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Provocation And Culture Analysis

Decent Essays

Fournier Pascale, Pascal Mcdougall, and Anna R. Dekker. 2012. Dishonour, Provocation and Culture: Through the Beholder's Eye? Canadian Criminal Law Review. 16(2): 161-193. This article examined how socio-legal hybridity manifests itself in the nation of honour in law, whilst sketching a definition and history of honour crimes and their variations in both the “East” and “West”. The article aimed to outline how honour is found intertwined with many other emotions in violent crimes internationally, and not just in the East, a common perspective of cultural otherness surrounding these crimes. The article further investigated Canadian courts and their translation of honour crimes within a framework of existing legal tools, with special reference …show more content…

The provocation defence has at times sanctioned deep cultural notions of marital unity and individual male honour. The paper affirmed that although forms that femicides take in different parts of the globe cannot be perfectly equated, the idea that the West does not have honour-based murders and does not support them whatsoever are false assumptions. In the final part of this article, the reception and legal treatment of honour crimes and femicide in Canada was assessed. Data were collected from a series of Canadian cases of intimate femicide in which male defendants (husbands, brothers, or fathers) raised the provocation defence. The sample included 56 cases, sorted by ethnic background of the defendants and the success or failure of the defence, and spanned the period from January 1990 to January 2010. Only cases which were appealed to provincial courts of appeals or to the Supreme Court of Canada were used. Though a low success rate for use of the defence was found for both categories of defendants – Western and …show more content…

The study found that instead of artificial binaries, there seemed to be a “passion/honour continuum.” Though honour crimes present unique sociological characteristics which must be acknowledged for effective prevention policies to be created, it was asserted that recognizing the distinctness of Eastern honour violence should not belittle other forms of abuse against women occurring internationally, including those taking place in the West. Future research was suggested in order to further dissect the correlation between success of provocation the defence and ethnicity. The provocation defence and its potential abolishment is something that went beyond the scope of this article and would require further analysis and an examination of the costs and benefits of the defence. Though a brief genealogy section was provided, future research would be needed to trace the historical roots of honour crimes on a case-by-case basis that considers the complexities of legal system globalization. The paper maintained that intimate passion crimes are a particularly important locus of public policy and gender equality concerns. Results and conclusions of this paper

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