Culture of Honor

Introduction In recent years, looking for an answer to the question what is behind the rise of political Islam and the terrorist attacks by the hand of a few of its advocates, a number of authors have put forward the view that some Muslims feel that their culture is superior, but at the same time fear that in today's world their way of life is threatened and that their honor is at stake. Presumably, the resulting feelings of humiliation are among the causes of the terrorist attacks we have witnessed in recent years.

Ky artikull eksploron mundësinë dhe interesin për të analizuar historisë semantike të termave të fjalorit të institucioneve që shërbejnë për të shprehur nocionet e nderit dhe besimit. Kjo analizë mundëson një qasje krahasuese në perspektivën e ndërthurur të antropologjisë historike dhe gjuhësore që mund të jetë themelore për të kuptuar raportet ndërmjet vlerave sociale të moralit dhe të fesë. Për të emërtuar fenë dhe besimin, shqiptarët përdorin terma që kanë të njëjtin trung të përbashkët indoeuropian me termat e latinishtes dhe të greqishtes së vjetër. Por edhe fjalë të tjera, që tregojnë vlerat morale të nderit, si betimi dhe fjala e dhënë, si edhe strategjitë për aleanca martesore, mbeten të lidhura me të njëjtat burime në shqip. Në këtë mënyrë, termat e kësaj fushe leksikore tregojnë nocione që janë të rëndësishme për të kuptuar funksionimin e grupit social, familjar e farefisnor, si edhe atë të gjithë shoqërisë. Kështu bëhet e mundur të kuptohet më mirë shprehja e këtij nocioni themelor që mbështetet jo vetëm mbi një kod nderi tepër të rreptë, por edhe mbi struktura farefisnore shumë të forta, mbi përparësinë e fisit e të lidhjeve të gjakut dhe që përfshijnë përgjegjësinë kolektive në mekanizmat komplekse të sistemeve të aleancave dhe hakmarrjeve. Paralelisht, për të kuptuar vlerat morale si edhe natyrën e fesë tek shqiptarët, nuk duhet të nisemi nga subjektiviteti i një besimi apo objektiviteti i një dijeje, por nga marrëdhënia që parimet për nderin dhe praktikat sociale vendosin midis njerëzve. Besimi dhe feja janë thjesht virtyte të nderit, pesha e besimit në fjalën e dhënë.

Bu makalenin amacı namus kültürlerinde özellikle kadın üzerinden tanımlanan namus kavramına odaklanarak namus, namus adına kadına uygulanan şiddet ve namus cinayetleri hakkında yapılan çalışmaları derlemektir. Bu bağlamda, öncelikle namus kavramının farklı kültürlerdeki anlamına değinilmekte ve sonrasında namus kültürlerinde ne anlama geldiği tartışılmaktadır. Namus kültürlerinde geleneksel roller ele alınarak, kadınların ve erkeklerin farklı rol ve sorumluluklarının namus ile ilişkisinden bahsedilmektedir. Namus kelimesinin Türkiye'de nasıl algılandığı üzerinde durulmakta ve konuyla ilişkili sosyal psikolojik değişkenler ele alınmaktadır. İlk olarak, kadına yönelik tutumların açıklanmasında önemle üzerinde durulan ve birbirleri ile bağlantılı olan cinsiyetçilik, ataerkillik, erkeksilik ve kadınsılık değişkenlerinin namus algısı ve namus suçları üzerindeki etkisi açıklanmaktadır. Dindarlığın ve özellikle Müslümanlığın namus ile ilişkisi hakkında yapılan araştırmalar sunulmaktadır. Ardından, sosyo-ekonomik düzey ve benlik değerini korumanın namus ile ilişkisini inceleyen araştırmalara değinilmektedir. Ayrıca, namus, hakaret etme ve duygu durum arasındaki ilişki üzerinde durularak, namusun bireylerin sosyal imajıyla doğrudan bağlantılı olduğu, bu imaja yönelik bir tehdidin kızgınlık ve utanca neden olarak bireyleri şiddete yöneltebileceğine değinen çalışmalar sunulmaktadır. Sonrasında, namus suçları ve namus cinayetlerine odaklanılmaktadır. Tüm dünyada ve Türkiye'de, kadınların namussuz olarak değerlendirilen çeşitli davranışlarından dolayı şiddete maruz kalmasını ve öldürülmesini konu alan yayınlara değinilmektedir. Son olarak, namus cinayeti işleyen kişilerin toplum tarafından nasıl algılandığı ve namus cinayeti işleyenlerin ne tür bir duygu durumda bulundukları ile ilgili araştırma sonuçları paylaşılarak genel bir sonuç ve öneriler bölümü sunulmaktadır.

