assume that difference is essential to explain real experience with attention to its coming about, its genetic conditions (see for instance Deleuze 36 ff.). Honoring is a “social process,” one that often requires a story, a narration, whereas dignity clearly has a “personal nature” (Oprisko 121). Pierre Bourdieu has offered a microcausal, agent-centered account of honor in relation to gender and to face: inscribed in the body, the ethic of male honor “requires a man to face up to others and look them in the eye”; it signifies “to face, face up to, and in the upright posture” (Masculine 17, 27). This bridges the two types of culture we are analyzing. Honor in this sense is an “investment in the social games” in which men, “the holders of the monopoly of the instruments of production and reproduction of symbolic capital, aim to secure the conservation or expansion of this capital” (Masculine 48).41 Their games are aptly synonymized with a ludic practice, a “fundamental illusio” (Masculine 48, 74).42 The honor ethic is thus “the self-interest ethic of social formations […] in whose patrimony symbolic capital figures prominently” (Outline 48).
The gender-related connotations of honor in honor cultures have been examined by Cihangir, Rodriguez Mosquera et al., King, Sev’er and Yurdakul, and ←33 | 34→Meeker, among others. A woman’s violation of behavioral guidelines has a direct impact on the proper functioning of family life, in the symbolic violence of masculine domination (as diagnosed by Bourdieu). King points out that “namus” is “a term borrowed from Arabic to Kurdish, Farsi, Turkish, and related languages” (King 61), referring to a woman’s sexual honor or female chastity as “a sacred quality, mirrored in communal opinion, modeled on communal convention” (Meeker 268), which needs to be protected by all means. While the honor-specific expressions vary depending on the respective language, it can nevertheless be claimed that there is a tendency to distinguish linguistically between male and female honor in honor cultures (which can sometimes even lead to translation problems because languages of “dignity cultures” mostly lack such linguistic nuances).
Sev’er and Yurdakul state that “şeref” (which is the Turkish equivalent of the Arabic “sharaf”) is “androcentric.” Churchill also describes “sharaf” as mainly used to describe a man’s honor (87): “sharaf is generally not ascribed to women, and certainly never in virtue of feminine traits”; male honor is dynamic, which means that it can “increase or decrease; likewise, it can be lost and then regained.” Being dependent on social judgment, it is equally exposed to competition. In contrast, namus is a type of sexual honor that presupposes physical and moral qualities that women ought to have” (Sev’er and Yurdakul 972–73).43 Reddy argues in a similar vein by underlining the “dualistic notions of male ‘honour’ and female ‘shame’, whereby masculinity is largely constructed in terms of female chastity” (“Gender” 307). Cihangir, Çetin, Glick et al., Sakallı Uğurlu and Akbaş, King, Meeker and others associate “namus” with “female chastity,” and in this context mention gender-specific honor codes in honor cultures.44 As soon as a ←34 | 35→woman’s “namus” is lost, honor immediately turns into a group value since the whole family’s reputation is ruined. The idea of “honor surrounding female chastity and self-restraint” is associated with the expression “ird” (Abu-Rabia 34; see also Rexvid 23 and Awwad, “Virginity” 106), which means “absolute chastity” (Churchill 89; Ermers 42). Churchill nevertheless mainly defines ‘ird as “the core aspect of sharaf-honor” (87), and thus as partaking of a male-related concept. Somewhat like Stewart (143), he treats “ ‘ird” as a part of male honor, while other researchers rather focus on its female connotations. Churchill’s observations that both men and women participate in ‘ird (88) and that ‘ird and sharaf are interrelated concepts are partly true: when ‘ird is lost, “no increase in ‘sharaf’ can compensate” for it (90). This presumes that the woman has already lost her ‘ird.
Ermers gives a semantic overview of different honor nuances that can be found in Turkish45 and Arabic, of which particularly the definitions of “şeref”/“šaraf” and “namus”/‘ird will serve our purposes. He provides rather non-gendered connotations of “şeref” in Turkish, seeing it as a sign of high social status, pride, non-sexual moral standing, respectability, and good reputation (38–39).46 However, in the context of honor-based violence, it must be stated that “şeref” just like “šaraf” is not gender-neutral, as it mostly refers to the honor of the man whose reputation is damaged by the fact that a female relative loses her honor “namus.” In general, Ermers is against a “gender bias” (31), claiming that, for instance, allocating “sexual restraint as an honor attribute exclusive to women” is not justified (34). Yet the fact that there is a specific expression to describe the sexual honor of women (namus/’ird), with none exclusively depicting the notion of male sexual honor that can be lost, speaks for itself and thus against Ermers’s statement that sexual restraint is positively evaluated “for both genders” (34). We will show in the following that men who have a “reputation of not controlling their sexual desires,” who make undesired sexual advances or who are accused of rape (34) are often judged less severely in honor cultures than a woman who does the same.
Similarly to Reddy as well as Sev’er and Yurdakul, Bilgili and Vural insist on the fact that the expression “sharaf” (or “şeref”) stands for a man’s honor, which is the sum of his own masculinity, his social status, and his power to protect his ←35 | 36→own and his family’s name (see Bilgili and Vural 66; on “warrior masculinity,” Churchill 138 ff.).47 Delaney stresses that “a man’s honor depends on his ability to control ‘his’ woman” (39), which at the same time highlights a woman’s being regarded as a man’s property. Among other duties, the responsible male always has to keep an eye on the female relative’s immaculate appearance in public. Whereas in dignity cultures individual honor is at least theoretically opposed to individual guilt, in honor cultures female shame (originally individual, but then made public), resulting from a woman’s violation of existing honor codes, can quickly trigger the loss of collective honor. Taking all these different aspects into account, we can thus claim that, in honor cultures, there exist some kinds of gender-specific honor that can usually not be found in dignity cultures.
Secondly, honor cultures are generally characterized by a complex interrelation between mostly collectivistic but also partly individualistic understandings of honor-related issues, because people wish to maintain a positive self-image as well as a positive group image.48 Members of honor-shame communities display “some collectivist characteristics” and at the same time “affinities with individualist cultures” (Churchill 95). This idea of honor as a group value is opposed to a characteristically individualistic perception of honor in dignity cultures, which is one of the main reasons why Fischer et al. distinguish between “individualistic versus honour-related values” (Fischer et al. 149). According to Caffaro et al. as well as Cihangir, only a few studies take the aspects of individualism versus collectivism into account when examining particular understandings of honor. However, especially in the context of immigration, these factors need to ←36 | 37→be examined to get a better grasp of the overall concept.49 When individuals have qualities on which others reflect, they undergo a formal reduction, based on “a particular relational identity” (Oprisko 30). As a result, for immigrants who have been living in a dignity culture for several generations, honor-related rumors about their family that might be spreading in their neighborhood still have a lastingly negative impact on their family name, regardless of the fact that they are far away from their homeland.
Concerning rumor and gossip, which can be a direct consequence of honor loss, Karen Adkins stresses that gossip “functions selectively”: “we sort through information to figure out what we want to pay attention to”; in using gossip “we synthesize, we combine disparate bits of information (often that don’t intrinsically appear to belong together) into a story or explanation for some sort of dissonant behavior, act, value, or person” (3). The backdrop of “our previous ideas, beliefs, and sometimes prejudices,” of which we may be unaware, is decisive (Adkins 3). Though the terms “gossip” and “rumor” are frequently used as (near-)synonyms, Adkins argues that there is “an assumed relationship of
