Gangland

The theme here lately is Beowulf, although you'll also find links and comments about current events below. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this oldest English epic is a bit like a cross between The Hobbit (dragons and monsters and all that) and The Sopranos. No wonder the world it portrays is so dangerous.

The kind of society portrayed in the poem isn't all that different from that of the Iliad. It's a warrior society based on a culture of honor. Culture of honor have been discussed here before (search blog in upper left hand corner form more). They have appeared in all kinds of societies and neighborhoods down to the present day.

To make it plain, a culture of honor is one in which the good things of life are easily taken away unless one responds vigorously to any and all slights or Nike stomps.

Beowulf also shows a glimpse of a "heroic" society dominated by lords and their thanes or retainers, who spend their time getting sloshed in mead halls when they aren't out raiding. The lord/thane bond was a very serious one, but it wasn't maintained with tyranny. Rather, the lord gained the loyalty of his retainers by generosity. In the poem, the lord is often called "the ring giver." As the poem puts it,

...a young prince must be prudent like that,
giving freely while his father lives
so that afterwards in age when fighting starts
steadfast companions will stand by him
and hold the line. Behaviour that’s admired
is the path to power among people everywhere.

Within the poem and in other Anglo-Saxon sources there are several stories about the lord/thane bond and the duty of a retainer to fight for and if need be avenge one's lord, even if he has already died and even if the fight is hopeless.

It's also a culture where feuds are common and can drag on and on. It wouldn't take much to get one started. Imagine a bunch of drunken warriors exchanging boasts in a mead hall. Bragging gives way to insults, which gives way to violence and then it's on. One good killing deserves another, unless the offender pays the wergild or blood price.

Finally, it's a culture composed of many rival bands and little kingdoms, each of which are prepared to move in on another's territory at any sign of weakness.

And all that is without taking the monsters into account, about which more later.

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GET MOVING. Here's an NPR tribute to America's first fitness guru, the late great Jack LaLanne.

WHAT'S IN A SMILE? Apparently, quite a bit.

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Legacies

This rooster has an acute sense of honor and is displaying it.

Over the last two weeks, Goat Rope has been looking at cultural factors that influence attitudes towards violence. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

In their 1996 book Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South, researchers Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen argue that cultures of honor evolve in places where central authority is weak and goods are easily stolen. In such conditions, violence is often viewed as a legitimate response not only to direct attack but also to personal insults and slights.

They further argue that this kind of culture, which tends to develop among herding people, was influential in shaping the culture of places like Appalachia, the south, and the American West.

Again, the book is 12 years old and many regions of the country have changed in lots of ways since then, but I find their argument interesting and it may at least shed light on some history.

The authors suggested that the legacy of slavery exerted a lasting influence on states where it was prevalent by supporting the use of violence for social control to a much greater extent that societies in which slavery was not a major factor. This might explain some major differences between Appalachia and the deep south:

...if we look within the South, those states that had a higher proportion of slaves in 1860 are today more in favor of disciplinary violence than states that had a lower proportion of slaves. Thus, states of the slave South were between two and four times more likely to administer corporal punishment than states of the nonslave South, according to the 1990 data. And when it comes to capital punishment, states of the slave South were three times more likely to have executed someone than states of the nonslave South, during the period 1977 to 1991. Results were particularly striking when we looked at the chance that a prisoner on death row would eventually be executed. The chance of a death row prisoner being executed were up to fifty times greater in the slave South than the nonslave South. As we would predict, the differences between the slave and nonslave South were restricted to coercive, disciplinary violence; the two regions of the south did not differ when it came to defensive violence.

YOU REALLY MUST DROP EVERYTHING ELSE RIGHT NOW AND CHECK OUT THIS NEW FOOTAGE OF A GIANT SQUID!

TOWARDS A NEW NEW DEAL. Here's a call for smart spending on infrastructure investments and job creation.

PATTERN OR NOISE? It's hard to tell them apart sometimes.

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"Experimental ethnography"

An insult to his honor is something up with which this rooster will not put.

Lately, Goat Rope has been exploring cultural factors that may influence attitudes on the use of violence. As noted previously, societies in which the good things of life are easily stolen tend to develop cultures of honor which view violence as permissible in the face of insults as well as theft and self defense.

Researcher Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen in their 1996 book Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South, argue that much of the American south and Appalachia were settled by people from herding cultures, which tend to develop cultures of honor. As noted in yesterday's post, they found regional differences between white males both in homicide rates and in attitudes regarding the use of violence in defense of honor.

Again, I don't want to overgeneralize about any region, especially one that has changed as rapidly in as many ways as the American south, and the data from the book in question is seriously dated, but I think the ideas posed by the authors is at least interesting enough to kill a week's worth of blogging.

Full disclosure: El Cabrero is himself the product of polite but occasionally belligerent Scotch Irish hillbilly ancestry.

To test their hypothesis, Nisbett, Cohen and other researchers designed an experiment that exposed northern and southern students to a situation in which they where deliberately pushed and insulted by a--pardon the expression--confederate in the study.

