1 Schwarz / Dead Honest Judgments

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This is a preprint version of an article published in American Journal of Cultural Sociology. The definitive publisher-

authenticated version [Schwarz, Ori (2013) 'Dead Honest Judgments: emotional expression, sonic styles and evaluating sounds of

mourning in late modernity', American Journal of Cultural Sociology 1(2):153-185] is available online at: http://www.palgrave-

journals.com/ajcs/journal/v1/n2/abs/ajcs20131a.html

Dead Honest Judgments:

Emotional expression, sonic styles and evaluating sounds of

mourning in late modernity

Ori Schwarz Tel Aviv University

Abstract

How do late-modern people morally evaluate behavior in emotionally-laden situations? To answer this

question, a cultural sociology of morality should explore both cultural contents and social contexts that

inform their employment. The article studies how Israelis ethically evaluate loud mourning

performances. In line with 'moral polytheist' repertoire theories, it identifies three moral logics

available to them, which are typical of late modern morality: the authenticity, self-control, and

therapeutic ethics. I explain why some of these logics may be used flexibly to support contradictory

claims while others prescribe their usage. I also explore what constrains choice within the repertoire.

While moral judgment is internally structured by cultural structures (moral logics), its application is

informed by social structure: since moral evaluation of others is always self-definitional, it is shaped in

relation to self-identifications, boundary drawing and stereotype threats. Finally, contrary to On

Justification, I suggest that people do not always strive to achieve virtuosity in any single moral world,

but also to avoid moral worthlessness in all moral worlds simultaneously. Studying the interaction

between cultural codes (the moral/discursive structures of critique and justification) and social

structures (in relation to which identification claims are made) may enhance our understanding of lay

morality.

Keywords

authenticity, emotions, ethnicity, identification, moral repertoire, morality, mourning

"I think it [screaming in funerals] is a theater. I think it's not normal, when someone does it, it’s

for the public, not for oneself. You don't need it for yourself. What one feels inside can be

endured in silence." [f54, emigrated from Ukraine, graphic designer]

Having one's beloved laid to eternal rest is an emotionally engaging and laden moment. People's reactions

differ widely, in terms of both subjective experience and emotional expression. But idiosyncratic as

individual grief may be, grief expressions are shaped by culturally-specific norms, repertoires, scripts, and

vocabularies that vary historically (Ariès, 1981; Gorer, 1965; Leming & Dickinson, 2010; Wouters, 2002)

and across social groups (Firth, 1993; McIlwain, 2003; Perry, 1993; Rosenblatt, 1997; Rosenblatt &

Wallace, 2005; Walter, 1997). Cultures and eras employ different "emotives" (Reddy, 2001), i.e.

vocabularies used to describe, explore, process and mold emotions of grief; and different "emotionologies"

(Stearns & Stearns, 1985), that is, different attitudes or standards toward emotions and their appropriate

expression (e.g. Wikan, 1988).

This last point brings us to the domain of normativity. How should one react to the sight of one's

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dear-ones being buried? Some reactions would be considered normal, while others pathological;1 some

healthy, and some harmful; some respectable and some embarrassing. These acts of judgment (such as the

one opening this paper, which contrasted quiet, internalized mourning with illegitimate inauthentic, other-

directed mourning) have been documented (Gorer, 1965; Perry, 1993; Rosenblatt & Wallace, 2005; Sagiv,

2012; Walter, 1997:130; Wikan, 1988; Wilce, 2009), although not systematically analyzed. Judgment may

be influenced by the identities of both the evaluator (as evaluation criteria may change across generations,

ethnic and religious groups) and the evaluated person (different funeral participants have distinct ritual

roles and emotional scripts: men are expected to mourn differently than women, mere acquaintances

differently than bereaved mothers, etc., e.g. Jonker, 1997).

The moral evaluation of mourning practices and performances2 has a special sociological

significance since death is often considered a moment of truth that reveals the true self of the mourner

(that is, a potentially true moral moment: Tavory, 2011); and since death rituals are viewed as central to

collective cultural identities. Different modes of mourning are embedded in economies of worth and

shame, as they are identified with different social values organized in binary codes, such as modernity vs.

traditionalism (Wilce, 2009); or self-control vs. self-expression (Wouters, 2002). When people ascribe

each other values they also attribute them social value (on the interrelation between values and value see

Graeber, 2001; Lamont, 2002; Sayer, 2005b; Skeggs, 2005; Stark, 2009). Thus, when people judge

mourning performances, they also evaluate the moral and social worth of the performers. Perceived

correlations between mourning styles and sociodemographic factors (especially ethnicity: McIlwain, 2003;

Rosenblatt & Wallace, 2005; Walter, 1997) give these judgments further significance.

