Social Honor Research Articles

Counter Action Frames: Employer Repertoires and the Union Menace in the Late Nineteenth Century

This article explores collective action frames associated with U.S. employer mobilization against unions in the late nineteenth century. The study makes several contributions to the literature on framing processes. First, it emphasizes that the interests and identities of counter-mobilizing elites are no less problematic than those of challengers. The character of labor protest did not in itself dictate how employers would construct the actors and issues at stake in industrial conflict. Second, it adds another explanation for why certain frames prevail, supplementing discussions of strategic framing and frame resonance. From among a larger repertoire of possibilities, proprietary employers adopted those anti-union frames that corresponded with diagnostic categories and identities constructed in other organizational settings. My focus here is on frames deployed in the arenas of municipal reform and status group formation as well as industrial relations. Finally, the case suggests that for elite counter-mobilization, the development of oppositional identities may also involve social closure, as higher status groups construct hierarchies of social honor.

Status, Class and the Politics of Canadian Aboriginal Peoples

These comments express concerns of First Nations about their status in the economy, society and polity of Canada. Status may refer to a number of things: particular cultures or lifestyles; entitlement to or enjoyment of rights, privileges, legal capacities or powers granted by the state; or the awarding or denial of social honour or prestige. All three have been prominent in the North American Aboriginal experience.

Status and Hotel and Catering Work: Theoretical Dimensions and Practical Implications

The concept of status has been neglected in mainstream sociology but figures prominently, if implicitly, in many analyses of hotel and catering work. In those contexts, status is employed as an explanatory variable, but its meaning and usage are unclear. This paper identifies ways in which status is used in explaining work place behavior. The concept of status markers is introduced and described. It is argued that a wider appreciation of the distribution of social honor in society is necessary for a proper understanding of the role of status in hospitality organizations. From this, a preliminary model of status in organizations is developed, and the model's implications for human resource management in the hospitality industry is sketched.

Social Honor and Systems of Meaning: A Comment Inspired by Hatch

Social Honor and Systems of Meaning: A Comment Inspired by Hatch

Class Collaboration for the Sake of Religion: Elite Control and Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century Colonial Mission

The Basel Mission is a Pietist evangelical organization that was active in many areas of the colonial world in the nineteenth century. In addition to the intrinsic religious satisfaction it offered to all its members, the Mission provided its leaders with social honor and an arena in which to sustain useful long-term ties to others like themselves. For most of the rank and file, acceptance into the missionary life represented social ascendancy well beyond their modest material origins. I will explore how the prospect of this gain affected their decisions to participate and then go a step further by calibrating the extent to which they were able to pass on their newly acquired social advantages to their offspring. The discussion of the findings concentrates on the unintended secular consequences of such religiously motivated activities, and it speculates about the implications for the changing class structures of nineteenth-century Europe and the colonial world.

Theories of Social Honor

The approaches used in studying status systems (or systems of prestige or social honor) can be classified as either materialist or nonmaterialist, and the essential differences between them reflect differences in assumptions about human motivations. It is argued that the materialist approach is untenable. The nonmaterialist approaches also differ among themselves in motivational assumptions, and these differences in turn lead to very different views about the nature of status systems. Three nonmaterialist approaches are analyzed, and it is suggested that one of them is more compelling than the others.

Subir para no bajar. Adaptación política y representación social de la nobleza urbana castellana (Murcia, 1665-1724)

Este artículo analiza algunas de las respuestas que la nobleza urbana castellana ofreció ante procesos de movilidad social durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVII. El descenso relativo de capital simbólico fue compensado, especialmente durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVII y la Guerra de Sucesión, con una reactivación del servicio real. Esto conllevó, en algunas ocasiones, una adaptación política -integración en el aparato administrativo de la Corona- y un incremento de la dignidad social -concesión de títulos nobiliarios-. El ejemplo de los Fontes de Albornoz, un linaje que se había convertido en un poder influyente en el conjunto del reino de Murcia, nos servirá para observar las motivaciones que llevaron a una reconstrucción sociopolítica de algunas elites provinciales de la Corona de Castilla.

Honor and Conflict in a Sicilian Town

Interpersonal conflict is endemic in Western Sicily and frequently involves neighbors and close kin. There are structural reasons for this. In the competition for control of material and human resources, each actor is vulnerable to others, just as they are vulnerable to him, while the boundaries of private property and personal influence are either defined in struggle or remain ambiguous. The resulting system explains not only the frequency of interpersonal conflict, but also the ideology of honor which often frames it. In other words, honor is seen as an historical effect of interpersonal conflict and also, in a more limited sense, as its cause. A distinction is made between normative codes of honor (social honor), and individual adaptations to the problem of honor (personal honor). The preoccupation with personal honor may intensify conflict, while conflict reinforces the traditional codes of honor.

German Social Honor Courts

German Social Honor Courts

The Social Honor Courts of Nazi Germany

The Social Honor Courts of Nazi Germany