Practice of Karo-Kari

Honour as the bedrock of family life and values is a familiar and well-researched idea in the literature on gender, family and kinship in South Asia. Honour Unmasked, while locating itself within this terrain makes a significant contribution to the field for the following three reasons. First, it is valuable for the site and context of study, as ethnographic work on gender and power in Pakistani society is relatively limited. It is also significant for the complex methodological terrain that the author traverses, owing to her multiple identities as she gathered information and data about honour and violence in Pakistani society, and the inherent difficulties of researching in a context that is otherwise silenced and hidden. Finally, the work is particularly noteworthy for the careful and ethnographically embedded ways in which it draws out connections between the intimate and private spheres of people’s lives and the domain of public life in Pakistani society.