Although long-established military virtues, such as honor, courage and loyalty, are what most armed forces today still use as guiding principles in an effort to enhance the moral behavior of soldiers, much depends on whether the military virtues adhered to by these militaries suit a particular mission or military operation. Clearly, the beneficiaries of these military virtues are the soldiers themselves, fellow-soldiers, and military organizations, yet there is little that regulates the behavior of soldiers towards civilian populations. As a result, troops trained for combat in today's missions sometimes experience difficulty in adjusting to the less aggressive ways of working needed to win the hearts and minds of local populations after major combat is over. It can be argued that today's missions call for virtues that are more inclusive than the traditional ones, which are mainly about enhancing military effectiveness, but a convincing case can be made that a lot can already be won by interpreting these traditional virtues in different ways.

This volume offers an integrated approach to the main traditional virtues, exploring their possible relevance and proposing new ways of interpretation that are more in line with the military tasks of the 21st century.

Catalina de Erauso was born in 1585 to a Basque noble family who deposited her in a convent when she was four.  Unlike many women of her era, she embarked on a voyage of self-definition that would propel her beyond the limits of the dominant culture of seventeenth-century Spain and to “where the world ends,” colonial Peru.  Catalina assumed the role of a male and succeeded in so many ways for so long, fooling so many. Her story also lived in the novedades (bits of news and rumors, often indistinguishable) common in the contemporary Iberian world.  Her adventures were even made into a play one year after she sent her autobiographical manuscript to Madrid for publication in 1625.  Her memoirs are a swashbuckling tale set in the Spanish Empire during the Age of Conquest. They are also rich in material for those seeking insight into identity, gender roles, and crossing gender divides. Her memoirs have been especially well-considered by authors writing about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues.
Catalina’s story shows that she learned from the culture around her, from which also she sought acceptance. She had had little direct exposure to the culture she had entered into so this process would not have taken place overnight. First as a teenager and then as a man, she used the lessons she learned to identify herself both to others and to herself. She accepted the seventeenth-century Spanish Empire’s gendered and racialized hierarchy and represented herself in the terms in which she understood it. Clothing was critical because it “made the man” and hid biological traits that differentiated her from other men. However, there was more to being perceived as a male than assumed genitalia – behavior was critical. Insecurities pushed her to exaggerate learned gender and racial behaviors as she strove to gain acceptance from others and simultaneously herself. Catalina’s understanding of what correct behavior was also grew more defined and complex as she traveled.
The behavioral patterns in her memoirs are indicative of Catalina’s understanding of Spanish masculinity and desire to be accepted in these terms. Throughout the course of her life she meets with “performance success.” A “performance success” is to be understood as when her audience (the public she was exposed to in any given moment) accepted the behaviors that she performed. She consistently succeeded in performances, but success must have been a fleeting feeling because she regularly sought new audiences to validate her through her wide-ranging journeys (see Figure 1). She did not have to prove her racial heritage, it was readily apparent, though she did display behaviors she felt were appropriate to it. Catalina strove for, achieved, and finally lived the rest of her life as a virile, pureblood, male Spaniard.

