For December: Snow by Orhan Pamuk

By special request, we are reading something about Turkey. You can listen to an interview of the author by NPR's Steve Inskeep. The main character of the novel is a man named Ka, who is a poet expat living in Germany. He comes back to his hometown in Turkey after a long time away, in part because he is curious about a suicide "epidemic" among local young women. The book touches on politics, religion, the headscarf issue, religious fundamentalism, East and West relations. It is a challenging book - not entirely linear - but should be satisfying to read and we should learn something about Turkey, which is a country we have not read about yet.

For HRW's work on women's human rights in Turkey, see He Loves You, He Beats You.

October: The Honor Code

Type "honor" into a Google images search, and you will see page after page of military medals, soldiers, more medals, more soldiers. There are a few other images sprinkled in there: a kid pledging allegiance, an academic honor code insignia. Honor is about integrity, respect, high esteem. We think of a man of honor, honoring our word, bestowing honors, honoring our parents, our heritage, our nation, or god.

In his most recent book, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, Appiah writes about how moral revolutions happen, and he suggests that there is an important role for honor to play here.

Specifically, honor is important to the processes by which human societies manage to travel from conflicting moral arguments to coherent moral actions. Appiah explores how socially accepted practices such as the duel, slavery, and footbinding came to be unacceptable practices. The basic idea is that opinions and behavior change when the practice is understood to be shameful or to damage the honor of the community-- behavior does not change because the practice is against the law, or because there are good arguments against the practice on moral or practical grounds.

This makes sense, and there are a lot of people who have spent a lot of time researching how shaming, peer pressure, and framing all influence social behavior that is harmful to others (for example, social psychologists have written on genocide in these terms The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence). Appiah suggest some interesting things in his book: for example, that modern cultures (such as ours in the US) tend to discount or underestimate honor- in our own society and in others'. He also goes into a lot of detail about honor.

Honor in Detail
Appiah begins with two simple points: Honor is about respect. The power of honor is partly in the threat of public shame if one fails to live up to standards of honor.

Respect can come from "esteem" for specific achievement: Competitive honor; or respect can come out of "recognition" of a particular quality (power or weakness) for which a person demands certain treatment: Peer honor.

Honor is part of personal networks of responsibility; it shapes collective identity, and the specificity of honor is specific to historical, social, and cultural contexts. Honor is socially defined, and it can change. Appiah suggests that we can use honor to frame morally problematic practices (such as honor killing) as shameful, dishonorable. This can displace an established belief that the practice protects honor, thereby weakening the force of the practice by undermining the most basic purpose of the practice for people.

Appiah does recognize the fact that peer and competitive honor overlap, in that people must work to retain their status in a peer group, just as they must work to attain status through achievement. I think it might be interesting to explore this in more detail. I have a feeling that these two types of honor interact quite a bit. Even within a peer group, certain achievements of men (for which they could earn high regard and competitive honor) would help solidify their class status and therefore their peer honor, while the very same achievements if accomplished by the sisters or mothers of these men would almost certainly not earn the women the same sort of high regard and peer honor, and might not even be recognized as a competitive achievement at all but rather a dishonorable and shameful thing. As long as we accept that men and women should "compete honorably" at different things, the framework seems to work reasonably well, but is this satisfactory? If the recognition of a person's human dignity is contingent on the person abiding by these standards of honor, then the danger is that they can lose the right to that respect if they unsettle those standards. It seems that human rights work still needs to rely on a deeper claim to respect. Even deeply dishonorable people have basic human rights, and although they can be detained, for example, they should not be tortured or detained indefinitely.

Looking at honor and shame as tactical elements is interesting, and important: the Justin, the Director of HRW's office in LA, recently pointed out how useful it is to have a specific and detailed understanding of honor codes and honor systems in human rights work: "in June 2010, we did a report on Female Genital Mutilation in Iraqi Kurdistan. Because Nadya Khalife, the researcher, is a Muslim woman from Lebanon, she had a particular grasp of the situation which led her to understand that women allowed it to be done to their daughters b/c they were convinced it was required by Muslim religion.  Since Nadya understood it is not, she went to the Kurdistan Islamic Scholars Union, the highest religious authority in the region, and persuaded them to issue a fatwa saying that the practice was not required by Islam.  Speaking to the clerics from within their honor system made her the persuasive advocate."

