Juhan: What is the ?Culture of Honor?? ? Lector: A Virtual Book Club

Culture of Honor

?When one family fights with another, it?s a feud.? When lots of families fight with one another in identical little towns up and down the same mountain range, it?s a pattern.??Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers

What is the culture of honor? Well, various sociologist and anthropologists have studied what the culture oh honor entails.? During such reasoning they have contrasted the cultures of honor with the culture of law.? In the culture of law there are laws in which men and women must abide by.? Therefore this requires specific cultures and sub-cultures to ratify and impose such laws.? A culture of law then incorporates an unwritten known social contract where men and women whom are apart of a specific society agree to defend their freedoms.? By defending such freedoms, these men and women in fact understand that those who do wrong will be punished by society.

As I stated before, psychologist, sociologist and anthropologist call it a ?culture of honor.? This cultural honor is mostly a male mindset that places an extraordinary amount value on defending one?s reputation ceaselessly.? As we read in Chapter 6 of Malcolm Gladwell?s Outliers, we learn that cultural heritages and legacies run deep and through; and we should not be coy about how they continue to affect daily lives of individuals.

Research has continued to suggest that because of this ?culture of honor,? there has been an increase in accidental deaths.? Those individuals who acknowledge these values associated with the ?culture of honor,? are also people who take more risks.??? Risk taking is supplementary with a dangerous mindset and we certainly see this prevalent in southern and western states such as Kentucky, Texas, Wyoming, and Kansas etc?? According to US News and World Report, ?honor states? rank higher than ?non-honor? states.? Approximately, more than seven thousand deaths a year are correlated with risking taking and the ?culture of honor.?

Though the culture seems more prevalent, back in the day, it is not as historical and ancient as we may think. The ?culture of honor? definitely still exists today.

If we as a community to become more aware of this notion it may help significantly reduce the dangerous, precarious behavior related with the ?culture of honor.?