Die interdisziplinäre Forschung gehörte lange schon zu den „Steckenpferden“ des Jubilars Rolf Gundlach - zuletzt verstärkt auf dem Feld interdisziplinärer historischer Hof- und Residenzenforschung. Dies aufgreifend konzentriert sich der Beitrag auf den Kern des Phänomens „Hof“, den „kommunikativen Strukturen“ (Winterling) an einem Königshof, unter denen der Gunst des Herrschers die zentrale gesellschaftliche Bedeutung zukommt. In diesem Rahmen wird ein Aspekt pharaonischer Gunst aufgezeigt, der in eine kosmische Dimension dieses gesellschaftsregulierenden Systems weist.
Nach einführenden Bemerkungen zum altägyptischen Staat und der Rolle des Königs darin, werden ausgehend vom frühramessidischen Quellenmaterial der Beamte und sein Anteil bei der Verwirklichung von Maat betrachtet, um abschließend seine Motivation hierfür durch die Gunst des Königs zu beleuchten.
Fazit: Der Pharao ist zuständig für die Verwirklichung und Festsetzung der Maat, d.h. er setzt mit den durch ihn vorgegebenen Normen fest, was Maat ist.
Er verwirklicht Maat aber nicht allein. Der im Idealfall durch königliche Gunst angespornte Beamte hat direkten Anteil an Verwirklichung von Maat, indem er „Maat sagt und tut“. Der König kann daraufhin die ursprünglich gottgegebene Ordnung wiederum den Göttern gegenüber nachweisen und diesen in Form des Maatopfers zuführen. Dem gesellschaftsregulierenden System der königlichen Gunst kommt als Impuls für die Motivation des Günstlings zur Maatverwirklichung entscheidende Bedeutung zu; ein Faktum, das hier als „kosmische Dimension der Gunst“ bezeichnet wird. Als solches dient es dem immerwährenden Streben nach dem Gelingen des „Weltprozesses“ (ASSMANN, Heil und Herrschaft, 203) einer Inganghaltung bedürftigen Welt.

This piece was published in the scientific journal Sexuality and Culture in 2015 and illustrates some central aspects of one of my PhD research projects. In the article I explore the charged discourse around the hymen and discuss possible different purposes served by the upholding of the concept. I mirror Swedish sexual policy against the narratives of teenage informants who need to maneuver within a normative field where the main dilemma is that the collective asserts power over the individual in matters concerning relationships and sexuality, and where the hymen plays not only a factual role but also a symbolic one.

Although little analyzed, the concept of divine honor or glory (kavod shamayim) has been central to formulations of classical Jewish thought and ethics. In the aftermath of the 1994 Hebron massacre, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg deployed the concept of divine honor as a religious sanction for murder. His tract Barukh Ha-Gever treats attrocity as a mystical technique for the attainment of unmediated, ecstatic, and personal experience of the divine. This article examines the genealogy of Ginsburg's anarchic ideology, which it contrasts with that of Rabbi Abraham Issac Kook and the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, two important twentieth-century Jewish thinkers for whom divine honor was also central, but whose vision for that honor was antithetical to the quest for unmediated divine experience, or to acts that violate religious law and human dignity. This article assays a phenomenology of divine honor and its relationship to violence in modern times. Don Seeman is an assistant professor of religion and Jewish studies at

This article not only offers a comprehensive survey of the terms with which Frisians insulted each other in late medieval urban Frisia but also analyses the where, when, who and why of acts of insult: preferably in public places, such as markets, churches (!), and taverns, where many people could be witness, insulters and insulted being both rich and poor, man and woman. Sometimes such insults adopted a ritual aspect when a group of people marched in procession to the house of the victim, beating on the door and front wall and/or pelting these with stones.

In this history of the development of ideas of honor in Western philosophy, Peter Olsthoorn examines what honor is, how its meaning has changed, and whether it can still be of use. Political and moral philosophers from Cicero to John Stuart Mill thought that a sense of honor and concern for our reputation could help us to determine the proper thing to do, and just as important, provide us with the much-needed motive to do it. Today, outside of the military and some other pockets of resistance, the notion of honor has become seriously out of date, while the term itself has almost disappeared from our moral language. Most of us think that people ought to do what is right based on a love for jus­tice rather than from a concern with how we are perceived by others. Wide-ranging and accessible, the book explores the role of honor in not only philosophy but also literature and war to make the case that honor can still play an important role in contemporary life.

