ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that individuals can acquire the moral stigma of cowardice when they fail to act in a certain way. When the individual fails to react, or responds disproportionately to minor insults, they risk being stigmatized, rejected and ostracized for cowardice. The chapter explores honor related violence, such as (violent) social sanctions, blood revenge and honor killing, against these two categories. Predatory attacks, being more lethal than moralistic attacks, the victims are often strangers rather than intimates or acquaintances. Moralistic violence is often social control or conflict management. The prevention of moral deviance is a regular motive of honor related violence. Predatory motives go hand in hand with instrumental aggression, which is premeditated, and exercised for ‘some goal other than harming the victim, and [is] proactive rather than reactive’. If cowardice is a moral issue, an accusation of cowardice is a moral accusation.
