Two sociologists, Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, have a theory as to why a new culture of victimhood is emerging on college campuses. They argue that it is a combination of an honor culture and a dignity culture, and that this new culture is the result of a merger of the two.
00:04:22.580It's like you said, a reputation, but it's a certain type of reputation.
00:04:26.060Can you guys go into a little deeper about what that reputation meant and why it was so
00:04:30.280important that you had to defend that reputation?
00:04:32.420Well, you see this classical notion of honor, which is not incompatible with reputation for sincerity or honesty or other things we associate with honor today.
00:04:44.860But the core of it in earlier times and places, and today in certain times and places where law is weak or absent, is maintaining this reputation for toughness, a kind of pugnacity, a willingness to defend oneself at the drop of a hat.
00:05:01.100And you tend to find it exactly in those places where people rely on toughness as a means of protecting themselves, their family.
00:05:08.560It's a way of deterring predation or attack from other people.
00:05:12.300And so one of the characteristics of these honor settings is that there's not a stable or reliable legal system in place, not a way of peacefully resolving conflicts or deterring predation.
00:05:23.920And so people rely on this reputation for being tough as a way of protecting themselves.
00:05:29.600You see it in the classical form in, say, medieval societies or ancient societies.
00:05:35.660And you see a modern form of it in various low-income, high-violence neighborhoods in the United States.
00:05:42.940Recently, a journalist, Jill Leovey, wrote a book about homicide in South L.A., for instance.
00:05:49.520She speaks of the need for young men to act tough when they walk the streets and project an image of being willing to retaliate quickly and severely in order to protect themselves in these high-crime areas.
00:06:03.620And this is curious, because, I mean, is it – is that why honor – so I'm guessing that's why honor existed in the past, because particularly in America, there was an established law enforcement, really.
00:06:15.600We didn't have the police force like we did today.
00:06:17.200So if you wanted to protect yourself, you had to do it on your own.
00:06:29.760And isn't there – I mean, I don't know if this has been sort of disputed by some sociologists recently, but there's a theory that, you know, Southerners embrace honor because police state is weak.
00:06:38.780But also, most of the migrants or most of the people who immigrated to the South were from Scotland and they were herders.
00:06:45.160Is there anything to that whole herder culture – something that encourages an honor culture?
00:06:54.600Yes, I would say they almost certainly brought this culture with them and reproduced it to some extent in the South.
00:07:01.380And that's one of the ideas – yeah, I mean, I guess it is disputed, but even, you know, the Southeastern part of the United States still has more, you know, higher rates of violence than other parts of the country.
00:07:13.380And the South – across the United States, because they migrated west, the same people.
00:07:18.000And so there is the idea that there's this – that kind of, you know, spreading of the culture and yet would have been rooted in the herding societies that they came from.
00:07:30.000And you find cross-culturally that the herding societies often have the synthesis on strength because animals are movable property and easily stolen.
00:08:32.980The big downside is that it's associated with a lot of violence.
00:08:37.400And, you know, in a certain society where there's not law, you can see why you need to maintain this reputation for toughness and engage in violence, maybe to prevent more in the future and prevent yourself from being victimized.
00:08:48.060But it can also lead, you know, to sort of a chain of violence where there's retaliation for one act of violence that leads to retaliation for another.
00:08:59.440In clan-based societies, there are, you know, tribal societies, there's often blood feuding where one clan, you know, a member of one clan has killed a member of another clan.
00:09:12.900And the response is that people from the, you know, the clan of the victim go and kill somebody from the clan of the killer.
00:09:18.800Well, then they respond then by killing somebody from the other clan, and it keeps going back and forth and can do so until they come up with some kind of truce.
00:09:35.020But the idea is, again, you have this, you know, especially when, you know, when homicides aren't dealt with by the state, when people aren't punished for them, you end up having this, you know, this chain of retaliation that leads to a lot more violence overall than it would be if it's just quickly suppressed by the state.
00:09:52.720Yeah. And it's interesting. I mean, the reason why we've, we've written extensively about honor, sort of the history of traditional honor, because it's so tied up with masculinity, right?
00:10:02.160You talk about the characteristics in an honor culture that are prized, our strength, courage, willingness to retaliate against slights.
00:10:13.120And you say there still exists in pockets of the modern West, particularly gangs, where honor cultures exist in their fullest.
00:10:22.340But I've noticed that even amongst people like us, right, we're college educated, white guys, who there's like twinges of it a bit, right?
00:10:32.340Like there's like, if a guy gets called a chicken, like that stings for some reason.