Review
CHOICE Choice Reviews July 2015. Olsthoorn (Netherlands Defense Academy) offers a timely philosophical examination of honor.  He traces the intellectual history of honor and its transformation throughout philosophical and political thought in the West.  He considers both honor generally and its various manifestations, such as the notion of honor among individuals, groups, and states.  The book reveals important insights about comparative concepts such as integrity, respect, and humiliation.  Though fewer people in today's world are concerned with honor in their everyday lives than in the past, the topic remains significant and continues to resonate in contemporary times in a variety of ways (as evidenced, for instance, by widespread interest in the phenomenon called "honor killing").  The book features an introduction, a conclusion, and five full-length chapters.  Although the background framework is primarily philosophical, the scope of the book is deeply interdisciplinary, drawing from political science, literature, military ethics, and related areas. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty.

--B. Romaya, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Published in: Robert W. Jensen and Eugene Korn editors, Swords into Plowshares:  Reflections on Religion and Violence (Essays from the Institute for Theological Inquiry).  Center for Jewish and Christian Understanding and Cooperation (Kindle Edition 2014).


ABSTRACT


 
Don Seeman, the author of the chapter

“Violence, Divine Honor and the State,” has published a number

of studies touching on the relationship between the idea of divine honor and religious violence in different Jewish intellectual settings and he has also written as an anthropologist on the relationship between honor and political violence in modern Israel. Here, for the first time, he offers a synthetic reading that attempts to account for the close relationship between the anthropological and theological registers and to account in a systematic way for differences in approach between Jewish thinkers as diverse as Maimonides, R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, Rav Kook, Moses Mendelssohn and Emmanuel Levinas. He begins with a phenomenological critique of the way honor and shame have been treated in recent

social science literature. He argues that honor and shame are “bridge concepts” that are applied in

classical conceptions to human beings as well as to God and that they therefore help to condition theological as well as political or anthropological conceptions of ethics and violence. After brief analyses of key biblical and rabbinic texts, Seeman argues that Jewish approaches to divine honor and violence can be divided into three dominant paradigms: vernacular, mystical and philosophical. The vernacular paradigm treats divine honor in anthropomorphic terms that are indistinguishable from those used to explain human social relations and recourse to violence. The mystical or kabbalistic paradigm builds, in a sense, on this robust vernacular sensibility, but adds a distinctive and subtle metaphysics of divine presence. This is the context in which the utter rejection of the vernacular sensibility by philosophical Judaism

—

exemplified by Maimonides and by modern thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn

—

takes on such importance. Seeman argues that the very shape of Jewish modernity has been conditioned by arguments over the nature of divine honor and by the political ramifications of those differences. The rejection of vernacular divine honor is a central theme of

Mendelssohn’s



Jerusalem

to which contemporary Jews are still implicitly or explicitly responding. We cannot understand the complex relationships between religion, violence and the state without a much better understanding of these dynamics.


"

Discussing the matter of dueling of honour a question always arises, is the duel of honour just another form of ritualized murder, an instrument to kill a person with full acceptance of the society, or is there something more about the duel of honour. Analyzing available historical sources and comparing different regulations from Polish codices of honour, the duel of honour will be scrutinized in search of its aim, of its grist, of its role in the honourable conduct. The competences demanded from a gentleman by the honour codices will be reconstructed answering the question – is the duel of honour a demonstration of certain com-petences or just barretry?

Just War Theory (JWT) replaced an older "warrior code," an approach to war that remains poorly understood and dismissively treated in the philosophical literature. This paper builds on recent work on honor to address these deficiencies. By providing a clear, systematic exposition of "Honor War Theory" (HWT), we can make sense of paradigm instances of warrior psychology and behavior, and understand the warrior code as the martial expression of a broader honor-based ethos that conceives of obligation in terms of fair competition for prestige. Far from being a romantic and outmoded approach to war, HWT accounts for current conflicts and predicts moral intuitions that JWT either rejects or cannot comfortably accommodate. So although it is not recommended as a replacement for JWT, there is good reason think that a fully mature, realistic, and yet properly normative theory of war ethics will incorporate a variety of insights from HWT.

