Family honor
Family honor is an abstract concept involving the perceived quality of worthiness and respectability that affects the social standing and the self-evaluation of a group of related people, both corporately and individually. The family is viewed as the main source of honor, and the community highly values the relationship between honor and the family. The conduct of family members reflects upon family honor and the way the family perceives itself and is perceived by others. Family honor can be dependent upon many factors. Areas that are affected by family honor include multiple aspects of lifestyle such as social status, religion, clothing, eating, education, job or career, ownership such as real estate, and marriage.
People who live in cultures of honor perceive family as the central institution in their society, and a person's social identity depends largely on their family. Therefore, it is important for these individuals to fulfill expectations of family and society in order to be accepted by their family and experience feelings of belonging to this central institution that they are tied to through birth or marriage. In some cultures, maintaining family honor is perceived as more important than either individual freedom or individual achievement.
The ideology and practice of family honor varies from country to country. Individuals of certain cultures are often unaware or discerning in their understanding of differing cultural traditions. Many fail to grasp the concept of honor as the basis for traditions such as defending one's honor or their family's. Some cultures value family honor more than others. Many times a family's honor may overpower the actions or beliefs of the individual. However, a theme that is common within many traditions is the respecting of elders. Children of the family are to respect their elders who have earned what some call a "badge of 'honor'" representative of their age. Once an individual has lived many years, they have earned this badge of honor and should be shown respect, teaching their young the cultural traditions that have deemed them honorable.
History
An individual is considered as honorable based on their behaviors and characteristics they display that the society deems to be worthy of honor. In addition, honor also entails the aspect of how high of a position an individual holds in relation to the group and how much they are respected by others.One of the ideals of family honor is social class. Social class can be defined as a group of people categorized into a hierarchy based on the amount of money they have accumulated, how much education they have received, and the amount of power they hold within society, amongst other variables. People who play similar roles within society tend to have similar outlooks. Social standing affects the way in which families form. It determines how and who a person mates with, how they raise their children, and how people relate to one another.
Historically, honor is a quality ascribed to an individual in two ways: either by obtaining it through their birth into an honorable family or being assigned as honorable by powerful people who hold higher status in the society. An individual's parental lineage, is the traditional source for their honor. Because honor is passed through paternal lineage in most patrilineal cultures, these societies historically considered having sons as a source of pride and honor. For example, in the Moroccan culture, it is still a preference among women to have sons instead of daughters. Morocco is a typical patrilineal society in which the son has a more important function for the family such as the son supports his parents once they have aged compared to the daughter who will marry into a different group becoming a loss to the family. In such societies men also hold more sexual rights compared to women besides the supportive role men obtain from caring for their aging parents. Women in these societies are perceived as threats to family honor.
Within cultures, honor is an important and highly esteemed theme. It can be maintained through living up to one's word and promises, providing for the family, and keeping a certain social status. Honor can be affected by women and men through ways in which a woman can shame her family through disapproved actions, and a man heightens his family's honorable status. Ensuing constant pressure to uphold her family's honor, a woman can suffer psychological and social damage.
Gender roles
The different effects honor instills upon women and men can be seen in the ancient world, where women and men played contrasting roles in society. Men displayed their honorable roles in public while women were restricted to the limitations of their households. While in public, women were required to avoid conversations with estranged men while only visiting places frequented by women. In the present Islamic culture, men hold a higher social status, but they also carry more responsibility in caring and providing for their family. If a man is single or childless his place in society does not waver or become lower. A woman should have a family whom she stays faithful to and respectful towards at all times. A man's actions will not greatly affect or hurt his family's standing like a woman's actions would. Women are perceived as vulnerable individuals who must be kept safe at all times. This aspect of a woman's characterization comes from her fertility and role within her family.Societies in which "family honor" is considered highly important generally place a correspondingly high degree of restriction of the freedom of women. In these cultures, a family may defend its honor, or may seek reparation or revenge if the family honor is perceived to have been abused or treated with disrespect. In Ancient Rome, sexual activity of married women outside of their marriage was seen as dishonor to the family and it was legal for men to kill their wives or married daughters that shamed the family through adultery. Reasoning for the designation of women to private and/or nonmale areas comes from the ancient tradition of a woman's place in the world. Women are not seen as independent individuals, but rather extensions of their male counterparts' identity and honor.