Below I explore normative judgment of mourning practices and performances in Israel, while

focusing on loud mourning. My aims are first to portray the available moral logics that Israelis may

mobilize for this task. Studying this repertoire and the manner in which actors actually use it may shed

light on wider questions that bother the sociology of morality and cultural sociology in general—questions

regarding the flexibility of moral logics (can they be used to justify multiple stances? And inasmuch they

can, what makes them flexible?), and regarding the influence of “external” factors (group membership,

symbolic interests, identity maintenance) on moral evaluation.

The choice to concentrate on the sonic dimension of mourning has several justifications. First, sonic

differences are highly conspicuous markers of difference between mourning styles of different ethnic (and

class) groups (both in funerals: McIlwain, 2003; Perry, 1993, and immediately after death: Firth, 1993;

Gunaratnam, 2009; Irish, 1993). Secondly, the sonic dimension of social difference is usually neglected by

ocularcentric social sciences (Smith, 2000; Feld, 2005), despite its key role in identity- and boundary-

work (Oosterbaan, 2009; Schwarz, 2012). Thirdly, focusing on sound enabled me to interpret the findings

against the wider context of sonic styles in Israel and their association with ethnic and class identities.

Whereas some interviewees bracketed their moral judgment of mourning, others applied the same logic

they employed for evaluation and classification of sonic styles and performances in other social sites.

The next section discusses developments in the cultural sociology of morality, which serve as my

point of departure, followed by a short literature review on the cultural meanings attached to mourning

styles. After presenting the methodology, I discuss three moral logics used by interviewees for evaluation

and critique of mourning practices and performances: the ethics of authenticity, self-control, and

psychological wellbeing. These logics, I suggest, are central to late-modern3 evaluation of action in

emotionally-laden situations. Finally, I discuss the ways these logics are employed in concrete contexts. I

contend that even when shared moral logics are in principal available to all, actual evaluation is

constrained by identification claims of the evaluators. Studying judgments of loud mourning performances

would thus (a.) enhance our understanding of mourning practices (since normativity shapes practice and

serves as its point of reference); (b.) shed light on the ways actors negotiate social identities and worth

1 Mourners are often concerned about the normality of their mourning, e.g. Walter, 1997:130. 2 “Performance” is a highly polysemic term. I use “performances” to denote contextualized, improvised, singular

realizations of social scripts. While performance s in this sense are often “performative”—add practices an

expressive edge, forming them in relation to audiences and the meanings they may ascribe them (Schieffelin,

1998; Abercrombie and Longhurst, 1998)— performativity is not indispensable component of the definition. 3 The term 'late modernity' is used below refer to our era and its unique cultural features. While doing so, I do not

wish to embrace all the characteristics occasionally associated with the term (such as increased reflexivity or the

risk society). However, as demonstrated below, contemporary moral and emotional repertoires can hardly be

made comprehensible without referring to historical processes such as informalization processes or the

popularization of psychotherapeutic notions.

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through employment of moral frameworks; (c.) identify general moral evaluation criteria which are

applied in emotionally-laden contexts and (d.) endow us with better understanding of the interface of

moral structures (moral logics, vocabularies or codes) and social structure (in relation to which positioned

actors make identification claims).

Autonomy and plurality: Repertoire theories of morality

Questions of morality and ethics—that were so central to the oeuvre of the discipline’s founding fathers

Weber and Durkheim and later marginalized for long decades—have lately reclaimed their place at the

heart of sociological thought. Sociologists now pay growing attention to the role of lay moral judgments,

justifications, and moral vocabularies, acknowledging that morality is more than an epiphenomena of

power relations, and recognizing its contribution to the shaping of social action, social identities and

boundaries, and the negotiation of social worth (Alexander & Smith, 1993; Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006;

Dromi & Illouz, 2010; Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003; Hitlin and Vaisey, 2010; Kefalas, 2003; Lamont,

1992, 2002; Lowe, 2002, 2006; Sanghera et al., 2011; Sayer, 2005a, 2005b; Tavory, 2011; Thévenot, 2002;

Vaisey, 2009).

Two developments are of special significance and lay the foundations of my own investigation. The

first is the growing encroachment of cultural sociologists on the realm of moral philosophy (Boltanski &

Thévenot, 2006; Sanghera et al., 2011; Sayer, 2005a; Thévenot, 2002), and in particular the study of logics

that guide moral judgment. This encroachment relies on two basic assumptions which are formulated in

explicit opposition to Bourdieu's highly influential stance: (a) that everyday lay moral evaluation employs

abstract principles which are not essentially different from those studied by moral philosophers (tearing

down the wall erected by Bourdieu between scholastic and practical logics); and (b) that moral logics

considerably shape (constrain and enable) evaluation, and cannot be reduced to a-moral factors such as

interests, capitals or dispositions, as their development, choice and usage are not guided only by struggles

over external goods like status and power, but also by desire for internal goods such as merit and intrinsic

value (Sanghera et al., 2011; Sayer, 2005a). Moral logics and discourses turn into another kind of structure

which—pace Bourdieu—has some autonomy and is not subordinated to other structures (Lamont,

1992:184). Moral structures inform social action, evaluation, and the distribution of social worth, and are

hence central to sociological analysis and deserve sociological research (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006;

Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005; Thévenot, 2002; cf. Alexander & Smith, 1993). Thus, the sociology of

morality shifts from sociology of culture agenda toward a cultural sociology agenda (in the terms of

Alexander, 2003).

