Family Honour and Social Time

Abstract

Violence is a dynamic event, not a static state. The cause of violence, therefore, cannot lie in static variables such as individual propensities (eg self-control) or aggregate properties (eg inequality). But what changes cause violence? A new theory developed by Donald Black traces violent acts to movements of social time. Social time moves when actors' statuses rise or fall (vertical time), when relationships increase or decrease in intimacy (relational time), and when cultural diversity expands or contracts (cultural time). The present paper applies the new theory to one particular type of violence – that committed in the name of family honour. Typically perpetrated by men against their female relatives, family honour violence is triggered by several movements of social time, but particularly vertical time, in the form of challenges from below by women seeking to make independent lifestyle decisions.