New Book: Honor and Violence against Women in Iraqi Kurdistan

14 10 2013

By Minoo Alinia

Palgrave, 2013.

ISBN: 978-1-137-36700-6, ISBN10: 1-137-36700-8

Examining violence against women in the name of honor in Iraqi Kurdistan, this study renders a unique contribution by offering an intersectional perspective. Minoo Alinia reveals the links between destructive, state-sanctioned honor discourse and notions of manhood as they are shaped by a resistance culture dedicated to the struggle against ethnic oppression. Supplying socioeconomic, historical, and political contexts, this book challenges explanations rooted in ideas of individual or cultural pathology. It demonstrates that, in Iraqi Kurdistan, women’s bodies have become the battleground for clashes between different masculinities, identity politics, and political projects.

Table of Contents

1. Locating the Book  2. Framing the Historical and Political Context of Oppression and Resistance in Iraqi Kurdistan  3. Intersecting Oppression and the Multiplex of Violence against Women  4. Policing Patriarchy: Honour, Violence, and Manhood 5. Women Opposing Violence: Room for Resistance and Spaces of Empowerment  6. Forced or Arranged Marriage and Women’s Responses 7. Suicide as Protest 8. Concluding Remarks

Minoo Alinia is a Researcher at Hugo Valentin Centre, Uppsala University, Sweden and a teacher at Uppsala University’s National Centre for Studies of Men’s Violence Against Women. She received her PhD in Sociology from Goteborg University, Sweden.