Honor in our Lives
In our discussion, we talked about different examples of honor in our own society:

• familial status (marriage, motherhood)
• professions (professor, doctor)
• associations (gangs, clubs)

We talked about gay marriage and how the respect  that is given to married couples is part of what makes marriage such an important issue: a married relationship and a married person carries a specific social value because it is honorable (we also talked about how marriage is different when we take into account race and class). At the same time, women who have children earn a certain type of feminine honor (and we are talking here about the honor gained from mothering children, not just having them).

Specific professions bestow honor: in a society with some educational and social mobility, this is a way of amending race, class and gender restrictions on how much honor/what type of honor is owed to people because of what class they belong to... but only amending. For example, if you are a woman in a predominantly male field of work, you will gain some access to the respect demanded by the profession but you are likely to have to work harder to "protect" and legitimate your professional honor and will often have to repeatedly "prove" that you deserve that respect. The same goes for class and race... we have specific codes for who automatically qualifies for honorable careers, based on background. Others can work hard and earn a place of honor, but it is often harder.

This brings us to the final example in our discussion: gangs. Gangs, we thought, could reveal a lot in terms of how important honor really is in our modern society. All three of these examples certainly illustrate social patterns in honor that lead us to ask:

Can honor ever be purged of its prejudices of race, class and gender?

The trouble, even discomfort, some of us have with honor as a social tool for change is in the gendered, classed, and raced implications of honor codes. We aren't the only ones who see this link between masculinity and honor: there are entire university courses dedicated to the subject! Appiah suggests that honor can overcome these problems, as society matures and embraces broader definitions of humanity and ethical responsibility...

Just as a thought experiment, what would it take for our society to look at successful diplomatic negotiations for peace with the same deeply motivating sense of communal honor as we look at successful military operations? Or to honor a new curriculum developer for their work on nonviolent conflict resolution in high schools to the degree that we honor inventors of cutting edge military technology? As a side note, on a Radiolab episode on Falling, poet and author Joan Murray talked about about the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel- it was a 63 year old woman- and who did not get the fame and fortune that she expected in part because she did not fit the popular assumptions of what a hero worthy of such admiration and honor should look like. The second person -a strapping young man- got that honor, and the money and fame that goes along with it. How different are we now in terms of our expectations about heroes?

Honor is part of personal networks of responsibility; it shapes collective identity. This is what Appiah calls an "honor world", in that people share a set of honor codes. The centrality of collective values and standards and identity are important, and I think it is very interesting that Appiah is attempting to deal with these issues as they influence morality. It is not so clear, however, that we can draw such a clear line between honor and morality nor between honor and oppressive practices as Appiah seems to suggest. We agreed, though, that honor and shame are often misunderstood, underestimated, and overlooked, and that they are still powerful social forces.

Nobel Peace Prize Awards

How exciting. There are three women this year who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Incredibly, the first woman to be awarded was Wangari Maathai, the environmental activist who did amazing work in Kenya. We just watched a film about her work, which won her the Peace Prize in 2004. The film makes powerful and effortless links between civic duty, participatory democracy, education, grassroots activism, community building, human health, environmental consciousness, human rights, and women's participation at all levels of society. Wangari Maathai, who recently passed away, fought hard and long and wisely for environmental justice.

These women follow in this tradition, fighting peacefully and powerfully for human rights: the first woman elected to the presidency in Africa (Ellen Johnson Sirleaf), the leader of the interfaith women's peace activism that brought an end to civil war in Liberia (Leymah Gbowee), and a pro-democracy activist in Yemen (Tawakul Karman), are the first women to be awarded the prize since it was awarded to Maathai in 2004.

The book club has touched on the work of all of these women except Karman. Human Rights Watch reminds us that the work is not over, and that with the Prize, more dangerous and important work awaits. Here's to the possibility of more women being recognized across the world for their incredible work for peace by taking on important challenges in human rights, justice, women's equality, democracy, health, the environment, education, conflict resolution, the arts... and more.

First Ever Film Night

We watched Taking Root, and the film was really great. It covered so many topics, and was entertaining and inspiring as well. A full review will be be written up and posted here in several days, but just to give you an idea- this film is about a woman who grew up in rural Kenya, became the first East African woman to earn a PhD, became a professor, and chair of her department. She started the Green Belt Movement, encouraging women to plant trees to fight deforestation, soil erosion, food scarcity and fuel scarcity. This simple idea turned into a platform for the formation of women's groups all over the country, which supported confidence, community, democratic practices, civic participation, environmental protection and restoration, political protest, and much more.

