In 1959, a group of anthropologists assembled in an Austrian castle to discuss the nature of cultures around the Mediterranean region. Their brainstorming produced a striking idea: if you want to understand the political dynamic of societies in places ranging from Andalusia to Jordan, you need to look at the concept of “honour and shame”.
The reason? Most northern European cultures tend to assume that societies should be shaped by legal rules, bureaucratic hierarchies and a sense that everybody should be equal in front of the law and state. However, according to Matthew Engelke, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, in many Mediterranean cultures “authority [has traditionally] resided in the family unit”, rather than in the state.
“Displays of power were exercised in and through individuals, even when they related to corporate identities,” he observes in his new book, Think Like an Anthropologist, adding that power and status “were often made in the form of bravado and raw assertions of might”. To put it another way, what creates social glue in the Mediterranean region is not government; instead it is a sense of “honour”, which means defending family and friends at all costs against perceived enemies, never mind the law.