The Hatfields, McCoys and the Southern Culture of Honor?

 

Part two of Outliers examines the ways that culture influences behavior and ultimately success, and posits that we are all, to some extent, prisoners of our own cultural heritage and ethnic history.    

To make his case, Gladwell examines remote Harlan County, Kentucky, which has been the home of apparently epic family feuds since the 19th century.  He extrapolates the violence of this area to the region as a whole, because similar feuds were common, declaring it a pattern.  Sociologists have identified a "culture of honor" as the underlying reason for the settling of minor disputes with loaded guns. 

Arising in marginally fertile areas where many make their living as herdsmen, the culture of honor arises from fear of loss.  Herding is solitary, and if one allows encroachment, starvation may follow.  According to Gladwell, the culture of honor is present in rocky, marginally fertile Appalachia because the area was settled by clannish Scots-Irish herdsmen who brought this cultural legacy with them from their rocky, marginally fertile homeland, where loyaly could mean the difference between survival and death.  This cultural legacy is thus said to explain a certain kind of Southern violence, enduring to this day.

Or not.  I'm with him, in general, when he says that where you are from matters, and that the culture in which you were raised does, too.  The idea that violent and ignorant behavior from generations back may well explain the actions of an individual; cycles of violence are real, as studies of domestic abuse so tragically reveal.  Not so sure that they apply, however, to entire regions of 21st century America. 

The underlying science may be a little funky, too; here is an interesting rebuttal:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/200904/is-southern-violence-due-culture-honor