Next we will try something else new: author Kwame Anthony Appiah is a philosopher well known for his writing on cosmopolitanism, and his new book is about how the sense of honor plays into what he calls "moral revolutions", in which an ongoing cultural practice shifts from being acceptable to unacceptable.

More soon!

In the News: Women in Somalia

Remember when we read the book by Ann Jones, called War is Not Over When It's Over ? I remember how intense it was to read the accounts of how women were surviving the wars that are fought after open hostilities have officially ended.

We decided to put another book on hold, because it was in many ways very similar: A Thousand Sisters, by Lisa Shannon. The book is the story of one woman awakening to the massive problem of rape and other violence in Congo, and deciding to do something about it. One of our book club members had decided to intern for the summer at Women for Women International, the same organization that Lisa Shannon turned to when she decided to do something to help women in Congo (and, by the way, the Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women also has a memoir that is on our list, and she also has an amazing story).

Well, Lisa Shannon is starting to work in Somalia, and she is already getting the word out-- this PRI story came out this week: Rape Hotline Reaches out to Women in Somalia, and you can read more about the project, which is a partnership with a number of other groups, on the Thousand Sisters blog.

For July: The Child Savers

UPDATE:
At a time when there is an ongoing and massive hunger strike by prisoners protesting conditions in isolation housing in California state prisons, this topic is very current.

Our meeting to discuss The Child Savers was fantastic. This book selection was a bit of a stretch for us- it was far more academic than the books we normally read. However, our book club members rose to the occasion, and we had a great conversation. Some issues that came up in the book were very familiar to us--it's amazing how history repeats itself sometimes-- including:

• a tendency to idealize the past (the good old days, when kids grew up in the fresh country air)

• a tendency to make assumptions about other people based on our own experiences and beliefs

• an inherent danger in reform efforts in terms of unintended consequences

• the long-term struggle of reform and the power of old institutionalized ways

• the power of profiling based on race, class, and gender

• the dissonance of competing ideas that seem to be inherent to incarceration: rehabilitation or punishment; improving character or reforming deviant behavior; protecting juveniles from bad environments or protecting society from criminals

We also found some very important questions coming up: when many people in society are afraid of criminals, and want them kept literally and figuratively on the fringes of society, people do not understand or empathize with criminals, and tend to think that incarcerated criminals 'get what they deserve' when incarcerated, and even assume that people "give up" their rights when the decide to break the law.

And finally: some really great solutions that came up during our discussion (and after):
1) change awareness about basic human rights (these are not changed or lost because of criminality): HRW points this out in their reports on prisoners all over the world: from Burma and Uganda to the USA's high level policies and practices.
2) talk to people, discover what they need and want (not what you think they need and want): HRW does this kind of work, since their researchers actually talk to prisoners in the process of writing their reports. Years ago, the LA WRC send members to interview inmates, and the ongoing review of LWOP surveys is another example.
3) help people find a good way out of cycles of poverty, crime, and violence: great examples are the literacy projects in which prisoners are encouraged to read, creatively express themselves, or earn a degree (sadly, these opportunities are generally lacking); vocational training in skilled, lucrative jobs such as welding or dog training.

Original Post:
For the summer, we are trying something a little new: this book is more academic in style than we usually read- but it is a classic: Rutgers University Press just came out with a 40th Anniversary Expanded Edition!

This is a book that has played a central role in juvenile justice debates in the US. It is also of particular interest to our group because the book approaches the question of juvenile delinquency by looking specifically at several women who played key roles in policy development; because the book itself influenced feminist history and feminist social policy; and because the subject matter of the book will bring us full-circle back to some of the themes of our last book, Girls Like Us. In our reading of Rachel Lloyd's powerful book, we were struck with the lack of support systems for the girls who were caught up in the law enforcement/juvenile justice/incarceration cycle. One of Rachel's key arguments is that these girls are not criminals- they should not be treated like women who break the law, because they are under the age of consent and they are often coerced, tricked, or even brutally forced to participate in the illegal sex industry. However, many law enforcement officials argue that the only thing they can do is to arrest these girls, because it is the only way to get them off the street. There are no social services or programs to support these girls, but jail is a place where the girls are safe from their pimps and can get off drugs (this in itself indicates some incredibly sad truths about the world that these girls live in). But there are serious problems with criminalizing the girls, as Rachel Lloyd points out: the whole world the girls live in needs to change, and punishing the girls is not going to help with that.

