Shame and honour: The violence of gendered norms under conditions of global crisis

SynopsisSanti Rozario (1992)) creatively and subtly explores shame and honour to understand village life in Doria, Bangladesh. Moving beyond descriptive accounts and causal explanations, she examines the values that guide village norms and the political economy that constitutes their implementation. In this paper, I contribute to the effort to understand gendered interpretations of normative practice by highlighting the institutional and regulatory regimes that constitute and legitimate forms of rule that appeal to idioms of shame and honour, fear, and humiliation. Engaging a moral regulation analytic of overlapping civil, religious and customary norms and expectations, I suggest that sanctions for noncompliance can reveal women's agentic capacities in decisions about suicide.