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To study the concept of honor in Turkish everyday life discourses. Many surveys have focused on namus, thus referring to honor killings, the mechanism of violence perpetrated against women. The reason given for such killings, often seen as barbaric and the result of criminal urges, is that some men feel compelled to restore what they see as family honor, soiled by the actions of their female relatives. However, these studies avoid another key aspect of honor: namely the plurality of its meanings as honor in Turkey may also be translated both as şeref and onur.

To begin to understand honor in all its forms, I conducted interviews with 100 Turkish men and women ages 20–27, all university students or graduates, from the Istanbul area. I also consulted the current official and Ottoman dictionaries to understand the history of word use.

Among the young adults interviewed “honor-virtue” (i.e., namus) is a debated topic. It may be analyzed at both theoretical and geographic levels and has the connotations of otherness and non-modernity. Namus co-exists with şeref (citizen honor) and onur (dignity).

Redefining the terms of honor could temper tensions between local/global, urban/countryside, modern/traditional, woman/man, and invisible frontier between namus and şeref worldviews. Advocating şeref and focusing on a broader definition of namus may encourage individuals to find their places in society. By focusing on national moral values, any individual in the country may participate in keeping the social order regardless of gender, age, or geographic location.

Although this chapter situates all violence against women as a human rights issue, it emphasises ‘culturalised’ forms of this violence, such as honour-based violence/abuse, forced marriage and female genital mutilation. The authors draw upon their respective research to highlight how these forms of gendered violence have been subjected to a process of culturalisation. The chapter shows that while this process has raised awareness of previously under-researched forms of abuse and highlighted some of the contextual differences between women’s experiences of violence more broadly, its overemphasis on culture and cultural pathology has resulted in policy and legislative responses that do not always benefit victims. Ultimately, this chapter aims to problematise ‘culturalised’ understandings of violence in diverse communities and to show how current policy, legislative and support responses fail to adequately address the intersectional needs of black and minority ethnic victims/survivors.¹

What do crime victims want? The answer suggested by Alexandre Dumas’ iconic character Edmund Dantés in The Count of Monte Cristo suggests that victims may want retribution, not revenge. Victims may seek more than restored honor or personal restitution. They may long for justice to prevail as an affirmation that the world still makes sense. Yet, Dumas also reminds us through the novel that human justice is only human and cannot provide this kind of cosmic guarantee. From this perspective, it is revenge, not retribution that looks more measured and more humane.

Anatomy of a Murder, a beloved, highly influential, seemingly liberal 1959 classic law-film seems to appropriate some of the fading western genre’s features and social functions, intertwining the professional-plot western formula with a hero-lawyer variation on the classic western hero character, America’s 19th century archetypal True Man. In so doing, Anatomy revives the western genre’s honor code, embracing it into the hero-lawyer law-film. Concurrently, it accommodates the development of cinematic imagery of the emerging, professional elite groups, offering the public the notion of the professional super-lawyer, integrating legal professionalism with natural justice. In the course of establishing its Herculean lawyer, the film constitutes its female protagonist as a potential threat, subjecting her to a cinematic judgment of her sexual character and reinforcing the honor-based notion of woman’s sexual-guilt.

This study will look at the relationship between norms on gender equality on the one hand and the level of gender equality in the political and socioeconomic sphere, the presence or absence of armed conflict, and general peacefulness on the other.

Data on gender equality norms from the World Values Surveys, political and socioeconomic gender equality from the Global Gender Gap Index, armed conflict from the Uppsala Conflict Data Base, and general peacefulness from the Global Peace Index are analyzed in a bivariate correlation.

The results show a significant association between norms on and attitudes toward gender equality and levels of political and socioeconomic gender equality, absence or presence of armed conflict, and level of general peacefulness.

There is no data base on norms on and attitudes toward the use of violence which is why only levels of violence are included in the study.

The study shows that governments, aid agencies, NGOs and others working on conflict prevention and peace building need to focus on improving gender equality in order to achieve a sustainable decrease in conflict levels and an improvement in general levels of peacefulness.

This study is original in that it looks at norms on gender equality on the individual level on the one hand and actual levels of both gender equality and violence in the society, including armed conflict on the other.

India has a distinct family hierarchy and a vertical collectivistic culture. Indian traditional cultural norms discourage young adults from having romantic or sexual relationships before marriage. Romantic liaisons and marriages are fiercely opposed outside the caste and social network. Despite this cultural practice, research in the last decade demonstrated that more young adults in India engage in premarital romantic relationships and prefer a marriage of choice. However, they strongly wish their parents to approve of their partner and arrange their marriage. This increasing trend of love-cum-arranged marriages could be considered how Indian culture adapts to the demands of modernization strongly impelled by globalization. This chapter discusses the dynamics of change in the romantic and marital agency among young adults in India. First, the authors provide a brief historical introduction to the Indian marital system. Then, the authors discuss the changing cultural dimensions that promote marital choice and independence in partner selection (e.g., filial piety). Further, the authors provide an overview of the trends in premarital romantic relationships in India. In addition, the authors discuss the distress and conflict in Indian families due to the increasing premarital romantic and sexual relationships among Indian youth, as evidenced by eloped marriages, forced marriages, and honor killings.

This introduction sets forth the main themes of Part B of the two-part volume, reviews the methods employed by the contributors, and demonstrates the relationships among these chapters and those of Part A.

The chapters in the volume exemplify current research approaches to the subject matter: gender-based violence. The introduction identifies trends and themes.

Worldwide attention is being drawn to examples and forms of gender-based violence. These are currently major topics in the media, both factual and fictional. Public policies are under discussion and programs to deal with them are developing. However, because the discussions and the programs are often not research-based or intersectionally inclusive, gender-based violence persists and victims are sometimes ignored, blamed, or subjected to further violence.

The chapter serves as an overall introduction to the volume and the subject matter more generally.