Women on the Margins of Life and Death

The issue of honour crime is much debated in
contemporary Turkey as well as in the Middle East.
Honour crime can be perceived as the murder of a
woman by one of her family members in the name of redeeming honour of the family. I intend to bring a
multidimensional approach towards the issue of honor
crime to show the interplay between different
discourses on women and family. By using Foucauldian
conceptualization of governmentality, I analyse the
operation of honour at state and governmental levels
in order to construct a portrayal of the cases of
honour killings on historical and theoretical axis.
Firstly, my framework provides a path for
understanding the process of how the issue of honour
crime becomes the object of knowledge and how
women s bodies appear as the site of discussions,
contestations and negotiations. The second is how
issues of tradition and nationalism come together in
the recent discussions of honour crime. In general,
this study opens a new path for anyone, who is
interested in social sciences and specifically
gender studies, and who wants to grasp the
interaction between state politics and sexual
violence.

Autorentext
Hayrunnisa Goksel, hold an M.A. degree in Sociology and Social Anthropology Department from Central European University, Budapest.Undergraduate Education: Studied Sociology and History at Bogazici University, Istanbul.

Klappentext
The issue of honour crime is much debated in contemporary Turkey as well as in the Middle East. Honour crime can be perceived as the murder of a woman by one of her family members in the name of 'redeeming honour of the family.' I intend to bring a multidimensional approach towards the issue of honor crime to show the interplay between different discourses on women and family. By using Foucauldian conceptualization of governmentality, I analyse the operation of honour at state and governmental levels in order to construct a portrayal of the cases of honour killings on historical and theoretical axis. Firstly, my framework provides a path for understanding the process of how the issue of honour crime becomes the object of knowledge and how women's bodies appear as the site of discussions, contestations and negotiations. The second is how issues of tradition and nationalism come together in the recent discussions of honour crime. In general, this study opens a new path for anyone, who is interested in social sciences and specifically gender studies, and who wants to grasp the interaction between state politics and sexual violence.