Family honor within society
Because the approval of honor is dependent upon the recognition of others, during ancient times individuals worked hard for the approval of their peers within their societal cultures. This meant that individuals were more likely to behave like their honorable counterparts. Groups reinforced what it meant to be honorable through various expected behaviors and goals placed amongst individual members. This discouraged members from any negative activity that may have adversely affected a group or family's honor. In the event that the leader of the group promoted actions that did not appear to be honorable on a larger societal scale, the leader then offered some explanation defending their actions which lead to the preservation of what they defined as honor and their traditions forever.In Ancient Rome, chastity and loyalty of members of a family was an important factor contributing to family honor in addition to social standing and accomplishments of that family. For example, if a married woman committed adultery, her father had the legal right to kill her whereas her husband was required to divorce her. If the husband chose not to divorce his wife, he would jeopardize his honor and be labeled as a pimp.
In opposition to freedom
In some cultures with strong principles of family honor, offspring are not free to choose a partner for themselves but may instead be expected to enter into an arranged marriage or if the offspring resists, into a forced marriage or child marriage.The use of violence may be collective in its character, where many relatives act together. The roles of women and men in this type of honor culture varies between persecutors and the oppressed, for instance a son in a family may be forced to enter into an arranged marriage by his older relatives while controlling his sisters.
Family honor within different cultures
Honor cultures exist throughout the world but are more common among peoples from regions stretching from North Africa via the Middle East, Central Asia and to the Indian subcontinent. Examples of these countries are Afghanistan, Albania, Eritrea, Iraq, Kurdistan, Libya, Palestine, Pakistan and Somalia. Family honour is also an important part of Latin American culture.Middle East and Africa
The aspects of family honor mentioned above differ throughout varying cultures and countries. Family honor in the Bedouin and other Middle Eastern cultures consists of interdependent forms of ird and sharaf. Ird is the honor of a woman she is born with which involves her chastity and continence whereas sharaf is the honor code for men which depends on ird of women in the family. Due to its connection to ird, sharaf includes protecting ird of the family members. The adherence to these gender-specific honor codes is important to keep the respectability and sexual honors of the family, particularly men, known as namus. For example, the sexual relationships of a woman are seen in these societies to make her impure and of lesser value, which affects her eligibility for marriage. Public knowledge and gossip about sexual impurity or adultery are proposed to be the main reasons that loss of family honor can bring shame to the family. Preservation of family honor is not only important for respectability of family members in society but also affects the fate of all family members. To protect family honor and dignity, families may resort in killing the woman who is involved in the dishonorable act. In an associated context, to protect the purity and chastity of young girls, families may decide to practice female genital mutilation, a practice that removes or damages female genital organs to assure that sex will not be pleasurable. A mutilated woman is changed so that she has no desire to engage in sexual activity that may undermine the family's honor.An example of this can be seen in Sierra Leone, Africa where young girls are mutilated every year. The number of girls mutilated in Africa per year has risen to 3 million. Rugiatu Turay, founder of the Amazonian Initiative Movement, protects young girls from being circumcised by other women in secret societies like Sande and other female practitioners who still engage in the ceremonial tradition today. Girls as young as the age of five assist in the mutilation of other young girls in the country. At the age of 12, Turay was snatched by female family members, held down and had her clitoris cut off with a knife. She was beaten, forced to walk, and had hot pepper water poured in her eyes. As she was mutilated, the women sang, danced, and clap ceremoniously. According to these women, Turay had become a woman. However, females are generally mutilated under the age of 15. Girls who are trained to assist in this ceremony are trained as young as five years old. Turay has convinced 400 practitioners to stop the practice of female mutilation, but 97 million females have been mutilated within the country and the numbers remain constant, even increasing. The practice has been enforced by politicians within the country and locals refer to the practice as a ceremony that initiates womanhood, prepares females for marriage, and restricts their sexual conduct.