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This chapter investigates the emotion that the Romans called verecundia, a kind of strategic fear that causes one to gauge one’s behavior in any given social interaction and judge correctly one’s standing relative to the other person, the better to monitor and restrain oneself and thus avoid giving offense. The discussion considers how this emotion helped regulate the behavior of persons of different ages, genders, and social standings. The concept of face is introduced.

A description of Demosthenes' position after Chaeroneia stands at the start of this chapter, showing that he defends himself not only against Aeschines, but also against the many accusations and the allegations with a religious background which Aeschines only exploits. Demosthenes turns arguments about his ‘Fortune’, described as a goddess by Aeschines, into a discussion of personal fortune, thus deflecting the debate to one of social standing. In the discussion of Aeschines' participation in the obscure rite of Sabazius, he does not make a religious point but ridicules Aeschines for his ignoble upbringing. In this way he removes the religious element, alluding to this aspect of the accusation only occasionally and after long preparation.

This chapter examines the ways in which caste in India shapes the experience of students in elite universities. It traces the differential pathways that Dalit and non-Dalit students, from comparable, elite educational backgrounds, traverse in their journey from college to work. Students from these two groups bring very different levels of resources — in the form of family connections, financial security during their university years, obligations to support parental households, and the like — to the starting gate. Hence, while the training they receive in the university world and the credentials they can claim when they finish are quite comparable, Dalit students lack many advantages that turn out to be crucial and are subject to skepticism on the part of employers who doubt the legitimacy of reservations (and by extension, the legitimacy of the credentials they present during the job search). Perhaps as a result, Dalit students from comparable degree programs as their high-caste counterparts have lower expectations and see themselves as disadvantaged because of their caste and family backgrounds. Because they arrive in college with weaker skills on average, they are playing catch-up and often do not succeed in pulling even with more advantaged students, and hence enter the job markets with weaker English language and computing skills.

This chapter tackles the question: what did Cassian offer his audience that was truly unique? It argues that his emphasis on an actual renunciation (renuntiatio) — as opposed to the theoretical renunciation preached by his contemporaries — sets Cassian apart from his fellow ascetic writers. Whereas other writers saw asceticism as a new aristocratic cursus that led to even more honours in the present world, Cassian advocated a complete separation from the world and its concern for rank and status. He proposed a literal interpretation of Christ's words in Matthew 19:21: ‘If you would be perfect, go sell your possessions, give to the poor, and then come follow me’. Cassian preached a complete change of life: the monk was to cast off everything that conferred status in the secular world, and imitating Christ, to don the humility and obedience of a great servant.

This chapter examines whether black and mixed-race men with higher social standing were exposed to a greater risk of mob violence than were their lower-status neighbors. The results show that southern mobs did not select their victims at random from the general black male population. There were important differentials in the risk of victimization according to both social marginality and social standing. However, what motivated mobs to exercise discretion in their targeting of victims cannot be known. Mobs did consider potential community reaction in their selection of victims. But until there is access to better information about the decision-making calculus of southern mobs the precise explanation for the patterns of differential risk for black men that was documented in this chapter and in Chapter 4 must remain open for debate.

This chapter demonstrates that patronage, charity, and friendship overlapped with class antagonisms in fifteenth-century Florence. The very insistence of Quattrocento moralists that people remain dutifully in their ordained social place, that they adhere to the sumptuary laws that sought to make distinctions of rank clearly visible, revealed, as has been observed of an earlier period, the energies many Florentines were putting into doing exactly the opposite. The frequent sexual alliances formed between Florentines of unequal social standing presupposed physical and emotional contexts in which the classes could intermingle with some ease. The finest, most enduring achievement of the processes of social and political negotiation and collaboration, of cultural osmosis, was the Florentine Renaissance itself, which could hardly have been the product of an utterly polarized city. There is no cause to romanticize the “amicable working relationship” established between many Florentines of different classes during the Quattrocento.

