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This chapter explores the ideas of honoring ancestors and self in the classroom, along the borders. To begin this exploration, it focuses on some aspects of the borders of black lives in the United States. The borders of education is the focus in the next section of the book. The idea of honoring ancestors is related to the course, “Womanist Spiritual Autobiography”; and honoring self is discussed in relation to the course “Womanist Theology and Literature”.

If mafia groups are present in a market, they must be organized in some form. Two questions have generated a heated and long-running debate among scholars of the mafias: first, are criminal groups organized in a hierarchical and military fashion or, on the contrary, are they loose networks of individuals, getting together to perform a specific task; second, are these groups territorially or functionally organized? Chapter 6 addresses these two questions with reference to the city of Perm, which is in the Gulag Archipelago in the Ural region of Russia. It pieces together some elements in the history of Perm’s criminality at the time of the transition from the Soviet economic and political system to the market economy, discussing the legacy of the Gulag (in the shape of the criminal fraternity of the vory-v-zakone – thieves-with-a-code-of-honour – that flourished in the Soviet labour camps between the 1920s and the 1950s, and re-emerged in the 1970s) in relation to the contemporary criminal situation, the post-Soviet criminal groups that emerged in the city, and inter-group relations and conflicts. Lastly, it analyses the organizational arrangements (structure, size, and internal division of labour) of the mafia groups in Perm, and compares them with other gangs and mafias (principally the Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra).

The first section of the chapter describes the main features of the original society of the vory-v-zakone – thieves-with-a-code-of-honour – the criminal fraternity that flourished in the Soviet labour camps between the 1920s and the 1950s, and re-emerged in the 1970s. The account given is based on archival data that have not been presented before, and describes the rituals and practices involved, the vory code of behaviour, vory activities outside prison, and punishment in vory courts. The second section addresses the question of the origins of the vory-v-zakone society, namely, whether it was a Soviet or pre-Revolutionary phenomenon. It is concluded that the fraternity most likely evolved from pre-Revolutionary criminal nineteenth-century arteli (guilds) of ordinary thieves.

An assessment is made of the role of the vory-v-zakone (thieves-with-a-code-of-honour – the criminal fraternity that flourished in the Soviet labour camps between the 1920s and the 1950s, and re-emerged in the 1970s) in the post-Soviet criminal world. The features of the new society are described (the existence of territorial groups of vory, and their organizational structure, activities, inter-group relations, and role) and the Russian Mafia is identified as groups that share vory rituals and norms of interaction and are federated with one another. The future of the Russian Mafia is then briefly evaluated amidst the emergence of two powerful competitor groups who do not share the rituals and traditions of the vory: the Chechen Mafia and the Cossacks. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the connections between politics, the church, terrorism, and the modern criminal fraternity.

Focusing on a single passage of a single early Christian text, chapter 2 situates the body language of 2 Corinthians 11:23–25 in the wider context of the corporal habitus of the early Roman Empire. While a man might well boast of war wounds, a whipping was an event that emasculated a man. Humiliation rather than honor accompanied beatings of the kind Paul endured. The chapter argues that by pointing to his own storytelling body, Paul claims his dubious corporal knowledge as a source of improbable power. Because Paul perceives that his corporal knowledge of repeated violation unites him with Jesus, he is able to position his abject body as a token of his authority. Ultimately, however, the example of Paul’s storytelling body fails to disrupt the habituation of early Christian bodies by Roman norms.

This chapter explores the distinctive way American advocates of slavery read the story of Noah and his sons (Gen. 9:20––27) and applied it to the defense of racial slavery. Their departure from the history of interpretation by failing to sexualize the story while reading it as a tale of violated honor confirms the centrality of honor in the biblical imagination of Southern whites. The concept of slavery as “social death” (the ultimate dishonor) is used to elucidate the connections between slavery, honor, and honor‐bound readings of this popular proslavery biblical passage.

This chapter reveals the diversity of men's responses to illicit paternity, and their general unwillingness to undertake even the basic duty of maintenance. When men were accused of fathering a bastard, a common response was denial. Very few voluntarily accepted even the minimal duty of maintenance. Instead, they sought to evade responsibility and expense; their own social and economic standing and honour were more important than the claims of any children. Men voiced their denials in terms of contemporary cultural stereotypes: paternity was uncertain because women who were sexually active outside marriage were whores; their words were untrustworthy.

Civil status, and particularly birth certificates, rather than identity papers, are the legal basis of identification in France. Its nineteenth-century history presents a complex picture, which cannot be reduced to a process of increasing state control. Far from implementing ambitious registration projects, French liberal administration left information scattered and scarce as compared to European standards. It had to find a balance between the need to provide open information in order to minimize uncertainty in social and economic relationships, and the protection of personal and family honour and reputation. Citizens' agency and consent have been determinant in this process, whose traces are still visible in contemporary France.

Chapter Four examines the differences in a core concept in the book, “cultural flexibility” (or the propensity to move across different cultural and social peer groups and environments), among students enrolled in either majority-minority or white-dominant schools. Findings reveal that Black students who attended majority-minority schools showed more cultural flexibility and greater self-esteem than those attending white-dominant schools. Among white students, regional location and representation in advanced placement or honors classes mattered. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, this chapter links these patterns to how students are organized and represented within educational activities in their schools. In addition, it discusses how students make sense of their social relationships and their (un)willingness to cross social and academic lines, given their respective schools' and communities' social climates.

Preservation of Indian princes under the Crown kept most states outside the jurisdiction of British India. Company precedents, rather than prescriptive regulations, influenced the role of political officers as envoys and advisers to maharajas and chieftains of client states. In practice, officers were brokers for more distant patrons located in regional presidencies — the central government's Foreign and Political Department and in the Viceroy's Council. Methods of supervision included creation of a network of clients of the resident and influencing state revenues through an appointed dewan (finance minister). Some states yielded resources through loans, railway and mineral concessions and regiments. As in all patron-client relations there was bargaining for advantage, willing loyalty, and sullen opposition. Some rulers were deposed. For others, imperial honours and improvement in the internal administration of patrimonial courts sheltered princes from the challenge of nationalist opposition. But official patronage could not secure for princes a constitutional role in an independent India.

This chapter examines how war shaped the identity of the nobility. The idea that military service was a duty for noblemen, but one fittingly rewarded with honour and more tangible benefits, was widespread in England and the Netherlands alike. Nobles read, commissioned, and wrote military treatises and memoirs and were exhorted in family histories to imitate the martial deeds of their ancestors. Poems, songs and chronicles, portraits, prints and history paintings, martial buildings, and gifts of swords and decorated plate proclaimed the military reputations of contemporary commanders. Elaborate chivalric funerals and tombs commemorated great generals, and some enacted memorable deathbed scenes, bidding their captains farewell and pledging their loyalty to their prince.