CBC continues its coverage of these types of crimes. This feature discusses how a Muslim community centre acts to prevent such violence. It's not a large organization, its website showing that it only has about six employees, and yet, I would not be surprised if it was quite succesful. The difference between this community group and a public agency is that precisely because it's a group developed from the community, of the community, it has a different understanding, different cultural capital and legitimacy for the community. In contrast, a public agency has the problem of its exercise of power. By virtue of being a public authority, it has a barrier to building trust within the community, and I believe that trust is key in the prevention of these crimes. That includes not only helping the people who would become victims, but also, effectively, reaching out to those who might become potential perpetrators and influencing them so that they don't.
I also found it interesting that the group is cooperating with an American group that seems completely unrelated - because how would, at face, honour killings have to do with gang violence among African American communities, be related. Well, judging from what is said in the feature, it is linked through the destructive status mechanisms that drives violence in both cases. Also, they both have in common that they are solutions that come from within the community. That gives the group itself power over the issue and a voice in public space.
I think that is imperative if such efforts are to succeed.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Honour related killings in Canada and Sweden
This topic is currently receiving some attention in both Canada and Sweden. In Canada, this is due to two cases currently in the legal system, the Shafia trial , where members of the Shafia family (orginally from Afghanistan) stand accused of killing four sisters, and the extradiction procedure of the mother and uncle of young woman accused of being involved in her murder in India. In Sweden, the attention stems largely from the rememberance of it being 10 years since the murder of Fadime Sahindal, of Kurdish decent.
This is a very complex issue and one disclaimer needs to be made right away: I haven't studied these types of events or the processes behind as part of my work. I merely take part of what the ongoing public debate in public space and make reflections based on my experience stuyding ethnic relations.
Sometimes (and in my impression this is more explicitly so in Europe), the public debate is said to consist of two camps, one (predominantly to the left) arguing that honour killings are just another form of patriarchy, and one (arguably on the right) saying that it's an issue of culture, where some cultures condone and encourage such killings in the name of honour. What is particularly problematic is that both sides tend to mirepresent the other side's argument in an almost hyperbolic fashion. So the "culture as a cause" side argues that the other side are "cultural relativists" who would look away and even allow murder for the sake of "multiculturalism" or "respecting other people's culture" (and I've never actually heard anyone make any such arguments). Meanwhile, the "it's patriarchy side" wants to paint the other side as just another group of racists.
The reason I find it complex is that I don't think that either form of explanation is succifiently nuanced, but also that both sides seem to simplify the processes that might underly these phenomena to the point of misrepresenting them, which would also obstruct preventative work rather than facilitate it.
For those who want to explain this with culture, several questions immediately rise: how are the Kurdish, Afghan and Indian cultures similar? It's not the religion of Islam, clearly, since the Indians in question, it seems to me, are not Muslim, but Hindu (indeed, it was a marriage across caste-lines that was alledgedly the motive of the killing). Moreover, there are many, many people within each of these communities who are activists trying to combat these practices, including Sara Mohammed herself, the founder of the Swedish network above. Indeed, if I recall correctly, the Kurdish community organized a manifestation against these practices in connection to the murder, so it's fairly clear that it's difficult to assign this type of value to a culture in a wider, ethnic sense (unless someone wants to try and make the argument that Kurds who take exception to such practices are "less Kurdish" than those who condone them, which is an argument I would find absurd).
Yet, at the same time, there does seem to me some form of status mechanism involved - the perpetrators seem to share the "protection of the family honour" motive. Thus, there is some form of cultural capital that drives these processes. Exactly how that takes place, and what common denominators can be found, I could not say (since I have not studied these properly)*.
However, I am concerned with the public debate, because reductionism is not going to prevent more murders, and that goes both ways. Engaging in a rhetoric that paints an entire community of "others" as "potential honour murderers" is only going to exacerbate racialization and stigmatization. Likewise, denying that there are young men and women who, at the end of the day, risk their lives if they do not conform to a wider family's demands with regards to their love lives, is not going to help these victims.
Finally, the ways of addressing the issue seem to differ between the two countries. In Canada, it seems to be the immigrant communities themselves who address the issue. Many advocates I have heard speaking on the subject express their concern that these murders will increase prejudice against the own community, and also argue that these practices are not inherent in the culture and therefore police should be so concern with "respecting the culture" that they do not take firm action against such crimes. In Sweden, immigrant organizations are quite underfunded and hardly agents to speak of. Instead, it is the government agencies that own the issue, as described by Björling, a former member of a women's centre. The problem with that is that the predominantly ethnic Swedish civil servants have very limited insight into the communities and also lack competence in dealing with the issue. Indeed, the grassroot organizations seems to have been continuously sidelined by Swedish government officials, in a most destructive manner, according to Björling. It's a pattern I recognize.
