The Civilized and the Barbarous: Honor in French and Turkish Contemporary Societies.

• Author: Dilmac, Julie Alev
• Position: Report

From anthropological studies describing social representations of Mediterranean countries, (2) to the outskirts of Paris, (3) to the analysis of its evolution and role in contemporary society, (4) honor holds a privileged place in humanities research. Although there have been a significant number of studies describing cultural differences emanating from this principle, honor is nonetheless a common element of various societies. While the term varies from one culture to another, what it designates is quite similar.

The principle of honor confers a specific place and status to the individual, allowing her or him to exist in a given society. It allows individuals to situate themselves within the collectivity in which they evolve, prescribing codes and conducts relative to their age, sex, (5) or social status. (6) Previous studies have given rise to a multitude of descriptions of honor, showing that this principle is present in numerous spheres of existence, but especially that it can take on various meanings: honor can be a "feeling", (7) an "entitlement to respect," (8) a combination of certain qualities such as "strength", "courage" or "integrity," (9) the "moral value of an individual," (10) a moral principle and a duty, (11) "an ideology," (12) or even "the need to attain a certain prestige within society." (13)

Honor is a complex principle that on various levels influences daily life. Often judged as outdated and ill-suited to modern society, honor can be seen as too rigid a concept, which is too "engaging" in a "liquid society." (14) However, honor cannot be abandoned without engendering a feeling of unease. If discussions of honor in daily life may seem irrelevant to todays world, forgoing it and living without honor remains inconceivable to people living in both these societies.

The goal of this research is to understand the place of honor in todays world, in an increasingly rationalized and profit-oriented world, in which individuals are characterized by their interchangeability. Mainly, this paper seeks to reveal how honor is expressed in todays consumer society and globalized world.

To conduct this research, I chose to analyze the honor principle in France and Turkey, which, although in geographical proximity, represent distinct traditions. The goal was to grasp the multiple understandings of honor among twenty to twenty-seven-year-olds in these two societies, focusing on identifying similarities, but also differences.

France and Turkey were chosen for comparison for specific reasons. In Turkey, three terms exists to describe the concept of "honor," namely seref, onur and namus. Although closely related, each term refers to different spheres; public, private and intimate. (15) These three words are used in the everyday life and are considered by the Turkish population as more important than life - in Turkey, people can kill for honor, they swear "on their honor," and they drink to one's "honor." The concept of honor seems to play a totally different role in French society. It is considered obsolete, harkening back to the principles of Musketeers and the chivalry of the Middle Ages. In short, for the French population, this term tends to be poorly suited for life in modern society. Starting from this observation, this paper shall analyze the divergences of these two perceptions. For the purpose of this paper, honor shall be represented by the concepts of "honneur" in French and "seref" in Turkish, which seem to share similar denotations.

The basis of this research is informal interviews were that conducted with young adults, between the ages of twenty and twenty-seven-years-old. This age group offered the opportunity to study the transformation of this principle. The Turkish young adults interviewed for this research were born in the 1980s, a period during which the country open its borders to foreign products. A liberal market emerged, having a huge impact on society. This generation grew up in a context in which the Turkish, the foreign, and market values all existed together. Life for these adults is now characterized by its apolitical nature and a lifestyle based on unrestrained consumerism. (16)

By looking at the 1980s generation of French people, it is possible to note similar transformations. These young peoples lives have been changed not only by social and economic factors, but by a general transformation that also occurred as wealth and production migrated to newly industrializing economies. The spread of technology and popular culture metamorphosed the habits of this generation. In France, this age group grew up in a society characterized by its political and social instability, causing a high rate of unemployment, and engendered by the ideology of 1980s, "neoliberalism." In 1981, in an attempt to lower unemployment, the French governments priority was to help companies become profitable and to encourage investment. France entered into a period of austerity, which the French population had no other choice but to accept. In the 1990s, the economic situation changed, and diverse categories of "have-nots" (such as the unemployed, the homeless and undocumented immigrants), who were until then considered victims of capitalism, stood up for their rights. This period was characterized by important movements, which tried to question the nature of the capitalist system.

The insecurity provoked by this social instability led to the dependence of the youth on the older generation. For example, numerous young adults still live with their parents and depend on them financially. In France, this population represented 11.6 percent of the twenty-five to thirty-four-year-olds in 2011, although they were only 8 percent in 2007. (17) True, it seems that this phenomenon is not only prevalent among French young adults: the 2012 ING International Survey on Homes and Mortgages (18) found moving back home was also prevalent in Turkey, Romania, Italy and Spain. The American crisis of subprime mortgages also intensified this global phenomenon. New terminology emerged to describe this group of young adults remaining in the parental home for extended periods; generation "boomerang," "kangaroo," "hotel Mama" or "altricial," referring to a species of birds who are born blind and helpless, depending completely on their parents for warmth and food until they have developed enough to leave the nest. This generation has then lived with the consequences of the economical, social and political transitions of their generation. They grew up in a world characterized by planetarisation, (19) in which individuals have to adapt themselves to a rationalized world, focused upon profit.

The aim of this study is to see how French and Turkish people born between 1980 and 1990 have adjusted the social expectations imposed by honor (such as restraint and constancy) to those dictated by the merchandise society based on exacerbate flexibility. To conduct this research, a convenience sample was utilized, which allowed the gathering of various representations of honor, and also an understanding the prevailing variations of the concept. The concern was not to set criteria which may have led to a biased analysis; for example, selecting a randomly drawn sample of people living in a specific quarter of Istanbul or Paris may have seemed appropriate from a methodological standpoint, but wrong from a demographic standpoint, as the sample may not have been be representative of a cross-section of Turkish or French populations. Defining additional criteria for this research would have been problematic as honor is relevant to everybody, without any distinction of race for example. To conduct this research, fifty men and fifty women in each society were interviewed. All of our interviewees were city-dwellers, aged twenty to twenty-seven-years-old, university students and graduates, born, raised, and currently living in Istanbul, or in the Ile-de-France region, which includes Paris. The present sample, while not representative of these two entire populations, provides a large panel of "exemplary cases," allowing us to analyze honor as a personal, but also in certain cases, as a cohesive principle. The results of this study show that in these two different societies, the concept of honor for young adults tended to share similarities, most likely due to globalization. The "planetarisation" seems to have redefined the interactions and the social values, and standardized the concept of honor. These interviews offer great insight into how individuals view the honor principle today, as well as how this may be a principle of resistance to contemporary barbarism.

Honor as a Self-Imposed Principle

Whether honneur in France, or seref in Turkey, the interviewees described honor as a principle imposing on individuals guidelines for their behavior. To the French, honor appears to be a significant personal principle: a set of values that allows for the preservation of ones integrity. Honor is a line of conduct and morality in which the individual believes, and to which he or she conforms as a guideline for his or her existence. In spite of its importance, young French adults seem to prefer to use other terms in their daily life, such as "dignity," "self-esteem," "pride," and "integrity," rather than to speak of honor: for them, this concept is a "grand word" imbued with commitments, ill-suited to the modern world, which advocates detachment. However, a vast majority of respondents indicated that honor gives the individual lines of conduct that should not be ignored, so as not to lose ones self-respect.

In Turkey, seref has also been perceived as a principle which gives meaning...