Reading about this world, about the challenges faced by these girls, and about the criminal behavior of the men who are pimps-- who are generally from the same neighborhoods, families, and socio-economic backgrounds as the girls are-- prompted us to ask a lot of questions about juvenile justice, about criminalization of adolescents' bad behavior, about how boys and girls experience poverty and violence differently, and about the history of juvenile justice in the US. We know that many young men (and some young women) are getting caught up in the adult prison system through life without parole (LWOP), mostly through the amazing work done on the issue by Elizabeth Calvin in the LA office of HRW. Reading this book will deepen our understanding of the issues.

May 11th: Girls Like Us

We have decided to read a book that is just about to be released (you can also get it on Kindle) by Rachel Lloyd. Her book Girls Like Us is about children who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation. The author is a survivor herself, and also an activist who founded an organization in NYC that helps girls recover from their experiences, and advocates for them in the criminal justice system.  

You do not have to read the book to attend. In fact, we may screen a film produced a few years ago by GEMS.

It looks as if Rachel will read from this book at Cries this year. We may also try to have Rachel come talk to us at a later date.

IntLawGrrls: Remembering Beijing: The Ferraro Factor

IntLawGrrls: Remembering Beijing: The Ferraro Factor

The author of this article was a guest speaker at the book club a while back- thanks to Ellen for this very interesting and inspiring article on Ferraro's contributions to international law on women's human rights!

April: Machete Season

Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak (2006) by Jean Hatzfeld, Susan Sontag and Linda Cloverdale.

For updates on human rights in Rwanda, see HRW's country page. The BBC has a good brief article on 'How the Genocide Happened'. I always find it interesting to look at the government's website as a useful introduction to the current issues in the country, and if you would like to go into more detail, I highly recommend that you check out Frontline coverage-- they have interviews, a chronology, political background, analysis, and more.

Susan Sontag's preface says that this book is one that  "everyone should read . . . [because making] the effort to understand what happened in Rwanda . . . is part of being a moral adult."

We will meet on Tuesday, April 12th to discuss the book.

And the World Changed, edited by Muneeza Shamsie

UPDATED!

Just broadcast! PBS Wideangle podcast on the Taliban and Women in Pakistan -- and how they are targeting women's rights and education. This is by the producer of Children of the Taliban.

100th International Women's Day
March 8th is International Women's Day, and we are celebrating in our own way: by reading an anthology of Pakistani women writers- stories set all around the world.

Interesting facts about Women's Day: in 1909, the Socialist Party of America declared the first National Women's Day, celebrated on February 28th. In 1910, leader of the Women's Office of the German Social Democratic Party Clara Zetkin called for an International Women's Day at the second International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen. 100 women from 17 countries were in attendance. Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland celebrated International Women's Day for the first time on March 25th, 1911. In 1913, Russia celebrated their first International Women's Day. In 1917, Russian women organized a strike, based on the 2 million Russian solders who died in the war, calling for 'bread and peace', and the movement ended up forcing the Czar to abdicate, and women got the right to vote!

HRW's Women's Rights Division
In honor of International Women's Day and as part of their 20th anniversary of the Women's Rights Division, HRW released a beautiful new webpage hub, which includes audio clips and a timeline:
Women's Rights Division

The following is the message that the WRD sent out on International Women's Day, 2011:
Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day and there is still much that we must do to ensure that women and girls can enjoy their human rights:
· Women still constitute the majority of those who are illiterate – two thirds of adults who cannot read and write are women, and this figure has not changed much over the last 20 years;
· Women workers continue to be clustered in the most insecure forms of work, including part time, casual and informal employment.  They earn less than men, and bear the burden of (largely) unpaid domestic work and childcare;
· Customary and statutory laws still limit women’s access to, and ownership of, land and other economic resources in Africa and Asia and consequently, women are over-represented amongst the poor;
· Violence against women, in its many manifestations, remains one of the most widespread and pervasive violations of human rights.

