The culture problem: How the honor/shame issue got the wrong end of the anthropological stick

The honor/shame issue is an important topic in mission, as portrayed in Georges’s The 3D Gospel for example. Proponents of the shame–guilt distinction draw on the popular culture concept of the early 20th century by assuming that cultures are objects that we can easily grasp and demarcate from one to another. Culture thus becomes a convenient idea to understand difference by generalizing and simplifying the unfamiliar and submitting it to one’s own way of thinking. Current anthropology, however, rejects such a reifying and essentializing approach. Rather, culture is seen as an expression of how humans think, act, and live in the world, and is thus complex, fuzzy, and dynamic. In dealing with the honor/shame issue, we need to get hold of the other end of the stick by starting with humans and treating honor and shame as cultural traits. Accordingly, honor and shame are encountered to different degrees and in different ways across humanity. A vertical and categorical classification and demarcation of cultures thus needs to make room for a more dynamic and horizontal spread of cultural traits. This allows us to account better for human diversity, while simultaneously maintaining humanity’s commonality as cultural beings. To study honor and shame we need to focus on how relationships work in various real-life situations. Such an ethnographic approach builds on observation, participation, and sharing in other people’s lives. It also asks what words and notions people use to express the values that shape their relationships.