Honour Killing: Dilemma, Ritual, Understanding

During the course of history, and in more contemporary times, a large number of honour killings have been reported from the Mediterranean, Latin American, and certain Muslim societies. However, research suggests it is an error to view the practice as being peculiar to a certain geographical region or belief system. Pakistan is one of the countries where the incidents of honour killing are among the highest in the contemporary world. As a hermeneutic and critical study, this book borrows from theorists and philosophers as diverse as Gebser, Foucault, Barthes, Riceour, Gramsci, Said, and Spivak. Contextualizing and analysing the various representative discourses in Pakistan, this work comes to some understanding of the possible cultural, religious, and historical reasons that create the exigency for men to kill a female member of their own family. It looks at honour killing as a message in several contexts of Pakistani national life and analyzes how these messages are communicated, and towards what rhetorical ends.