Honor, Shame, and Social Status Revisited

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) He does not make gods who sculpts sacred faces into gold or marble; he makes gods who asks of them. The humblest could hiss you at games or piss on your statue. They could kill you. Honour is always a question of ascription, not a matter of fact or individual right.1 That and shame were and (for most part) remain pivotal cultural values in Mediterranean is really beyond question. One can debate fruitfully how and shame work together and independently, and how they work differently in different locations, but there is more than enough evidence to defend proposition that in Mediterranean, past and present, these values remain pivotal.2 The broadly accepted anthropological definition of and shame has been distilled from two sources: observation of human interaction in person3 and ancient literary and epigraphical remains.4 From vast amount of modern ethnographic work and ancient primary sources, Bruce Malina developed a model of and shame that, while criticized,5 has stood test of time. Many scholars of biblical antiquity have benefited from explanatory power of Malina's model, an influence not limited to those affiliated with Context Group.6 This much is admitted in otherwise critical article by F. Gerald Downing.7 Yet, despite obvious strengths of Malina's model, it is starting to show signs of its age and might benefit from some changes that would increase its heuristic power and longevity. It is always good to return periodically to look with fresh eyes at our models and data we use to construct them, and I think we shall be rewarded by doing so here. I. REVIEWING MALINA'S HONOR AND SHAME Malina claimed that concerns of and shame are to be found where authority, gender status, and respect intersect. Authority is ability to control others without force; gender status refers to different standards of acceptable behavior that apply to males and females; respect refers to attitude one ought to have toward those who control your existence (humans, gods, God). Where these three intersect, Malina situates his well-known definition of honor: the value of a person in his or her own eyes (that is, one's claim to worth) plus that person's value in eyes of his or her social group.8 Honor, for Malina (as for Julian Pitt-Rivers and John G. Peristiany before him), relies on claims to from a person and assessment of that claim by a public court of reputation (hereafter PCR). There are two types of honor; Malina calls them ascribed honor and honor. Ascribed is with which one is born: by ethnicity, family reputation, gender, wealth, and so on. This tends to be less dynamic than acquired honor, which can be won and lost on a daily basis through acts of benefaction and agonistic contest of challenge and riposte. Honor cultures are not a unique feature of Mediterranean area. Honor cultures appear also in Japan and South America and within subcultures in nonhonor cultures (e.g., North American sports teams, military and police forces, and gangs). An culture is defined by seriousness with which people who inhabit it protect their and fight to retrieve it if it has been lost. This phenomenon can exist only in concert with perception that access to is limited. If there were enough to go around, losing a little here and there would carry no consequences. This is an important distinction to draw, for it is also what distinguishes and shame cultures from non-honor and shame cultures: a non-honor and shame culture might well know and shame, but it does not see as a limited good and thus does not contest it with same intensity. It is Malina's understanding of challenge and riposte contest that will be focus of my critique of his model. …