[Declanomous]

This is interesting. At the risk of being lambasted for this view, I've often felt that this is the issue with a lot of places within the United States.

For instance, I've always considered personal interactions in the South to be largely dictated by honor. I do not think it is coincidental that the poorest and least-educated areas of the country are the same area.

I think a similar problem is at play in inner-city violence. I live in Chicago, and murders seem to be almost entirely honor-related at this point.

While I do think that honor-based societies are indicative of a lack of pragmatism, I think that they make sense in a certain light as well. Honor is something that has no (outright) monetary cost, and so you can have honor when you have nothing else. If you have nothing but your honor, and don't defend your honor when someone besmirches it, you will be left with nothing at all. This alone makes it fairly easy to see why people will kill to maintain their honor.

[jacobolus]

My impression is that a lot of honor based societies perpetuate themselves at lower levels because they get battered hard by the overarching society / more powerful external powers. People feel that they need to protect themselves and their tribes from being stomped from above. Combatting power inequality and systemic violence/abuse is probably the biggest counter to turf fights, domestic violence, etc., at least on a generational time scale.

[cousin_it]

In the past of any European country you'll see peasants being largely peaceful and the aristocracy following honor culture at its worst. Honor culture doesn't arise in response to oppression, it arises when private violence is unchecked by law. The only counter is rule of law.

[jacobolus]

The peasants being peaceful? Where do you get that idea? Alcoholism, domestic violence, theft, fist fights, mob justice, banditry, etc. seem pretty common in peasant society that I have seen.

Or you just mean the peasants don't often pick fights with the soldiers, and their violence typically doesn't rise to the scale that would make history books?

[cousin_it]

Honor culture is not an umbrella term for evils like alcoholism, theft, or fist fights. It's a sharper, uglier thing. The central idea of honor culture is that a man must kill anyone who insults him, otherwise he's "not a man" and becomes fair game for everyone. It was much more prevalent with the aristocracy than with common folk, for the reason that I explained in the previous comment.

Even today you'll find that honor culture is much more popular with criminals than with law-abiding poorer folk that the criminals prey upon. It's not about how much power your group has, compared to other groups. It's about whether your conflicts within the group are constrained by law.

[kenning]

Yeah I'd say it's not necessarily a case of honor based systems causing poverty. It's also the other way around. Pretty straightforward.

If you make a long essay about how a belief system causes poverty you'll be demonized by the left; the other way around, and you'll be demonized by the right. Say they dovetail, and nobody cares.

[TeMPOraL]

> Say they dovetail, and nobody cares.

Seems that in general, feedback loops are too difficult to politicize, and so their understanding is often missing from the public discourse.

[andrewjl]

True Detective Season 1 is a very deep, nuanced study of exactly what you describe in the South.

[aaron-lebo]

How so? It didn't especially focus on honor or vendettas, it was about cults, abuse, and a cover-up. Based in the South, yeah, but not getting the honor connection.

[andrewjl]

Think of Hart vs Cohle as an analogy to shame vs guilt cultures.

One particular scene I recalled when reading this article was the punishment Hart exacted on the two boys he caught with his daughter. Contrast that to his behavior towards the young women he cheated on his wife with, which is reminiscent of the honor culture described here.

Another scene he saw he a woman he was having an affair with seeing another man and proceeded to assault him in her own apartment. Again very reminiscent of the honor culture. We can see how Hart is unable to comprehend the moral inconsistency of his actions.

Contrast with Cohle, who feels deep guilt over the loss of his daughter and does not engage in any infidelity over the course of the series. (Besides the incident with Maggie, however it was something she goaded him into and he was single at the time.)

[andrewjl]

Also common thread in these situations was that the women were denied agency by Hart in his interactions with them.

[aaron-lebo]

You got me to watch it again, so thanks. :)

[andrewjl]

I also caught a lot more watching it the second time around!

[linkregister]

I agree with Aaron, the major themes of the show were decline and depravity. All of the main characters were self-destructive. Honor and pride had little to do with the series.

[baybal2]

I read it, and think it is a so so writing. The author piles too many things together.

martythemaniak gets more of what it is to it.

There are no such thing as an honour based society, and the author is imagining things.

Popular explanation: what seems as an "honour" things to people in the west are often just egregious displays of social status. It is hard for Americans to naturally arrive to the way of thought of this sort. I'll drop few examples for you:

Men killing their wives who were raped - it is not them any much recovering that "honour," but to show everyone that these men do not let the enemy to assert dominance over them, non-verbally stating "hey look, the enemy has no power over me, he will not diminish my status by forcing me to sleep with a woman raped by him"

Same for the extreme sensitivity to insult marty mentions - it is to show everyone "No one is allowed to place themselves above me"

Acceptance of personal revenge including retaliatory killing - is the thing from the same opera. It is to show that you do not let the assailant to assume social status above you. If you can't retaliate and kill, you show your weakness/inferiority/impotence.

