HONOUR AND SHAME IN THE MED
HONOUR AND SHAME IN THE MED.
By the end of the 1950s a group of anthropologists, led by J. G. Peristiany, started a discussion about the existence of the Mediterranean as a territory characterized by some common features that assured its cultural homogeneity. One of the main publications that contributed to found the anthropology of the Mediterranean was the anthology Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society edited by Peristiany (1966). Even if Peristiany and Pitt-Rivers have claimed recently that they have never meant "to establish the Mediterranean as a 'culture area'" (Peristiany and Pitt-Rivers 1992: 6), their previous statements about "the continuity and persistence of Mediterranean modes of thought" (Peristiany 1966: 9) were actually understood by the scholarly world as an implicit acknowledgement of the existence of such a unified entity. The so-called "honor and shame" syndrome was one of the most important "modes of thought" that Peristiany and his colleagues in 1966 assumed to be pan-Mediterranean: their belief was that "there exists a sex-linked, binary opposition in which honor is associated with men and shame with women" and both honor and shame are "inextricably linked, tied to one another in cognitive as well as affective terms" (Brandes 1987: 122). Since then this "syndrome" became constantly associated with Mediterranean studies.
It could be argued that the articles included in the Peristiany volume are perhaps less unanimous than the editor states; they focus on different societies, chosen among the most marginal ones in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean so as "to tribalize" them; and finally, they exemplify the classical shortcomings of Mediterranean anthropology, namely, the "failure to compare, to make use of history, to work in cities, to relate part to whole" (Boissevain 1979: 81-82). In spite of these difficulties, the concept of a pan-mediterranean "honor and shame" syndrome soon became the "bread and butter" of
By the end of the 1950s a group of anthropologists, led by J. G. Peristiany, started a discussion about the existence of the Mediterranean as a territory characterized by some common features that assured its cultural homogeneity. One of the main publications that contributed to found the anthropology of the Mediterranean was the anthology Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society edited by Peristiany (1966). Even if Peristiany and Pitt-Rivers have claimed recently that they have never meant "to establish the Mediterranean as a 'culture area'" (Peristiany and Pitt-Rivers 1992: 6), their previous statements about "the continuity and persistence of Mediterranean modes of thought" (Peristiany 1966: 9) were actually understood by the scholarly world as an implicit acknowledgement of the existence of such a unified entity. The so-called "honor and shame" syndrome was one of the most important "modes of thought" that Peristiany and his colleagues in 1966 assumed to be pan-Mediterranean: their belief was that "there exists a sex-linked, binary opposition in which honor is associated with men and shame with women" and both honor and shame are "inextricably linked, tied to one another in cognitive as well as affective terms" (Brandes 1987: 122). Since then this "syndrome" became constantly associated with Mediterranean studies.
It could be argued that the articles included in the Peristiany volume are perhaps less unanimous than the editor states; they focus on different societies, chosen among the most marginal ones in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean so as "to tribalize" them; and finally, they exemplify the classical shortcomings of Mediterranean anthropology, namely, the "failure to compare, to make use of history, to work in cities, to relate part to whole" (Boissevain 1979: 81-82). In spite of these difficulties, the concept of a pan-mediterranean "honor and shame" syndrome soon became the "bread and butter" of