The second significant trend in the cultural sociology of morality may be described (following

Weber's 'polytheism of values': Weber, 1946) as a shift from moral monotheism to moral polytheism.

Theories that ascribe each society (in a Parsonian manner) or each class (Bourdieu, 1984) a monolithic set

of shared values, or a hegemonic moral 'first language' (Bellah et al., 1985) are replaced with repertoire

theories that assume that individuals have access to multiple moral resources or logics. Choice of logics

within this repertoire is often assumed to be guided by ad hoc evaluation, interests and (institutional)

contexts, rather than by the identity of the actor (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006; Eliasoph & Lichterman,

2003; Friedland & Alford, 1991). Repertoire theories of morality often assume that moral 'resources'

(Lowe, 2006) or “worlds of justification” (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006) are in principle equally

accessible to all, that actors use them creatively (thus, the same element may be used simultaneously by

antithetical parties in the same political conflict: Lowe, 2006); and that actors may shift between elements

in the repertoire (even if this maneuver is costly and strenuous: Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006; Lowe,

2006).

My research embraces both developments: my data supports the assumption that multiple moral

logics are available to actors (although not everyone employs them in the same ways). I also analyze the

structure of moral logics as an independent structure: I find this analytical isolation necessary in order to

explore its interrelations with other structures (Archer, 1996; Kane, 1991). Below I explore the ideational

contents that constitute this structure, its internal power (flexibility levels), logics, inter-element

(in)compatibilities, and its undertheorized interrelations with other structures.

The repertoire literature tells us a lot about the structural langue of repertoires (Boltanski &

Thévenot, 2006) and their transformation (Lowe, 2006), but only little about the parole, the actual choices

people do: if all ethical worlds/resources are available to all, what principles guide people's choices which

logic to employ in concrete cases of moral evaluation? In Stephen Vaisey's words, “if, as Swidler rightly

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claims, people know more culture than they use, why do they use what they do?” (Vaisey, 2009:1968).

While we should not expect a deterministic, all-embracing answer, it would be disappointing if sociology

has nothing to say about these choices. Vaisey's solution is distinguishing between a deterministic model

of moral motivation and a pluralist model of moral justification: people first have 'evaluative responses'

determined by their unitary habitus, and then use available discourses eclectically and incoherently (a la

Swidler, 2001) for post-hoc justification of their evaluative responses. Such a model, however,

reintroduces monism and determinism and denies moral logics and critique almost any impact on reality.

Furthermore, people do not always justify their gut feelings: sometime they criticize them (as some of my

interviewee did), even when could easily find justifications in their repertoire.

An alternative, more realistic and modest account, would maintain that while evaluative acts may be

more instinctive or more reflexive, all evaluations are shaped to some degree by both the available moral

structures and by the embeddedness of actors in social structures. Furthermore, while moral logics are

often available across class boundaries (Sayer, 2005a), their usage may be influenced by group

membership not through the habitus but through the attempts of actors to claim certain social identities

and kinds of worth and avoid stigmatization or self-devaluation. Since moral evaluation of others usually

reflect on the identification and social valuation of the evaluator, and since risks of stigmatization and

devaluation are unequally distributed (members of low-status groups are at risk of confirming negative

stereotypes about their group, while members of high-status groups are at risk of staining themselves with

racism or classism), some moral moves are not really available to all. My endorsement of moral

polytheism should by no means be understood as implying an instrumental account of morality, in which

moral evaluation is determined by amoral motivations. People may feel committed to moral logics and

uncomfortable with bluntly contradicting their past evaluations. They may seek internal goods no less than

external ones. While moral evaluation cannot be reduced to the interest of actors in supporting their

identifications and sense of worth, the commitment of actors to their self-identification projects and their

sense of worth is not instrumental, and it may constrain their use of moral logics. Thus, in order to

understand moral deliberation and evaluation we should analyze separately moral and social structures,

and explore their interrelation. This strategy is employed below to study evaluation of mourning practices

and performances.

Once the structure of moral logics and the social context that shape their actual application are

discussed separately, it becomes possible to further ask, whether some moral logics lend themselves more

easily to flexible application by conflicting parties while others must be used in a more restricted manner,

a question I address below.

