As an emerging subcultural model, the culture of honor combines
previous notions of race and region (Nisbett and Cohen 1996). This
model states that white males reared in the rural South are more likely
to approve of violence in some situations, specifically those involving
protection of self, personal honor, family, or personal property.
Recall, Swidler’s (1986) ‘‘tool-kit.’’ Southerners simply are more apt
to draw a violent response from their tool-kit than others, given cer-
tain situations. To view it another way, Southerners have violence
near the top of their ‘‘cultural repertoire’’ when others may not. This
is a different approach than previous subcultural explanations of viol-
ence in the South because it focuses on a very limited and well-defined
demographic group, and couples this with a focus on violence having
protective motives. The culture of honor was most likely established
when the first settlers moved into the Southern regions of the United
States. As stated before, these settlers relied on a culture of honor as a
self-policing tool due to the lack of law enforcement in rural areas.
The high regard for personal honor was passed down through genera-
tions, and is still somewhat present today (Nisbett and Cohen 1996).
Nisbett and Cohen (1996) state that they borrow the term ‘‘culture
of honor’’ from anthropology, but insist that they confine their
theorizing to only part of its complete meaning. For example,
Wyatt-Brown (1982), who also discussed honor in the South indicates
that honor is often considered multidimensional and deals with more
than response to threats and handling personal disputes without
involving the authorities. Rather, honor is (1) ‘‘an inner conviction
of self-worth’’ (2) the ability to show that self-worth in public,
and (3) the assessment by the public of the self-worth of the individ-
ual (Wyatt-Brown 1982, p.14.) Thus to Wyatt-Brown, an individual
must first believe that he or she is honorable, they must not hesitate
to act honorably in public and finally, for the public or community
to consider an individual honorable, their public actions must be
interpreted as such.
There are clearly internal and external components to Wyatt-
Brown’s definition of honor, and this definition of honor is very gen-
eral and applies to virtually all public displays or overt behavior. So,
in general a culture of honor refers to a group or society that relies on
public displays to evaluate individual behavior and in a sense individ-
ual worth. Specifically, if someone were to be threatened in a culture
of honor, and especially if that threat were in public, the individual
would feel the need to quickly respond to that threat to show that he
or she is still an honorable person, both to himself and to the group.
This is the main aspect that Nisbett and Cohen (1996) focus on in
their theory.