They found that southerners responded differently to the insult than northerners in their emotional and physiological response and in how they interpreted the events. They were more likely to be angered than amused by the insult, showed higher levels of the hormones cortisol and testosterone after the event, and interpreted it as a direct attack on their manhood.

Nisbett and Cohen found support for three points based on the results of the experiment:

...(1) the insult is a much more serious matter to the southerner than the northerner. (2) It is more serious because an insult makes the affronted southerner feel diminished. (3) Consequently the affronted southern may use aggressive or domineering behavior to reestablish his masculine status.

All I know is the experimenters are lucky they didn't get their clock cleaned.

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CHILDREN OF KATRINA are suffering from serious health problems, particularly those who lived in FEMA-provided trailers.

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IX-NAY ON THE OGA-YAY. Malaysian clerics have issued a fatwa against the practice of yoga. They have plenty of company in the US, where the "Christian" religious right has raised similar objections. So like does that mean no stretching exercises?

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Going south

This rooster had a keen sense of honor, which may have led to his untimely demise.

For the last week, Goat Rope has been looking at cultural factors that may influence attitudes towards the use of violence. Please click on last week's posts if you find this interesting.

To recap briefly, in societies where the good things of life are scarce and easily stolen, people tend to develop a "culture of honor" which encourages people to engage in or at least credibly threaten violence in response to insults or threats. Such cultures often develop among herding peoples where central authority is weak or nonexistent, but once established they can continue long after a society's economic base has changed.

El Cabrero's beloved region of Appalachia may be a case in point...

In a 1996 book, Culture of Honor: the Psychology of Violence in the South, researchers Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen argue that many parts of the American south and Appalachia (the two are not identical in my view) were settled by herding people such as my own Scotch-Irish.

They also identify different attitudes towards violence between those areas and northern states.

Let me be the first to say that it's dangerous to overgeneralize about a region and that the American south has undergone many changes, demographic, political and otherwise. I'm not going to give this book the coveted Blanket Goat Rope Endorsement, but it is interesting in at least identifying historical trends.

Nisbett and Cohen found (using data from the early 1990s) that homicide rates for white southerners were higher than that of white non-southerners in fights that developed as a result of arguments which generally involve some kind of insult. They controlled for other factors, such as urbanization, poverty, etc.

In terms of attitudes, they found that

southerners were not more in favor of violence in general, that they were not more in favor of violence in many specified contexts unrelated to culture-of-honor concerns, but that they were more likely to endorse violence when it was used for self-protection and for social control. The...data also showed that southerners were no more likely to endorse violence than northerners in a wide variety of specific situations. It was only for situations involving an affront, the protection of self, home, or family, and the socialization of children that southerners were more likely to endorse violence. Thus, southern ideology does not make all violence acceptable but, rather, allows violence as a tool for special purposes.

On the other hand, this attitude that violence may be permissible under some circumstances may have also contributed to southern traditions of courtesy, politeness and hospitality:

Perhaps that is also why southerns have a reputation for being so polite. The best way to keep a conflict from spiraling out of hand is to avoid the conflict in the first place. So southern hospitality, politeness, and friendliness are what keep social interactions going smoothly.

Y'all have a nice day!

PARTING SHOTS. President Bush is spending his last weeks in office rewriting rules and deregulating industries.

WHAT PRICE REFORM? This review of coal mine safety from the Charleston Gazette is a reminder that improvements were paid for by the deaths of miners.

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Acting bad

The toy monkey insulted this man's honor.

El Cabrero is musing this week about how some cultures evolved in situations which promoted the use or threat of violence as a survival asset. Let me state again that people who want to make the world less violent would do well to try to understand the factors that contribute to violence.

As I mentioned yesterday, the researchers Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen came up with some interesting findings as reported in their book, Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South. I consider Appalachia to be a distinct cultural area from the deep south but they discuss that region as well.

The authors note that one leading cause of male violence is

the sense of threat to one of his most valued possessions, namely, his reputation for strength and toughness. In many of the world's cultures, social status, economic well-being, and life itself are linked to such a reputation. This is true wherever gaining resources, or keeping them, depends on the community's believing that the individual is capable of defending himself against predation. If resources are abundant or are not subject to theft (like those of most traditional farming peoples, for example), then a reputation for toughness has little value. But if resources are in a scarce or unpredictable supply, and if they are sufficiently portable that theft is a practicable route to bounty, then toughness has great economic value. Potential predators will go elsewhere rather than risk dealing with a man who knows how to defend himself and his possessions and who appears to be not afraid to die.

Again, such cultural values tend to develop in herding societies, where wealth is mobile, but they can last long after social conditions have changed.

I would write more about this subject today, but I'm off on a cattle raid...

UNEMPLOYMENT. The US Senate yesterday approved an extension of unemployment benefits. unemployment benefits. Here's some information showing why that's a good idea.

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CUTE PRIMATE UPDATE here.

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Cultures of honor

Stewpot Rooster was always ready to defend his honor.

Lately Goat Rope is looking at how cultural factors can shape people's attitudes towards violence. As noted previously, in societies where the good things of life are scarce and easily stolen, people often develop attitudes that support the use or threat of violence to defend goods, status and respect.