00:10:38.380Even though, you know, it's like, yeah, we all still have a little bit of it in us.
00:10:50.860It's one of the things that, you know, when we're talking about like an honor culture, we see honor as something that, you know, it's sort of valued over other things.
00:11:00.400So it's still, it's still often, you know, a kind of status in other settings.
00:11:05.880It's, you know, bravery is, you know, is, is something that is, is still important and even your reputation for it.
00:11:12.420And yeah, even, even when you're taught, so if you're, you're in more of a culture of dignity where you're taught, don't respond violently, brush off insults.
00:11:20.440Yeah. I mean, like you're saying, I think we all have these, these moments where our blood boils and we can, you know, we're just completely angry, you know.
00:11:28.620And, you know, the difference is that we have that kind of thing, you know, society is telling us not to respond, right?
00:11:35.180And when we think of what we're supposed to do morally.
00:11:37.580And if you're in an honor culture, though, if the full blown culture of honor, you know, you would, it would be, it would be shameful for you not to respond.
00:11:46.820Your family would expect that other people would too, because you would, you would lose status.
00:11:51.560It wouldn't be just about a kind of a, a momentary feeling of anger that you would want.
00:11:57.140Yeah. And you guys made this point in your, in the paper as well, is that although honor culture doesn't really exist in the West and even in most industrial countries, it does exist.
00:12:11.000It doesn't exist for people. It still exists on a nation state level, right?
00:12:15.920Countries are always really concerned about, you know, okay, China or, you know, we just had in the news recently, the U.S. like went into like Chinese territory and the Chinese are like, we're going to do something to show that we saw that and you can't respect us.
00:12:30.440And I guess it's because at a nation state level, there isn't a higher authority you can really go to. Correct?
00:12:37.180Correct. States, oddly enough, exist in a stateless society.
00:12:41.080There is no common court system they can go to. I mean, there are international organizations, but they have little real authority of any kind.
00:12:49.060And so states do still show this concern with maintaining their reputation and with being able to respond to aggression in a aggressive manner.
00:12:59.300Yeah, it is. So yeah, people want to see honor culture manifest, just watch international politics.
00:13:04.280Okay, so let's talk, we've talked about honor culture. The second type of moral culture that we transitioned to after honor culture was what you all called dignity culture.
00:13:16.080And you mentioned that one of the characteristics is that you don't use violence.
00:13:20.100But what are some of the other characteristics of a dignity culture and why did it arise?
00:13:24.800Yeah, one thing we should point out is that people use these terms differently.
00:13:29.460I mean, as you mentioned before, you know, we talk about honor meaning something else all the time, integrity or something.
00:13:35.300And so we're using honor and dignity in a very specific sense here.
00:13:39.240We didn't invent these terms used in this way, but other people use them differently.
00:13:43.920So when we're talking about dignity, then it's something very different from a reputation for bravery.
00:13:50.000The idea is that with dignity is that everybody has this moral work that's just apparent to you as a human being.
00:13:57.680And it can't be taken away from you if somebody insults you or something.
00:14:05.140And so, and this exists in an environment where you do have strong state authority.
00:14:10.880So the idea is if there's a serious offense, if there's violence against you, someone harms you, someone steals from you, you go to the police, you go to the courts.
00:14:17.560But if it's not very serious, then maybe just ignore it.
00:14:22.380And so that's what ends up happening in a dignity culture.
00:14:25.440And almost every, you know, it's often just completely the opposite of honor culture in terms of the morality that's taught.
00:14:34.620So instead of being told that you must defend your reputation, you're told to ignore insults.
00:14:41.160Sticks and stones will break my bones.
00:14:51.800It's important to emphasize too, I think.
00:14:54.060And I've read some of Brett's work on personal honor or what he calls private honor and the importance of reputation in a contemporary setting.
00:15:03.980But in what we're calling dignity cultures, your reputation might matter, but it can't be harmed by what others do to you.
00:15:11.500You can harm your own reputation through your own actions by doing something that's a violation of moral rules.
00:15:17.280But you cannot have your reputation shattered by others harming you.
00:15:21.600It's them who are in the wrong and not you.
00:15:23.320Versus in an honor culture, you're the one who experiences shame if you've been victimized by others.
00:15:28.200And it's up to you then to demonstrate what's a show of violence often, you know, if somebody has insulted you, even if they're wrong.
00:15:35.620Whereas the idea in a dignity culture would be, if they're wrong, then ignore it.
