Shame, Status, and Limited Sharing

The importance of shame in producing conforming behavior has been reported for a number of societies (e.g., Epstein 1984; Obeyesekere 1981; Spiro

1958), and it works in the same general way for the Swahili. An issue that occupies an important place here, however, is how shame based in the sharing of understandings about what is not desirable behavior can function given the limitations in such sharing that have been demonstrated in this community. Further, there is the question of how shame can encourage conformity to the expectations in statuses when those expectations differ, sometimes markedly, from one role to another.

In fact, the hypothesis here is that shame is produced both by the relatively few cultural elements that are shared by virtually everyone and by the values and beliefs shared mainly within limited categories of people (i.e., those resulting from statuses). Regarding the last source, individuals will be shown to experience shame as the result of evaluating their actions according to understandings they attribute to members of a status category. Shame will result even when these understandings are known by the shamed to be antithetical to those shared among members of other status categories. Shame resulting from understandings that are, and are known to be, widely shared does not work in precisely the same ways as does that resulting from understandings that are viewed as being only shared within particular categories and relationships.

One of the differences is in identifying the shaming agents. For the very broadly shared understandings, those whose disapprobation is feared are the same for everyone. These "shamers" are the same group of prestigious men regardless of the status of the individual experiencing shame. With respect to aibu based in understandings taken by those affected as shared by some, but not most, community members, the shamers, obviously, are different according to what behavior is being assessed. The crucial and feared evaluations may be those of anyone occupying a status or statuses qualifying him or her as a likely judge as this is seen by the one concerned about a particular transgression. Those viewed as judges in one sort of transgression may well not be thought of as judges in another.

Double Status Relativity and, Also, Uniform Judgment

The variation in the composition of the set of judges varies depending on the category the actor sees himself in (e.g., soccer player) and also on the categories of those he takes as concerned with what he is doing (e.g., soccer fans and kin but not those without interest in either the sport or the actor's general prestige). The double status relativity with its dependence on the actor's category as well as the categories of those whom he views as possible sources of shame does not apply to all judgments but is limited in its effects by three different considerations. Each of these limits leads to uniform, rather than dually relative, judgments.

First, there are a few broad value violations that are seen as shameful by nearly everyone without regard to whom the violator may be. Second, there is some general agreement on what is shameful resulting from the understood presence in the group of a status whose very high prestige members are taken to make judgments about shamefulness or its absence that are more difficult to ignore than others' are. Finally, an additional status exists whose members are characterized by their willingness publicly to disclose otherwise generally unknown shameful acts, thereby contributing to the operation of the first two considerations.

It will be shown that shame's operation is importantly affected by the fact that much of what anyone does is seen as judged by standards that differ according to the statuses of the shamers, while some of what is done is taken as judged by universally accepted standards. The differential importance of the judgments of occupants of different statuses in producing shame concerning much of what everyone does puts this powerful emotion behind the distribution of culture that occurs through the community's social structure, that is, set of interrelated statuses. At the same time, the uniform importance of the judgments of a single category of high prestige individuals as concerns a relative few of the things people do brings the same emotion to bear as a support for the existence of a single community embracing all its different statuses.

The interest here is mainly cultural and concerned with the functioning of the group rather than primarily psychological and concerned with the minds of individuals. Still, it will be suggested that although the internalization of values may be present, it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the effectiveness of shame as an influence on behavior.