RESUMEN El artículo es una reflexión sobre cuál fue el papel de los agentes del honor (reyes de armas, informantes de las Órdenes Militares y testigos) a la hora de elaborar una idea general sobre el problema del conocimiento y de la reputación en Castilla durante el siglo XVII. Se analizan y ponen en relación los diferentes modos de articular el conocimiento en los procesos de ennoblecimiento y se busca problematizarlos. ABSTRACT This article attempts to reflect on what was the role of agents of honor (heralds, informants and witnesses military orders) when developing an overview of the problem of knowledge and reputation in Castilla during the seventeenth century. They are analyzed ways of articulating knowledge in textile finishing processes and seeks to discuss them.

The culture of honor as the best explanation for the high rates of criminal homicide in Pernambuco: A comparative study with 160 convicts and non-convicts
Monica G. T. Campello de Souza, Bruno Campello de Souza, Wofgang Bilsky, & Antonio Roazzi
Abstract: The present work aimed to investigate the propensity towards criminal homicide using a broad approach, encompassing theories based on socioeconomic frustration, decision-making processes, emotional attachment, testosterone, moral development, moral values, and the culture of honor. A total of 160 adult Brazilian men completed a questionnaire, various psychological tests, and right-hand digit ratio measurements. The findings discarded all theories tested, except the culture of honor. It is concluded that, in the region, public policies for the reduction of the rate of homicides must be specific to that crime and address cultural issues regarding honor and moral satisfaction.

Cet article explore essentiellement l’intérêt et l’éventualité de procéder à des analyses d’histoire sémantique des termes du vocabulaire des institutions qui servent à exprimer les notions d’honneur et de croyance. Cette analyse permet notamment d’entreprendre une approche comparative dans la perspective croisée de l’anthropologie historique et linguistique qui peut s’avérer cruciale pour comprendre les valeurs sociales de la morale et de la religion. Pour désigner la religion aussi bien que la croyance les Albanais utilisent des termes qui tirent leur origine dans le même fond commun indo-européen avec les termes latins ou grecs anciens équivalents. Mais à la même souche d’autres mots restent attachés en albanais, qui désignent les valeurs morales de l’honneur comme le serment et la parole donnée aussi bien que les stratégies d’alliance matrimoniale. Autant dire que les termes de ce champ lexical dénotent en albanais, plus qu’en latin, des notions qui apparaissent cruciales pour comprendre le fonctionnement du groupe social, familial et parental, ainsi que celui de la société tout entière. Il devient possible alors de mieux comprendre l'expression de cette notion fondamentale qui repose non seulement sur un code de l'honneur très strict, mais aussi sur des structures lignagères fortement prégnantes, sur la primauté de la filiation et des liens du sang, mettant en œuvre une responsabilité collective dans les mécanismes complexes des systèmes d'alliance et de vengeance. Parallèlement, pour comprendre les valeurs morales aussi bien que la nature de la religion chez les Albanais, il ne faut pas partir de la subjectivité d’une croyance ou de l’objectivité d’un savoir, mais de la relation que l'honneur et les valeurs sociales instaurent entre les hommes. Foi et religion ne sont que la vertu de l’honneur, le poids de la croyance et de la confiance en la parole donnée.

Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen’s (1996) influential account of “cultures of honor” speculates that honor norms are a socially-adaptive deterrence strategy. This theory has been appealed to by multiple empirically-minded philosophers, and plays an important role in John Doris and Alexandra Plakias’ (2008) antirealist argument from disagreement. In this essay, I raise four objections to the Nisbett-Cohen deterrence thesis, and offer another theory of honor in its place that sees honor as a normative system regulating prestige competitions. Since my account portrays honor norms as radically different from liberal ones, it actually strengthens Doris and Plakias’ case in some respects: cultures of honor are not merely superficially different from Western liberal ones. Nonetheless, the persistent appeal of honor’s principles, and their moral plausibility in certain contexts, suggests not antirealism, but pluralism—a reply on behalf of realism that itself has considerable empirical support.