Americans, you are fortunate enough to not to live in a society where ones social status is not determined by a principle of "the ones who have higher status than I am are the ones I can't kill"

[jacknews]

"No one is allowed to place themselves above me" .... "social status"...

This is exactly what the author means by "honor", as opposed to the western definition of integrity, trust, chivalry, etc, etc.

[PhasmaFelis]

I don't understand what you're trying to express here. You agree that all of the things the author describes do happen, and pretty much for the same reasons the author describes, but you...still think he's wrong, somehow? Possibly because you don't like him using the word "honor," even though he went to great lengths to not do that?

[baybal2]

While he mentions that to him, it seems that deemed honour is a proxy for social status in some cultures, in none it is. Egregious manifestations of social status, do come a mile apart from what even moderately enlightened person considers an honour in cultures he listed. His finding went only a finger poke length in the issue.

No sane Sikh or Bengali will publicly admit that men who killed their wives in anticipation of Pakistani army coming, rather than to defend them with their lives did an honorable thing. These historical episodes are publicly denounced as the most shameful in history of Sikh and Bangla communities, with only few fringe, marginal religious fanatics coming forward with opposing opinions.

Nor will any normal person from Balkans accept exceptional vengefulness as something to be proud of.

[baybal2]

He picked word Thar, but even that semantic loading that he devised, reinvents the bicycle. He want to put that to "wage feud" as he puts is different from simple fight over social status, while it is, and later he effectively says that.

[PhasmaFelis]

Most people don't kill over social status. If we're going to communicate about this effectively, we need to find a word that means "social status except you're willing to kill over it." Which he did. Is there a word you would have preferred?

[techdragon]

I’m not an anthropologist but I’ve read a few things over the years.

Honour and social status are often correlated inside of honour valuing “subcultures” that often use the honour system they make up as the driver for the typical in group vs out group social dynamics that perpetuate the majority of subcultures. So it’s often hard to distinguish between different “honour systems” that can make some of the more extreme behaviour understandable.

For example the honour killing of wives can stem from absolute moral codes surrounding sexual behaviour combined with strong social stances on purity. Once “tainted” it is viewed as more honourable to kill the tainted wife than to allow her to remain in the family. She is no longer pure enough to remain a suitable partner for anyone thereby making death preferable. This relates back to my honour subcultures point because in this subcultures view, failing to “eliminate the taint” risks devaluation of their own social standing and creates sufficient incentives that some are driven to commit murder in the name of “honour”

Also it often happens that “both” people involved in the extra marital sex are killed in such honour killing cases.

[justinpombrio]

You've listed a few things as not being honor, that I would have called honor. Could you say what you do mean by honor?

[throwaway43434]

The article is much more mischievous than that.

The reasoning here is that 'honor system' is something that can't be extricated from these societies; that it is somehow a cultural (which is an epithet for racial) invariant. It's a pity that such BS-ery forms the basis for many areas of studies, and proliferates in the editorial pages of major newspapers.

[paulajohnson]

I think you are erecting a straw man here. The article

1: identifies a set of social norms which it names "thar".

2: Asserts that these norms tend to occur together (i.e. a society in which individuals primary allegience is to a family or clan is likely to find it acceptable to kill in vengance and be paranoid about female sexuality)

3: Argues that these social norms are generated by poverty, and simultaneously likely to perpetuate poverty, thereby creating a vicious circle.

4: Considers the possibility that our society could develop a similar culture in the future.

You claim that the author believes that this is something that cannot be extricated from the societies that practice it, but I cannot see such a claim in the text. In fact the writers concern about the possible descent of western societies into thar would seem to put the lie to your claim: if a society can descend into thar then it can also climb out of it.

If you say that all "cultural" critique is actually racism in disguise then you make it impossible to consider any aspect of how a culture might affect the prosperity and well-being of its members. This can only be justified if you believe that culture has no impact on prosperity and well-being. If it does have an impact then it becomes necessary to consider which cultural norms promote prosperity and well-being and to criticise those that prevent it.

[skrebbel]

> cultural (which is an epithet for racial)

I think you make that jump too fast. I'm Dutch, and I know people of all kinds of ethnic backgrounds whose culture is closer to "Dutch culture" than to any other. I also know some people of the same ethnic backgrounds whose culture is much closer to that of the country of origin. I really mean culture here - the way people behave at home, at the dinner table. How they interact with society.

I suspect this is even stronger the case in America/Canada - My impression is that for all their differences, Caucasian and African Americans on the coasts are culturally closer to one another than to other groups in the world.