Honour Unmasked: Gender Violence, Law, and Power in Pakistan

by Nafisa Shah

Based on Nafisa Shah's unique insights over years of experience as a journalist, researcher, and administrator, this fascinating study highlights how the state justice system and informal processes of redress are mutually implicated in providing a space for honour-related violence in the Sindh province, known as karo-kari. The author persuasively argues, however, that the label, karo-kari, masks diverse underlining factors such as contest over leadership, resources, marital strategies, and uses the language of honour as a means of legitimating and appropriating power.

The book is a sensitive, scholarly, lucid, and coherently argued treatise on the topic of honour killings. It contains fascinating and richly-detailed ethnography and engages on issues of concern across the anthropology of gender, politics, and law. This landmark study offers a new perspective for understanding and dealing with honour-related violence, demonstrating that honour does not lead to violence but that such violence is strategy ‘masked in honour’.

Genres: Nonfiction

408 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[Sadiq Bhanbhro]

This is an important account of a social phenomenon (I call it social sickness) karo-kari (murders in the name of honour), in Sindh Pakistan. The author argues that it is not honour that causes violence but it is the violence that seeks legitimacy in the system of honour. The author presents well researched evidence to support her argument. This book is an important contribution to anthropology of honour and violence in Pakistan.

[Dr Tanzeel]

Honour unmasked by Nafisa Shah is a comprehensive anthropological study of a tradition that has remained masked for many years.
Being a Sindhi herself the writer has a deep knowledge of the prevalent culture and has wonderfully portraited various aspects of the topic.
It shows how the tradition of Karo Kari is interwoven between social, judicial, ethnographic and cultural lives of Sindh and how various factors play their role in its execution.It is difficult however to blame or nominate any specific factor for this issue.
It was my first book on this topic and the first one by Nafisa Shah.
I will definitely read more on this topic.
Over all Honour unmasked is a good book to read. I rated it four.

[Qasim Khokhar]

It’s a wonderful book on a subject which is Taboo in Indus Valley Countries especially India and Pakistan. The miseries of womenfolk killed like sacrificial goats on the altar of ego, lust for lands or money and then masked in flag of honor saving has been brought into limelight with proper research substantiated by factual data. Perhaps it’s the pioneer book on the subject. The writer having herself served as Mayor of the district which Is one of the most infamous in this ‘Crime in the name of Honor’ and as Federal Minister has very systematically unearthed and unmasked a crime against humanity.

[Fahad Nasir]

Review to come