Despite this, there are many reasons to celebrate today and these include the establishment of UN Women (an achievement that represents several years of advocacy by women’s rights activists), women in the Middle East and North Africa taking their rightful places in demonstrations and protests to demand their human rights, the slow reduction of female genital mutilation, the increased numbers of women who are receiving ante natal care, and the diminishing gender gap in the enrollment of girls in primary education.  As Michele Bachelet said last Thursday night at the official launch of UN Women, “we have hope”.

Cries From the Heart, May 9th, 2011
Mark your calendars!
This is an evening of prose, poetry and performance at the Broad in Santa Monica.
For one night only, star performers will come together with Human Rights Watch, bringing to life the stories of Ordinary Heros. A cocktail reception precedes the performance, and a dessert and coffee reception concludes the evening.

We are seeking sponsors at levels from $1,000 - $10,000
Individual tickets are $100- $150

More information coming soon. Please start preparing a list of possible sponsors you could ask to support this important event!

And the World Changed
What a fantastic, passionate, committed group! We started out the evening talking about the new article posted by a fellow female journalist about CBS/60 minutes journalist Lara Logan, who experienced violent assault and rape while reporting on the protests in Tahrir Square, Egypt. Along with the well-written article in the New York Times (see the comments to this post), Amanda Marcotte's article for The Guardian provides a very clear summary and analysis, as well as a broadly representative set of links. Frustrating that women are still forced to make such difficult decisions about whether they should report gender-based violence on the job or just keep quiet, because if they speak up, they will face character assassination, claims that they 'asked for it', that they are lying for personal gain, and that men should do those jobs just to avoid such messy situations. This is an age-old dilemma, however, and one of many challenging, messy, murky life decisions that women often face. And this leads us to the discussion of the book! 

As an anthology, this book presented us with a very wide-reaching and complex view of Pakistani women's worlds. One theme that we came to notice was the complexity of women's responsibilities, allegiances, cultural and religious backgrounds, priorities and goals. Sometimes, when thinking about human rights work, it is easy to fall into a pretty black-and-white view of things: right and wrong, abuser and victim, justice and truth... but life is often not so obvious. Victims become aggressors; family members retain oppressive expectations along with providing abiding love and support; past violence continues to shape everyday meaning even for those who were not yet born when the conflict "ended"...

And the stories reminded us that the violence of colonial rule, and of Partition seem to be key elements of individual and familial identity, and daily life, even generations later. There were clear echoes in the claims of War is Not Over When It's Over . Also of the variety of women's lived experiences, the rich cultural, educational, political and artistic heritage of Pakistani women, of their global and cosmopolitan as well as parochial and conservative selves, of the importance of class and race in women's experience, and of how hard it was to generalize -- once we read these individuals' voices.

Recurring questions also arose: of the nature of the humanity of human rights abusers (how can they do such violence); of the utility and moral appropriateness of trying to understand why human rights abusers do what they do (how to explain and not excuse); of relativism and culture wars (HRW link); of impressing our ideas of what should be done or standing back; of how to define 'help' and 'solidarity' when we cannot understand the people we reach out to; and of idealism and anger at injustice, frustration with the intransigence of oppression, impatience with the slowness of change, and the danger of accepting people's suffering because we want to be understanding and patient. In other words, we got to the philosophical and ethical roots of human right work!

This anthology is available from the Feminist Press, as well as your more standard online booksellers, and comes highly recommended. Each author is introduced, and the 25 different stories cover a lot of topical ground. If you are interested in themes of social and cultural change, immigration, East-meets-West issues, and the challenging of stereotypes (gender, race, and class), you will be bound to find something here that is interesting.

In terms of background, we all know that Pakistan is important to the foreign policy of the U.S., particularly in the context of the ongoing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pakistan is a nuclear power, and that makes it a really important player in the region. To take a look at the recent human rights issues in Pakistan, see HRW's website.

The BBC has a very useful and concise introduction to Pakistan.

Update for: It's Not Over

For those of you still interested in the very lively discussion we had on Ann Jones' book on women and war, the latest Tomgram includes an article by Ann Jones about Afghanistan, women's participation in politics, and the challenges of applying United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. It is worth a read.

If you don't want to read, but you would like to listen.... you are in luck! An interview with Ann Jones is available.