This chapter argues that educational travel was a major factor in family strategy and estate finance, and that these concerns in turn shaped encounters with the Continent. Case studies show how travel could become central to the standing and self-image of a landed family, how changing finances informed foreign experiences over several generations and how time abroad offered opportunities for an upwardly mobile family to establish itself. Those of lesser means used economisation, borrowing and patronage to travel beyond their means, spreading foreign experience deep into the gentry, while others took advantage of diplomatic and military networks to send sons to the Continent. The chapter ends by considering how forms of travel emerged from unequal negotiations among family members. Only a minority of young men discussed here saw Italy on their parents’ money, with some travelling beyond their means and others limiting themselves to closer destinations. Attention to family practice, rather than to familiar ideas of an Italian ‘Grand Tour’, reveals a far more diverse culture of educational travel.

This chapter focuses on personal and social dignity, exploring the source and scope of individuals’ moral claims against having their dignity violated, frustrated, or destroyed. For personal dignity, the grounds of such claims lie primarily in the import of self-respect, but these claims are constrained by the duties they would impose on others. For social dignity, the grounds of such claims lie primarily in the import of social standing, but depend on the individual being entitled to maintain that social standing. This framework sheds light on the wrongs of humiliating or degrading treatment, while avoiding the problematic implication that individuals can appeal to their dignity to protect bigoted behavior from sanction.

Despite great variability, most burials of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe exhibit a high degree of standardization. Richly furnished graves consist of wooden chambers furnished with grave goods like chariots, vessels, and other objects, while less “rich” burials—clustered in “regular” cemeteries—show the same orientation to the south as well as regularly reappearing objects like weapons or ornaments. Because of these strict rules, scholars have accepted such burials as “the norm,” and any other form of deposition of the dead as “abnormal,” hinting at macabre customs like cannibalism or sacrifice. This chapter analyzes one kind of Iron Age deviant burial, those in settlement pits, discussing bioarchaeological and isotopic analyses, a reassessment of archaeological evidence, and a comparison with normative burial practices. The dead in settlements belonged to at least three social categories, each probably considered incomplete in some way and unfit to be buried in regular cemeteries: very small children, adolescents, and other individuals that had suffered an untimely or “bad” death, and individuals of low social standing.

This chapter tackles motivation and its crucial role in the development and improvement of musical skills. The manifestations of motivation are treated as behaviors, and its sources are identified and classified as either intrinsic or extrinsic. The chapter also presents the results of research on the topic. First, it is found that music is intrinsically motivating and that the support of parents and mentors are vital in generating and sustaining this motivation. The next point revealed is that a musician's social standing among his peers, coupled with his own self-perceptions of ability and success, help to strengthen his commitment to the art. Lastly, motivation in music is linked to the musician's own reaction towards challenges. Musicians who aim for mastery in their field have been found to exert all necessary efforts in achieving this end result, which allows them to enjoy otherwise repetitive and tedious practice activities.

This chapter engages with turn-of-the-century debates about benevolence and the orphan through a discussion of mourning and class in Pollyanna. As a novel in which nearly every character suffers from loss, Pollyanna enacts a response to loss and mourning that reconsiders Progressive-era benevolence and posits Pollyanna's “gladness” as an appropriate means to work through mourning. In a conversation between Pollyanna and Aunt Polly—where Pollyanna's declaration that her days were happy was answered by Aunt Polly's hope that they are profitable as well—Pollyanna seems to reach an understanding that from Aunt Polly's example, both duty and profit are about personal investment and benefit, and are at least conjoined to class. To Aunt Polly, duty and benevolence both represent and establish one's social standing; for Pollyanna, duty and benevolence require a wholehearted engagement with life that enables her to work through mourning and come to terms with her orphanhood.