00:16:14.800It's honor and dignity both are connected to equality, egalitarianism in a sense, and that honor disputes are between equals, but they're often in a stratified society where, you know, so there's this exclusive group that has honor, and other people who are below them, slaves or whatever, don't.
00:16:32.900And so, yeah, with democracy, you end up having the idea that everybody has worth, and so when there's not an exclusive group that's thought of as, you know, having more moral worth of some kind, then I think that's one of the things that weakens honor, too.
00:16:56.180I know it's really squidgy when you're talking about transitions to moral cultures, but would it be safe to say, like, industrialization in the United States is when you really see that transition from honor culture to dignity culture?
00:17:40.240I know it's a place in the early 19th century, but I think you're right, but I think you're right that as industrialization picked up, the transition quickened and reached its fullest, especially in the Civil War.
00:17:55.900Yeah, I'm guessing that's when police power and state power was actually fully established in the United States, because, yeah, you're right, up until about 1900, I mean, it really was the Wild West still here in the West.
00:18:09.300It wouldn't be for a few years until we would actually have governments, working governments in these really remote areas.
00:18:17.240So that brings us to victim culture, victimhood culture, you're seeing now.
00:18:24.960So let's talk about the characteristics of victimhood culture and what you saw in the broader culture that made you suspect that we are transitioning to another moral culture to handle conflict.
00:18:40.020We began seeing these things on college campuses or, you know, coming from them.
00:18:47.520I mean, one incident occurred in March of 2013, and this is kind of when we started thinking about this.
00:18:56.160There was an incident at Oberlin College where they shut down the campus and canceled classes after a student saw someone they believe was wearing a Klan robe.
00:19:13.020And at the time, we were sort of amazed by this.
00:19:16.720You know, I mean, it seemed like it seemed very unlikely that there was a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan at Oberlin College.
00:19:22.340And it did turn out that, you know, that it was somebody in a bathrobe or a towel or blanket or something.
00:19:29.340And so there's that, that you had this idea of people at Oberlin College who thought that they were living in an environment that was kind of a hotbed of racism.
00:19:39.720Well, at the same time, you know, so we were looking at things and a colleague pointed me toward this Oberlin microaggressions website.
00:19:48.560This was the first time I had had seen the term microaggression.
00:19:53.300And so these are, you know, the idea is that there are these slights, even unintentional slights that are experienced by minority groups and that they cause real harm.
00:20:03.520You know, and so the students on the Oberlin microaggressions website were documenting all these little things that they called microaggressions that were examples of racism or some other kind of dominance.
00:20:16.860You know, there was, you know, there was a student who said that she was in the gym and overheard a professor saying that she was glad both she and her husband had blue eyes.
00:20:28.920And the student then comments and says, I don't want casual racism in my professors.
00:20:33.500And, you know, there are other incidents like this that were, you know, small matters.
00:20:37.740If anything, it's kind of a matter of interpretation.
00:20:39.980But the idea was that they were trying to highlight these things.
00:20:45.020And so it didn't seem like what we're familiar with as a culture of dignity where you ignore slights.
00:20:51.620They weren't, you're not only not ignoring them, broadcasting them, not giving, you know, not giving people the benefit of the doubt on intentions and things like that.
00:21:00.740And so we thought, you know, what's going on?
00:21:03.040Is it, you know, is it a culture of honor?
00:21:05.560You know, so in honor cultures, people are famously sensitive to slight, but obviously in this case, these people are not, are not responding violently.
00:21:13.200They're not fighting duels or harming people.
00:21:15.320They are complaining and complaining to third parties.
00:21:19.700And so, and they're especially, you know, what you see that's very different from honor cultures.
00:21:23.800In honor culture, when you're slighted, you use violence because the whole point is to show that you're not weak.
00:21:52.320I know it's kind of, it's become into the, the mainstream, uh, recently.
00:21:57.520I think this year is when I, you really start seeing in all the newspapers and magazines and things like that.
00:22:02.040Um, but for our listeners who aren't familiar with it, you gave one example of microaggression that were professors said, I'm glad I have blue eyes.
00:22:08.780Um, what are some other examples of microaggressions that are, are common microaggressions?
00:22:15.140Uh, there are almost too many to keep track of at this point.
00:22:18.720And I was reading a news story today, yesterday saying that using the term politically correct is a microaggression that was recently.
00:22:39.880There was a document put out by the university of California.
00:22:44.400It's, um, it was, it was part of a, uh, uh, uh, a teacher training thing, or, you know, some training for faculty that, and it has about 52 examples of microaggressions listed.
00:22:56.420And yeah, some of them were, were things like that.