Until fairly recently it was not uncommon for political theorists to hold the view that people cannot be expected to act in accordance with the public interest without some incentive. Authors such as Marcus Tullius Cicero, John Locke, David Hume and Adam Smith, for instance, held that people often act in accordance with the public interest, but more from a concern for their honour and reputation than from a concern for the greater good. Today, most authors take a more demanding view, maintaining that people are to be just solely from a love for justice, not from a fear of losing face. In this article today’s prevailing view, which sees honour as something obsolete and archaic and not as a legitimate motive, is contrasted with the older view that honour is important for both knowing what moral is and acting on it. Subsequently, it is argued that the ethics of honour, especially in the form it took in the works of Hume and Smith, can still be of value, exactly because it is less demanding.

Da Pharao weder im Kult, in der Staatsverwaltung, noch in der Kriegsführung alle Ämter selbst ausfüllen kann, übernehmen Stellvertreter diese Aufgaben für ihn. Die Delegation von Macht ist ambivalent, wie HELCK in „Die Männer hinter dem König und die Königswahl“ problematisiert, indem er die Diskrepanz betont zwischen dem Bild der altägyptischen Quellen, welche die Könige überwiegend als allein Handelnde darstellen, und der Realität, in der „in den meisten Fällen aber die Könige Marionetten in den Händen bestimmter Gruppen“ gewesen seien.
Das Epitheton „Kopf der Schenut“ – „Anführer der Hofleute“ – steht stellvertretend für eine Reihe von Beinamen höchster frühramessidischer Beamter, die auf eine besonders machtvolle Position dieser innerhalb der Hofgesellschaft schließen lassen. Darunter sind Wesire wie Paser und (Pa-)Rahotep, Vizekönig Setau, der Chef der Grenzpolizei Ameneminet. Durch die Möglichkeit, den König zu beeinflussen, für andere den Zugang zu ihm zu gewähren oder zu verhindern, können die Personen in seiner Umgebung entsprechend ihrer Gunst am Hof ihrerseits andere begünstigen und Macht außerhalb des Hofes ausüben. Wie WINTERLING zeigte, hat das für den König ambivalente Folgen: Einerseits wächst mit der Macht seines Hofes die Menge des von ihm Entscheidbaren. Andererseits ergeben sich für ihn Probleme der Kontrolle über Macht- und Einflussstrukturen.
Hinsichtlich der Personalpolitik Ramses’ II. ist festzuhalten, dass sie – neben dem zu allen Zeiten möglichen plötzlichen Aufstieg und Fall von königlichen Günstlingen – vor allem von Kontinuität geprägt ist. Durch die festzustellende lange Ämterkontinuität (wenige hochrangige Personen, die z.T. mehrere Jahrzehnte die gleichen Positionen besetzten) bilden sich einflussreiche regionale Machtblöcke innerhalb der frühramessidischen Gesellschaft. Deren überregionale Vernetzung konstituiert sich u.a. durch Familienzugehörigkeit und ist aufgrund wirkmächtiger sozialer und politischer Netzwerke auch vom König ernst zu nehmen. Die Darstellung einiger dieser Kräfte – der politischen Entscheidungsträger – ist Ziel des Beitrags.

By examining the representation of popular and inquisitorial forms of punishment in the works of Cervantes, this essay seeks to recover shame as an emotional register of lived experience in the early modern Mediterranean, an affect which has hitherto remained overshadowed by the abundance of critical literature on honor as well as by large-scale Mediterraneanizing studies.  The identification of an inquisitorial discourse of shaming in the episodes of Don Quijote’s encagement suggests the need, on the one hand, to reevaluate what twentieth-century anthropology denominated the “values” of Mediterranean society and, on the other, to rehabilitate local (hi)stories that are all marked by blood: the blood of shame’s blush; that which was shed through violent conflicts; and that which governed the politics of blood purity.

