Honor and the Political Economy of Marriage

'Honor' is used as a justification for violence perpetrated against women and girls considered to have violated social taboos related to sexual behavior. Several 'honor'-based murders of Kurdish women, such as Fadime Sahindal, Banaz Mahmod and Du'a Khalil Aswad, and campaigns against 'honor'-based violence by Kurdish feminists have drawn international attention to this phenomenon within Kurdish communities.Honor and the Political Economy of Marriage provides a description of honor -based violence that focuses upon the structure of the family rather than the perpetrator s culture. The author, Joanne Payton, argues that within societies primarily organized by familial and marital connections, women s honor is a form of symbolic capital within a political economy in which marriage organizes intergroup connections.Drawing on statistical analysis of original data contextualized with historical and anthropological readings, Payton explores forms of marriage and their relationship to honor , sketching changing norms around the familial control of women from agrarian/pastoral roots to the contemporary era.