My experience tells me that the Canadian model probably can be more succesful: it gives ownership to the issue to those closest concerned with it, including the advocates of victims, who are likely to be more knowledgeable about this. It would also avoid stereotyping and racialization. That said, I'm not aware of any study that has actually compared the two models.
*If I were to speculate, I would probably make a Bourdieusian analysis, thinking about cultural capital in fairly closed social network (Habitus) as one important driver. In that sense, the practice can be related to both culture and patriarchy, and distinct from some other patriarchal practices, but not cultural in an ethnic sense, since it seems like a phenomenon that exists within subsets of larger communities.
This is a very complex issue and one disclaimer needs to be made right away: I haven't studied these types of events or the processes behind as part of my work. I merely take part of what the ongoing public debate in public space and make reflections based on my experience stuyding ethnic relations.
Sometimes (and in my impression this is more explicitly so in Europe), the public debate is said to consist of two camps, one (predominantly to the left) arguing that honour killings are just another form of patriarchy, and one (arguably on the right) saying that it's an issue of culture, where some cultures condone and encourage such killings in the name of honour. What is particularly problematic is that both sides tend to mirepresent the other side's argument in an almost hyperbolic fashion. So the "culture as a cause" side argues that the other side are "cultural relativists" who would look away and even allow murder for the sake of "multiculturalism" or "respecting other people's culture" (and I've never actually heard anyone make any such arguments). Meanwhile, the "it's patriarchy side" wants to paint the other side as just another group of racists.
The reason I find it complex is that I don't think that either form of explanation is succifiently nuanced, but also that both sides seem to simplify the processes that might underly these phenomena to the point of misrepresenting them, which would also obstruct preventative work rather than facilitate it.
For those who want to explain this with culture, several questions immediately rise: how are the Kurdish, Afghan and Indian cultures similar? It's not the religion of Islam, clearly, since the Indians in question, it seems to me, are not Muslim, but Hindu (indeed, it was a marriage across caste-lines that was alledgedly the motive of the killing). Moreover, there are many, many people within each of these communities who are activists trying to combat these practices, including Sara Mohammed herself, the founder of the Swedish network above. Indeed, if I recall correctly, the Kurdish community organized a manifestation against these practices in connection to the murder, so it's fairly clear that it's difficult to assign this type of value to a culture in a wider, ethnic sense (unless someone wants to try and make the argument that Kurds who take exception to such practices are "less Kurdish" than those who condone them, which is an argument I would find absurd).
Yet, at the same time, there does seem to me some form of status mechanism involved - the perpetrators seem to share the "protection of the family honour" motive. Thus, there is some form of cultural capital that drives these processes. Exactly how that takes place, and what common denominators can be found, I could not say (since I have not studied these properly)*.
However, I am concerned with the public debate, because reductionism is not going to prevent more murders, and that goes both ways. Engaging in a rhetoric that paints an entire community of "others" as "potential honour murderers" is only going to exacerbate racialization and stigmatization. Likewise, denying that there are young men and women who, at the end of the day, risk their lives if they do not conform to a wider family's demands with regards to their love lives, is not going to help these victims.
Finally, the ways of addressing the issue seem to differ between the two countries. In Canada, it seems to be the immigrant communities themselves who address the issue. Many advocates I have heard speaking on the subject express their concern that these murders will increase prejudice against the own community, and also argue that these practices are not inherent in the culture and therefore police should be so concern with "respecting the culture" that they do not take firm action against such crimes. In Sweden, immigrant organizations are quite underfunded and hardly agents to speak of. Instead, it is the government agencies that own the issue, as described by Björling, a former member of a women's centre. The problem with that is that the predominantly ethnic Swedish civil servants have very limited insight into the communities and also lack competence in dealing with the issue. Indeed, the grassroot organizations seems to have been continuously sidelined by Swedish government officials, in a most destructive manner, according to Björling. It's a pattern I recognize.
My experience tells me that the Canadian model probably can be more succesful: it gives ownership to the issue to those closest concerned with it, including the advocates of victims, who are likely to be more knowledgeable about this. It would also avoid stereotyping and racialization. That said, I'm not aware of any study that has actually compared the two models.
*If I were to speculate, I would probably make a Bourdieusian analysis, thinking about cultural capital in fairly closed social network (Habitus) as one important driver. In that sense, the practice can be related to both culture and patriarchy, and distinct from some other patriarchal practices, but not cultural in an ethnic sense, since it seems like a phenomenon that exists within subsets of larger communities.
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