7 INSTALACIÓN INTERIOR

Sociologist, anthropologists and theologians have used various terms interchangeably with honour and shame. These concepts are significant in most traditional cultures especially as they are viewed differently. For example, honour is synonymous with majesty, reputation, admiration, adornment, splendour, credit, and exalts, tribute; its other noun forms include principle, nobility, pride (not negative pride). Honour is also seen as glory, abundance, privilege, and mark of respect, mark of distinction, award and prize. Its antonyms are insult, dishonour and ignobleness. The idea of the verb is to keep respect, stick to, to reverence (tehillah), pay homage to (hadar) or venerate, while to break is an antonym of to honour. Peristiany states that honour and shame are two poles of an evaluation, and they are the reflection of the social ideas of a people. What is particular to this evaluation is the use of personality as a standard of measurement in society (Peristiany 1965:9-10). Honour is also an estimation of a person‘s worth, claim to pride and the acknowledgment of that claim as one‘s pride is excellently recognized by the society (Gilmore 1987:3).

Shame on the other hand is a feeling or condition associated with humiliation, disgrace and

dishonour resulting from laziness, pride, refusing direction, failure to discipline, ignoring custom, defeat and enslavement or paganism. For instance, pagan worship or idolatry was a chief source of shame for God‘s people in the Bible, and such unfaithfulness led to their humiliation before their enemies (Brown 1990:816). According to Tate (2005:170), honour had to do with not only a person‘s status in the community but also the recognition of the same status for other members of the same community. Israel suffered national defeat and God took them into exile, exposing their shame.

Pope (1913:771-772) distinguishes between honour and shame thus:

This code is specie of etiquette observed by particular class, trade or profession, thus it belongs to ‗minor morals‘ or ‗moral codes‘ which is not different in the medieval period and our postmodern times. Honour is a high regard felt, given or received; it is a sense of what is due or right. It takes an objective meaning as equivalent to exalted, rank or position as (mark of excellence, distinction or decoration). It could be having a personal or collective

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recognition of self as a member of a society; it could be a conjugal fidelity to honour a wife or husband. Honour is ideal self-preservation of the development of self-consciousness; while shame is the guardian of honour this implies that there is always a context between moral concepts and social behaviour.

Furthermore, shame bosh is synonymous with disgrace boseth, embarrassment herpa, humiliation, indignity, ignominy, infamy, and pride is its antonym. In the verb form, shame is similar to mortify, make uncomfortable, humiliate or embarrass. Other verb forms include discredit qalon, dishonour, degrade, bring into disrepute, defamed and given a bad name or bring shame on, while the antonym is honour. Shame is the humiliation one gets from the community as a result of a character or a group‘s negative behaviour. From a similar understanding of both words, meaning-making is more than mere looking at a word; its interpretation depends on the context as shown in the following statement‖:

Shame is an emotion of self-abasement, experienced by one who is conscious of social norms and doesn‘t like to act contrary to or below the standards of the society which are approved for making judgment. It is related to a state that is confused with modesty, shyness and coyness which is marked by hesitation caution and inhibition. They arise under a consciousness of being under the gaze of others whose attitude is curiosity, superiority or criticism. It also involves the sense of unworthiness and demerit which is connected to sex as a consciousness of failure and being exposed before others. It is a self-imposed retributive punishment that points to injury. Social psychologists emphasize that one‘s social group furnishes the determining influence in informing an individual of taste and conduct in the society (Ames 1920:446-447).

The influence of honour and shame is closely connected to the public and private realms of life. Honour is a quality expressed in public and contested there. It has to do with gender, as women were required to remain virgins for the purpose of chastity and honour while men‘s seduction was seen as prudent sexuality, such that chastity became the mark of an honourable woman in the society, a hero or a wise person as the wisdom woman in Proverbs 31:10-31 (Horowitz 2005:1010). Shame in many instances is a grading that sets one below the standard and that is why an action must be taken afterwards to regain one‘s glory or pride. Shaming comes automatically as a result of a person‘s failure to live up to the standard or to keep the ethics of the community. Shame often makes people around a person to withdraw their relationship with such a person in order for him/her not stain their character or make the relationships sour (De Silva 2008:287-288).

In my opinion, the code of honour and shame was a major indication of knowing the right actions to take in a society, which implies a certain system of reciprocal right and obligations.

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It means dignity is bestowed on human beings as a result of an achievement or the demonstration of excellence by a person or group. The conduct of a man‘s honour or shame is regulated by social blames in a circle where we belong or the larger world that influences the individual. The idea of honour and shame is being used by anthropologists, sociologist and theologians to study the belief systems and reasoning ability of various people. Consequently, the concept of honour dictate the manner in which a person interconnects in public whether as superior, inferior or equal with others.