‘This world’s divided into two kinds of people: The hunter and the hunted,’ big-game hunter Rainsford says in The Most Dangerous Game (1932) and self-assuredly continues, ‘Luckily, I’m a hunter. Nothing can ever change that.’ Well, he will discover that in the manhunt movie even the hunter can become prey. The manhunt movie is a subgenre of the Hollywood thriller which joins two elements: big-game sport hunting and hunting humans. Sport hunting stirs up themes of nature and culture, morals and ethics, masculinity, and, finally, civilisation. Here, we will ask what happens when the subgenre is used in the Nordic thriller. The chapter has three aims. First, it establishes the central generic traits of the manhunt movie. Second, it sets up a theoretical framework of sociobiological and ecological theories with hunting as a reference point. And, third, it examines the Nordic version of the manhunt movie focusing on the themes of hunting, nature, social standing and civilisation. I look at the Danish drama The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012), the Norwegian thriller-heist-comedy Headhunters (Morten Tyldum, 2011) and the Swedish thrillers The Hunters (Jägarna, 1996) and False Trail (Jägarna 2, 2011) by Kjell Sundvall.

The word pendant, whatever its actual etymology, suggests that the ideal relation between any pair of figures is achieved when each figure is shown to depend on and lean toward the other. Whether in public or private installations, pendants on display create behind and around themselves a mural area that represents the domestic setting in which the images first hung and their subjects lived. Many pendant pairs end up divorced, in different domiciles of display. Pendants generally, and generically, advertise two things: harmonious domestic life and comfortable social standing. The elbow is a famous bone of contention. Several languages celebrate both its defensive and its aggressive behavior. Sitters would not be satisfied if their poses were carbon copies of the pendants already in their neighbors' houses. Painters can add this motive to their own desire to surpass their peers and predecessors.

This chapter utilizes the theoretical framework developed in Chapter 1 to explain how dignity can be violated, frustrated, or destroyed. For personal dignity, violations involve forcing a person to transgress her own dignitarian standards, making her less respect-worthy in her own eyes, while frustrations involve preventing a person from upholding her own dignitarian standards, blocking an avenue for increased self-regard. Social dignity takes the same form, but with community standards taking the place of personal standards. Status dignity, by contrast, is violated when an agent is treated in ways that contravene the recognition respect she is owed in virtue of her membership in a social class, and is frustrated when she is denied access to sites where recognition respect is offered.

In this epilogue, an open conflict between Pierre Bouguer and a colleague from the Geodesic Mission, La Condamine, and his final years of life are analyzed and discussed. This epilogue reports that the reason for the dispute, which moved from the floor of the French Academy of Sciences to the public journals, was to do with Bouguer’s vanity regarding his mathematical abilities and La Condamine’s wish to improve his social standing. This conflict damaged Bouguer’s reputation as a scientist and also hampered his chances of promotion within the Academy. During the final years of his life, Bouguer maintained strong relations with the navy, became a founding member of the Academie de Marine (Naval Academy), and wrote six memoirs and a book, De la Manoeuvre des vaisseaux (On the Maneuvering of Vessels). Bouguer, who provided his services as editor of the Journal des sçavans (Journal of Scholars), died on August 15, 1758, in Paris, France.

Our study of insolvency records affords a rare glimpse into the lives of women from different social classes and milieus in Bombay during the mid-nineteenth century. Contrary to colonial stereotypes of Indian women as trapped in oppressive patriarchal relationships, and as weak and helpless, we find that many had independent incomes, owned property, and enjoyed power in the domain of the home and family life. Women from wealthy merchant families actually owned and controlled much of the borrowed capital. We infer from the insolvency records that women who were not wealthy and worked for their livelihood also had considerable agency. In our study, about 38% of the women who petitioned the insolvency courts for protections were dancing girls, courtesans, and prostitutes who had independent incomes and were directly affected by the crash. The incomes of dancing girls and courtesans were low as a whole but varied greatly, as did their social standing and levels of literacy.

A discussion of Thorbjorn’s rejection of Hrafnkel’s seemingly generous offer to compensate him for the loss of his son. Thorbjorn wants compensation designated as such. Thorbjorn sees more than a hint of Hrafnkel’s self-satisfaction in the offer. He wants to see Hrafnkel hurt in a way that Hrafnkel will feel the pain. Hrafnkel understands the reasons for Thorbjorn’s refusal much better than Thorbjorn’s kin, or the critics. Hrafnkel understands that Thorbjorn, in his insistence on being paid compensation, wants to make Hrafnkel see himself as for one moment an equal, that is, to force him to give up on his most important self-defining characteristic: his refusal to pay bœtr for those he kills.