Honor cultures arise where livestock theft requires self-defense absent legal protection

Evidence

The so-called culture of honor of the American South is similar in some ways to that of Oman. The culture supposedly comes from Scotland in its days of relatively anarchic shepherding—anarchic in the sense of having limited legal devices so that individuals had to defend their own interests against others. Because sheep are relatively easily stolen, shepherds armed themselves to defend their flocks. The culture that developed was one of quickness to anger and violence coupled with remarkable gentility and politesse in ordinary relations. Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen (1996) find that, still today, male southerners are typically polite and even respectful to strangers but quick to anger and hurtful to others when their anger is aroused. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 463

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the reader’s Hobbesian-degradation theme: a state’s absence forces self-help monitoring and violence, the same mechanism Saramago’s sudden blindness triggers.