ABSTRACT
The chapter explains the consequence of a culture-of-honor tradition in the South rather than of other factors that have been proposed. It examines the role of women in the southern culture of honor, including the extent to which they socialize and sanction male behavior and the extent to which they participate in a culture of honor themselves. The chapter discusses the thesis about the frontier-herding origins of this culture of honor. The culture of honor appears to be sustained by collective manifestations ranging from shared assumptions about the beliefs of others to institutional codes including laws and social policies. In some Mediterranean cultures, it is the women who routinely carry out some sorts of homicides, for example, the stoning to death of women believed to be unfaithful. The hypothesis suggests that cultures of honor should be relatively rare for some kinds of economies, particularly, hunter-gatherer economies and stable agricultural economies.
