Where people don’t trust the state to protect them, men enforce status and safety through retaliatory 'honor' norms—much like medieval Europe. The author argues U.S. reluctance to police effectively in some Black neighborhoods sustains a DIY order that normalizes violent score‑settling. Dignity norms only take root when a capable, trusted state reliably enforces public order.
— This reframes crime and policing debates around state capacity and trust as cultural levers that move violence, not just around guns or poverty.
Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell
2025.12.02
46% relevant
The article provides a concrete animal analogue for the broader idea that when formal resource‑management institutions are absent, groups resort to violent enforcement and exclusion; matriarchal elephant families policing water access and expelling members under scarcity mirrors the human pattern of private enforcement invoked in the matched idea.
Charles Fain Lehman
2025.11.30
82% relevant
Wilson’s argument that informal community restraints and local norms — not primarily courts or poverty alleviation — determine crime levels is conceptually aligned with the 'Honor Culture Fills Policing Gaps' idea, which says communities lacking trustworthy state protection resort to private norms and retaliatory enforcement; both explain how weak state capacity or legitimacy shifts enforcement to local social orders and shape violence outcomes.
Lorenzo Warby
2025.10.15
100% relevant
Comparison of a 1278 London killing to a modern urban homicide and the claim that the "contemporary American state… lacks the informed willingness" to impose public order in African‑American communities.