Shadow of the caste: Exploring culture of honor in a southern town.
Item
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Title
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Shadow of the caste: Exploring culture of honor in a southern town.
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Identifier
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AAI3296929
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identifier
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3296929
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Creator
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Foster-Paley, Donna.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Michelle Fine
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Date
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2008
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Social
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Abstract
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The southern United States has been labeled by psychologists as a monolithic culture of honor and violence. Nisbett and Cohen's (1996) hypothesis is that the South is a culture of honor, a culture in which masculinity for males and violent protection of property and loved ones is respected by the community. The values and ideologies of cultures of honor have been identified: the values of a facade of consensus, focus on appearances and on status, and normed inequality are predominant. Dominant ideologies include property-holding honor ideology, an ideology of shame sexuality, of conformity, and of meritocracy. The academic literature is rife with undocumented stereotyping of southerners as a single group with a single viewpoint or "mind" (Cash, 1941). This study sought to identify the values and ideologies of a variety of southerners, including southerners of different genders, races, and financial statuses. The focus is on everyday disagreements and community conflicts, rather than homicide statistics, and the unwritten rules of interaction. The study design was composed of twenty-four interviews with community members in a southern town. Grounded theory was used in the analysis of the data: open coding was used to reveal the values, ideologies, and unwritten rules of interaction for community members. This type of analysis allowed the words and stories of southerners to inform the work and give voice to their own values and beliefs rather than those attributed to them by others. The perspectives of the understudied, poor people, people of color, and activists, were examined. I found a community that operated as a fractured culture of honor, based not on the control of women as in other cultures, but as a race-based culture of honor built on control of African-Americans in particular. All participants narrated a strong protective and reactive southern identity. There were a variety of complex standpoints; the largest differences were around race and level of activism. The interplay of history, a culture of honor foundation, the use of moral exclusion (Opotow, 1990), and the strength of southern identity were all crucial to understanding this southern community.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
