. Due to their transnational condition, immigrants often place little trust in the legal system of both state of origin and state of residence; therefore, customary laws, including the ones linked to honour, are followed in the society of residence.