El articulo es una reflexion sobre cual fue el papel de los agentes del honor (reyes de armas, informantes de las Ordenes Militares y testigos) a la hora de elaborar una idea general sobre el problema del conocimiento y de la reputacion en Castilla durante el siglo XVII. Se analizan y ponen en relacion los diferentes modos de articular el conocimiento en los procesos de ennoblecimiento y se busca problematizarlos.

Cultures of honor facilitate certain forms of interpersonal violence. The authors suggest that these cultures might also promote values and expectations that could heighten suicide risk, such as strict gender-role standards and hypersensitivity to reputational threats, which could lead people living in such cultures to consider death as an option when failure occurs or reputation is threatened sufficiently. Study 1 shows that, controlling for a host of statewide covariates, honor states in the United States have significantly higher male and female suicide rates than do nonhonor states, particularly in nonmetropolitan areas among Whites. Study 2 shows that statewide levels of antidepressant prescriptions (an indicator of mental health resource utilization) are lower in honor states, whereas levels of major depression are higher, and statewide levels of depression are associated with suicide rates only among honor states. Finally, Study 3 shows that individual endorsement of honor ideology is positively associated with depression.

Given its psychological and sociological importance, especially in non-liberal societies, honor may be the most undertheorized normative phenomenon. Philosophical neglect of honor is due partly to the doubtful moral bona fides of honor: honor-typical motives have been usually viewed by philosophers in both the Christian and liberal West as either non-moral or immoral but replaced by morally sounder ones. More practically, honor (and what is usually translated into the English “honor”) connotes a number of apparently contradictory meanings, further bedeviling analyses. Four particularly salient conceptions of honor emerge in the anthropological, literary, and philosophical literature on honor: honor as prestige, honor as the ethos characteristic of “cultures of honor,” honor as honestas, and honor as agonism.

In this research, we compare two forms of interdependent agency. Whereas all interdependent cultures emphasize interpersonal connectedness, we suggest that the nature of this connection may differ between face and honor cultures. In a large survey, with 163 Japanese and 172 Turkish students, we tested the idea that, consistent with the concern for face, Japanese interdependence emphasizes conformity; that is, fitting in, whereas, consistent with the concern for honor, Turkish interdependence stresses relatedness; that is, sticking together. The results confirmed these hypotheses: Japanese described their agency more in terms of conformity than Turks, whereas Turks described their agency more in terms of relatedness. Moreover, relational well-being was predicted by conformity in the Japanese group and by relatedness in the Turkish group. Autonomy was also important for both samples, and it predicted personal well-being. Results suggest that a multi-dimensional approach to interdependent agency is needed to distinguish meaningfully between different interdependent cultures.

Souza, M. G. T. C., Roazzi, A., & Souza, B.C. De (2011). When killing is a legitimate course of action: A multidimensional investigation into the culture of honor as an explanation for homicides in northeastern Brazil. In: Y. Fisher & I. A. Friedman (Eds.), New Horizons For Facet Theory: Searching for Structure in Content Spaces and Measurement (pp. 85-98). Israel: FTA Publications.
ABSTRACT: In the current paper, socioeconomic frustration, decision-making processes, emotional attachment, testosterone, moral development, moral values, and motivations were investigated in a mixed sample of 160 adult Brazilian men with and without criminal history. The resulting data was studied using SSA techniques and Facet Theory, identifying patterns suggesting that, for the sample, homicide does not stem from violence or criminality in general and that, psychosocially, it is a legitimate course of action and not a crime per se. Finally, a brief discussion is made of the implications of the findings.

Abstract: In ‘A Dialogue’, Hume offers an important reply to the moral skeptic.  Skeptics traditionally point to instances of moral diversity in support of the claim that our core values are fixed by enculturation.  Hume argues that the skeptic exaggerates the amount of variation in moral codes, however, and fails to adopt an indulgent stance toward attitudes different from ours.  Hume proposes a charitable interpretation of moral disagreement, moreover, which traces it back to shared principles of human nature.  Contemporary philosophers attempt to locate examples of moral variability that cannot be accommodated in this way.  But they are no more successful than their predecessors.  Moral skeptics have not found a single case of moral diversity that is resistant to the Humean strategy.