In cultures where honour is valued, chastity is one of the codes for honour. When this code is violated, the honour of the family is threatened. Relational Models Theory (Fiske, 1992) contributes to an understanding of this phenomenon. It posits that people often represent their families as sharing a common essence whose purity needs to be protected. According to the laws of sympathetic magic, contact and similarity are two conditions through which contamination of the essence can happen. Thus, a tight regulation of contacts, especially sexual ones, is a way to protect against contamination of the shared essence.

The Brazilian novel City of God from Paulo Lins tells the story of a nice and hardworking boy who sees his girlfriend being brutally beaten and raped by a band of gangsters. While this event happens, the gangsters have a weapon pointed to the boy’s head. Not being able to protect and defend his girlfriend from the gangsters, the main character decides that the only way to get his honour back is taking revenge. But to be able to take revenge, he would have to become a gangster.

This is fiction, but given the importance of honour in many cultures, it could as well be a true story. Honour is related to social reputation and to the respect one gets from others. When their honour is threatened, people in cultures of honour respond by trying to repair and maintain their social relations and construct new ones. The social status of the dishonoured person is at stake if she or he does not respond appropriately. Given the immense importance of honour for social relationships, we propose to apply Relational Models Theory (Fiske, 1992) to better understand honour concerns. The main goal of the current theoretical approach is to analyze the functions of honour-related phenomena for social relationships.

Honour

The sentiment of honour results from assessing how we are seen, judged and valued by others. Thus, honour concerns lead to a preoccupation with one’s social image and reputation, which reflects back on the self-image (Rodriguez Mosquera, Fischer, Manstead, & Zaalberg, 2008). Expressing the right feelings and behaving in the right way make others pay respect not only to oneself, but also the groups to which one belongs (Pitt-Rivers, 1968).

In addition to being associated with respect and personal reputation, honour is also associated with a reputation for being ready to physically defend oneself and one’s family (Pitt-Rivers, 1965; Wikan, 1984). Cultures of honour have developed in societies where law enforcement used to be weak and tended to fail (Cohen & Nisbett, 1994). Thus, the danger of robbery, assault etc. intensifies the need to protect oneself and the weaker members of the family. Compared to members of other cultures, members of cultures of honour show greater approval for violence when the family is affronted or needs to be defended (Cohen & Nisbett, 1994). This readiness to defend one another strengthens the family ties (Rodriguez Mosquera, Manstead, & Fischer, 2002) and reflects positively on the social reputation of the family (Cohen, Nisbett, Bowdle, & Schwartz, 1996).

Consequently, the family in honour cultures, often comprising several generations and several degrees of relatedness, is one of the most important groups of belonging. Family members have to defend the social reputation of their family, be careful of their public behavior, and avoid humiliations. The collective attribute of honour makes people more concerned with personal honour, given that the honour of one member of the family is shared with all members. If one member is judged as dishonourable, the whole family’s social reputation and status suffer (Fischer, Manstead, & Rodriguez Mosquera, 1999).

To summarize, honour is a sentiment based in the potential or actual social approval of the actions of oneself and one’s family members. Accordingly, in cultures of honour, people care about and emotionally react to the match or mismatch between their and their family members’ actions and the relevant social standards. Conversely, in cultures of dignity, which are based on the conviction that each person has a value which is independent from other persons’ judgments, more importance is given to the match between one’s actions and one’s personal standards. One reason for this difference might be that cultures of honour tend to be more collectivistic than cultures of dignity. Fischer and colleagues (1999) compared the honour concerns in The Netherlands vs. Spain, as well as the types of episodes that elicited shame and pride. Spanish participants had greater honour concerns than Dutch participants. They also reported more events than Dutch participants where both, pride and shame, were experienced in the context of a social relation. For the Spanish, shame was related with episodes in which their honour was publicly threatened. On the other hand, the Dutch described more often self-focused events of pride and shame. These results underline the link between honour concerns and the events that trigger emotions.

Overall, the available literature suggests that honour is an important attribute to social life: It provides a standard for judging one’s own actions and those of others. Honour is therefore immensely important for social reputation and respect, and it is typically based on the whole family, thereby increasing the interdependence and cohesion in the family. In addition, honour deeply influences the psychological functioning of individuals; it provides a basis for self-esteem, determines to a large extent which types of situations provoke emotions and how they are regulated. Nevertheless, there are still some questions remaining: What mechanisms maintain an honour-based thinking? How are honour concerns related to the protection of the group? Why should a culture of honour develop based on protection? We suggest that Relational Models Theory (RMT; Fiske, 1992) offers a good theoretical explanation for some of these questions. RMT claims that social life and social relations are essential in people’s lives. People organize their social lives into four different cognitive models – one of these four basic relational models is communal sharing. In communal sharing relationships people have a sense of shared identity, ignoring the distinctiveness among the members. The relationship is represented as a shared essence or substance between members of a group (Fiske & Haslam, 1997). Most, though not all, American and European families are organized in a communal way of relating. Accordingly, people often represent their families as sharing a common substance: blood. Understanding communal sharing might thus help us understand the way honour is conceptualized and experienced.