Social scientists refer to such societies as "cultures of honor," but that term may require a little unpacking. The term honor, after all, has many meanings. In this case, we are not referring to honor in terms of moral rectitude or virtue such as Samuel Johnson did in his dictionary. Johnson defined honor as "nobility of soul, magnanimity, and a scorn of meanness."

Instead, as Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen argue in Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South, the term refers to societies in which

The individual is prepared to protect his reputation--for probity or strength or both--by resort to violence. Such cultures seem to be particularly likely to develop where (1) the individual is at economic risk from his fellows and (2) the state is weak or nonexistent and thus cannot prevent or punish theft of property.

Think Wild West, prisons, rough city neighborhoods or schools, isolated but dangerous rural areas, herding societies, etc. Cultures (and subcultures) of honor have developed in many parts of the world where similar conditions prevail. And once a culture acquires certain traits, they can often endure long after the conditions that engendered them have changed.

ON A RELATED NOTE, here's a article about the influence of war on human evolution.

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I herd that

Don't even think about it.

Sometimes one good book will lead to another. I recently read and highly recommend Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, even though I'm sure it will bust the bubbles of many readers who are uncomfortable about our animal origins.

In that book, he pretty much demolishes some cherished ideas, such as the belief that all human behaviors are purely social constructions ("the blank slate"), that all nasty human traits are the result of culture ("the noble savage"), and that our minds are somehow floating ghosts that haunt the region of our heads ("the ghost in the machine").

In one part of the book, Pinker revisited the ideas of Thomas Hobbes and referred to a study by Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen that found that

violent cultures arise in societies that are beyond the reach of law and in which precious assets are easily stolen. Societies that herd animals meet both conditions. Herders tend to live in territories that are unsuitable for growing crops and thus far from the centers of government. And their major asset, livestock, is easier to steal than the major asset of farmers, land. In herding societies a man can be stripped of his wealth (and of his ability to acquire wealth) in a blink. Men in that milieu cultivate a hair trigger for violent retaliation, not just against rustlers, but against anyone who would test their resolve by signs of disrespect that could reveal them to be easy pickings for rustlers.

Golly willikers, I wonder what it would be like to grow up in a culture like that? And keep your hands of my goats, bub...

But seriously, that is an interesting idea. Sometimes cultural norms often long outlive the situation that gave birth to them. But if you think about it, many people all over the US and the world live in situations where there is no positive relationship with a governing authority and where all the perceived good things of life--from respect and status to money and valuables--can be taken away.

CRYSTAL BALL. Here is one prediction about the near future of the economy in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia. Short version: bad but maybe not as bad as the nation as a whole. That'd be a switch.

OWN TO RENT. Economist Deal Baker proposes a simple solution to the foreclosure crisis here.

URGENT MUMMY UPDATE here.

THE SOUL IN THE STONE. An archaeological artifact reveals ancient attitudes towards immortality.


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Chips and blocks

Roosters are not generally known for their conflict resolution skills.

Lately, Goat Rope has been exploring the cultural influences that shape how different people tend to think about violence and fighting.

My own family has deep roots in the gizzard of Appalachia. This is a nice place, but some of us around here descend from long lines of...shall we say...spirited Scotch-Irish people and even more spirited Celts. Some of the really crazy ones were on my father's side.

Those people were interesting, fun and colorful characters. They could be extremely generous and very gracious hosts and could really turn a phrase (provided you didn't mind some artful profanity). But many of them had what we might call a liberal attitude about scrapping when provoked.

There was even a saying in one branch of my family that people would say when someone displayed a lack of courage or spirit: "Where's your fightin' Gillespie?"

I wonder about the force of tradition and heredity. I am generally speaking a peaceful person. My day job consists of working for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization tolerant enough to hire me and even let me do this blog. I've spent a lot of time working on various ways of non-violently resolving conflict.

However, I've spent decades studying and practicing the fighting arts and would do it all the time if I could get away with it, bad knees and all. I love a good tussle, although generally of the non-physical variety.

My daughter (La Cabrita), a Ph. D. student in psychology, observed that I seemed prouder of her when she recently defeated a more advanced opponent at a karate tournament than for anything else she'd done. What can I say?--her kicks were awesome! My son (El Cabrito) could relate similar stories.

When they were little kids, La Cabrita out of the blue kicked El Cabrito across the room with a picture perfect side thrust kick. I am embarrassed to say that the first words that escaped my lips were "Good kick!"

That was something my great grandfather might have said...

Anyhow, I've recently read some interesting social science research on that might explain how some cultures (such as my own) got to be that way. As I've frequently argued, those who want to make the world less violent would do well to understand the things that contribute to violence. About which more tomorrow.

DADDY, WHAT'S A TRAIN? was a Utah Phillips song my kids enjoyed when they were little (and weren't kicking each other). On that note, here is an interesting take on the auto bailout currently being discussed and a call for investments in mass transit.

UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM on taxes and economic growth here.

ARACOMA. Widows of two men killed in the Massey Energy mine fire in 2006 settled their suit yesterday.

GRATUITOUS ANIMAL VIDEOS here.

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