Relational Models Theory

According to A. P. Fiske’s Relational Models Theory (1992), all human interactions have a relational meaning – they initiate, affirm, question or end a social relationship of some sort. He suggests that across cultures, people organize their social lives through four different cognitive models. These four models are useful to structure social life. People know a-priori how to recognize each relational model, and this helps them behave in accordance with the norms of that particular model.

These four models are communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, and market pricing. Each of these models is applied for different purposes. Communal sharing is applied when the participants in the relationship can be treated as equivalent; authority ranking is applied when relationship partners have asymmetric positions in a linear hierarchy Needs clearer definition—does it apply when both partners desire an unequal power distribution? Or just one partner?; equality matching is applied when the goal is an even distribution of resources; and market pricing is applied when the partners base their relationship on cost-benefit analyses. Though the four models are equally important for structuring social lives, we will only focus on communal sharing because of its relevance to honour concerns.

In a communal sharing relationship partners see each other as equivalent and undifferentiated. They treat each other not according to individual identities but according to the shared identity– people within the group are the same, outsiders are different. This principle of equivalence means that people take whatever they need and contribute with whatever they can. Members of the group do not keep track of what each member takes and gives (Fiske, 1992; Fiske & Haslam, 2005). Communal sharing organizes the relationship when people have in common something socially meaningful that differentiates them from outsiders. Some of the most intense communal relationships are constituted through sharing related to the body; participants share several aspects of their bodies (i.e., tattoos, clothes) or there is something that their bodies share in common (anessence). Thereby, communion is generated and developed by acts such as giving birth, nursing, breastfeeding, going through rites of blood sharing (i.e., blood brotherhood), commensal eating and drinking, and skin-to-skin contact. Sharing bodily substances creates a categorical bond among people. Thus, the act of sharing substances is a material sign of a social relation. It strengthens the social cohesion and the identification with the in-group (Fiske, 1992; Fiske, 2004; Fiske & Fiske, 2007).

When people perceive that everyone in the in-group shares essential substances (i.e., blood, food, or drinks), they apply a communal relationship model (Fiske, 1992; Fiske, 2004; Fiske & Fiske, 2007). Generally, communion makes people feel that all members of the group are of the same kind, are united by a common identity, or a common essence. This collective essence raises concerns about contamination of the group, i.e., fears that they can be vulnerable to pollution. Once one member is polluted, the whole group can be contaminated (Fiske, 1992).

Because family cohesion and loyalty to the family are especially important in cultures of honour, we should find in these cultures particularly strong communal relationships within families, which should result in concerns about the purity of the family’s essence. The pollution of the shared essence within a group is mostly related to sexual issues, specifically sexual penetration. Accordingly, women in cultures of honour are expected to have sexual shame. They are expected to protect their virginity until getting married and be restrained in their relations with men (Rodriguez Mosquera et al., 2002). Men are expected to conserve their masculinity. The contamination of the essence can happen when a person gets penetrated. Anthropological evidence shows that in a male homosexual relationship, little stigma is attached to the man who penetrates. The slur is directed to the one who is penetrated (Carrier, 1977).

Hence, according to the relational models approach, the killing of a female family member because of sexual intercourse outside marriage (honour killing) represents the cleansing of the essence after contamination. Killing the dishonoured family member is seen as the only way to separate the family essence from the polluted essence, and thereby clean it. In addition, the killing serves as a punishment and has thereby deterring effects upon others (Fiske & Fiske, 2007). Thus, the killing is a collective responsibility of all family members or of the larger group for protecting the honour of the group. Because the deterrence is highest if all dishonourable acts are punished maximally, in some cultures of honour the larger group or even the state takes responsibility for honour killings.

In honour cultures, the protection of the shared essence is important for the group’s hierarchical position. Honourable families maintain their social statuses, reputations and respect. The loss of honour implies a loss of status. In other words, the purity of the common shared essence appears to be a prerequisite for social power.

Laws of Sympathetic Magic

To better understand the importance of shared essence and its connection to honour concerns, we draw on the laws of sympathetic magic (i.e., Frazer, 1959 [1890]; Mauss, 1972 [1902]; Tylor, 1974 [1871], cited in Nemeroff & Rozin, 1994), discovered by anthropologists more than 100 years ago. These laws are suggested to be universal principles of thinking that give rise to magical beliefs and practices in traditional cultures. The law of contagion describes the idea that things which are in contact influence each other through the transfer of some essence. However, this influence continues even after the contact has finished. The major idea is “once in contact, always in contact.” According to the law of similarity things that are similar to each other share basic properties. The image encloses the essence of its source and generates similar effects as the source. The main idea of this law is “the image equals the object.” Both of these laws work either with a positive or with a negative connotation. If an object is similar to or in contact with a positive person - such as a respected chief - the value of the object increases. If an object is similar to or in contact with a person of bad reputation- such as a prostitute - the object is devalued (Nemeroff & Rozin, 1994; Rozin, Millman, & Nemeroff, 1986)

Rozin and colleagues (1986) found support for the negative law of contagion in the United States. Across different domains, participants in their studies wanted to avoid contamination by negative objects (i.e., soup with spit; blouse of someone disliked). Other studies showed the effect of the negative law of similarity; participants tended to reject good food shaped into disgusting forms, and became less accurate when throwing darts at pictures of people they liked.

The negative law of contagion states that once someone is in contact with a negative object, there is contact between the essences of the two objects, and therefore, contamination. If the object of contact is negative, the “good essence” gets permanently contaminated with the “bad essence.” This means that in order to protect the group essence, group members should avoid behaving in ways that could contaminate it . Contact and similarity with negative objects lead to contamination of the shared essence within the group. Because avoiding this is of utmost importance to all family members, who may have contact with whom tends to be strictly regulated in cultures of honour. This is particularly true for sexual contact, presumably because it is a particularly intense form of contact with not only implied but factual exchange of substances. Therefore, if one member of a family violates the norms for sexual conduct in a given society, the honour and the social status of the family are threatened. An example of this is real or implied sexual intercourse of female family members outside marriage. The fact that the norms of sexual conduct and the punishments tend to be stricter for women than for men might stem from the fact that the net substance exchange tends to be asymmetric., It may also be attributed to a number of other factors, including the fact that women can get pregnant, the result of power relations in these societies, or some combination of these reasons.

Accordingly, Relational Models Theory and the Laws of Sympathetic Magic can jointly explain the psychological bases of sexuality-related honour concerns. Relational models theory is the more general theory and can explain the mental representation of relationships, such as those within a family. The laws of sympathetic magic show how relational thinking is universally and strongly influenced by “magical beliefs” about essences and contagion or contamination. If family members think about their family in terms of a shared essence, they feel more united. The social functionality of such an honour code, however, clearly goes beyond increasing the family’s cohesion and has to do with control over people, resources and reproduction. Such a functional analysis, however, is not the focus of the present article.

Conclusions

According to relational models theory, communal sharing relationships are characterized by a perception of shared essence, which is pure but can be contaminated. Families are an example of such communal groups. Their essence has to be protected by family members. The law of contagion and the law of similarity show how humans universally have a preconception that having contact with someone who is now impure, or being similar to that person, can result in contamination. This is the basis of the idea that the family honour can be ruined when the substance of any of its members is polluted. If the essence is contaminated, and no longer pure, this contamination spreads to the other members of the group (Fiske, 1992). In sum, thinking in terms of honour grows out of the characteristics of relational models.

According to relational models theory, communal sharing relationships are characterized by a perception of shared essence, which is pure but can be contaminated. Families are an example of such communal groups. Their essence has to be protected by family members. The law of contagion and the law of similarity show how humans universally have a preconception that having contact with someone who is now impure, or being similar to that person, can result in contamination. This is the basis of the idea that the family honour can be ruined when the substance of any of its members is polluted. If the essence is contaminated, and no longer pure, this contamination spreads to the other members of the group (Fiske, 1992). In sum, thinking in terms of honour grows out of the characteristics of relational models.
In this article we focused exclusively on the communal sharing aspects of honour. As pointed out in the introduction, however, honour also defines the hierarchical position of a family within a larger group. The hierarchical component of honour, then, corresponds to authority ranking relationships among the families on the power/status dimension. Displaying a readiness to fight, for example by assuming an upright posture, often suffices to fend off actual violent conflict. However, the prerequisite for entering this game of status competition seems to be the purity of the family essence. It ensures the loyalty of the family members to each other and is the basis for the social reputation of the family. As such, then, family honour seems to be the basis for male honour and all other modes of relations. This is reflected in the fact that the worst insults in cultures of honour tend to be those which call into question the family purity, such as suggesting a man’s mother might be a prostitute.

Final remarks

In honour cultures, honour is one way to represent the group essence. If we look at relationships within and between families, we find the importance of honour as an indicator of a family’s standing in society. Family honour is one of the most important concerns – families build their social status and their social respect based on honour codes. The way each family is seen in the society will also define and structure the relationships that the family maintains not only within itself, but also with the other families. Therefore, understanding honour keeps being an important challenge.

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