Another direction in which I want to elaborate on the account of Boltanski and Thévenot

(2006[1991]) is the specificity of the moral resources. Whereas Boltanski and Thévenot offer a highly

abstract and a-historical typology of moral worlds, moral vocabularies are obviously historically specific

(Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005[1999]; Lowe, 2006). The increasing centrality of emotions in late

modernity as an interpretive and moral framework (Furedi, 2004; Illouz, 2008; Nolan, 1998) raises the

question, whether there is any unique repertoire of moral logics employed by late modern subjects to

evaluate emotions and emotionally-informed action,4 and if there is, what moral logics does it consist of?

Empirically exploring moral evaluations of sonic performances in funerals may draw a first sketch of this

repertoire.

Mourning and modernity

What characterizes late-modern mourning? How have the past few decades reshaped mourning practices?

The literature offers two almost diametrically opposed accounts: anthropologist Jim Wilce (working in

4 It should be noticed that I include evaluation of the appropriateness of emotional reactions within the moral

realm. Against the narrow lay notion of morality as not being evil to others, I use the term “moral judgment” in its

wider sense, to connote the realm of normative evaluation of human conduct (how people ought to act or whether

a certain path of action is virtuous). Feeling and demonstrating emotions are considered here kinds of "action"

which may be normatively evaluated, hence "feeling rules" and "display rules" (Hochschild, 1979) are included

within the definition of moral judgment or ethics. Whereas the complicated relations between action and emotion

lie beyond the scope of this article, it should be noticed that people actually often use moral language to judge the

appropriateness of felt and displayed emotions (Sayer, 2005a).

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Bangladesh and Finland and drawing on data from other countries) tells the story of silencing traditional,

loud, expressive mourning; whereas sociologist Cas Wouters (2002) and historian Pat Jalland (2006),

working in the Netherlands and Australia respectively, tell the story of the revival of expressive grief.

According to the latter story, the norm of silent grief with minimal emotional expression which

prevailed until the 1960s has waned ever since. The old "regime of silence" gave way to the "emancipation

of emotions." Mourners are no longer expected to bear their grief in a dignified way, be brave, and avoid

expressions of emotions or weakness in order to save face. Losing face is no longer a threat, as passing

judgment on other mourners has lost legitimacy, turning into a vice condemned by etiquette books

(Wouters 2002:6). Fixed customs that had blocked individual emotional expression gave way to diversity

and self-expression. This trend, which is part of a wider cultural informalization process (Wouters, 2002),

has been promoted by psychologists who have professed the new therapeutic ethic of emotional

expression (Jalland, 2006).

According to Wilce, however, people have become much more judgmental about loud and

emotionally expressive mourning performances. "Shame over loud public wailing has spread around the

world, particularly in elite-aspiring classes" (Wilce, 2009:130), and quiet crying has become the binding

norm among these classes (2009:3). This collective shame has a double source: on the one hand, it

represents internalization of the colonial gaze which, by applying cultural evolutionist notions, has

constructed loud laments as backward, primitive, animalistic and wild. On the other hand, it represents the

globalization of a modern notion of authenticity, according to which cultural regulation of emotional

expression indicates lack of genuine feelings. Either wailing is spontaneous, and hence shamefully

animalistic and uncivilized, lacking modern control; or it is "merely" conventional, hence meaningless and

lacking modern authenticity. Wilce suggests that whereas American "psychologized individualism"

rehabilitated verbal expression of emotions, bodily expressivity has been banned by emerging global

norms of middle-class respectability (2009:128-130).

These two antithetical historical narratives are important reference points for my analysis. We shall

return to them in the conclusion, and see that they are not as different as they seem at first glance. In

Israel, just as in Bangladesh, loud mourning practices (either conventionalized or unconventionalized) are

marked as both "Oriental" and "traditional," and highly identified with Mizrahim—that is, Oriental Jews5

(Sagiv, 2012). This follows a general pattern, almost consensual among Israelis, that identifies loudness

with Mizrahim, Arabs and people with lower-SES (Schwarz, 2012). Contrariwise, a strict ideal of

"respectful" silence has characterized funerals in the secular, Ashkenazi Kibbutzim (Kalekin-Fishman &

Klingman, 1988).

The significations attributed to loud mourning practices makes them highly sensitive, since

"Westernness" and modernity have been the core of the self-concept of Zionism and Israel since their

dawn; Westernization and modernization of Oriental Jews had been official state policy goals; and

Westernness and modernity have become major forms of cultural capital in Israel that yield symbolic and

material returns (Chinski, 2002; Khazzoom, 2008; Shohat, 1988). Today Mizrahim are still

underrepresented in the middle-classes and educated elites, and ethnic arrogance against Mizrahim and

practices associated with them is not uncommon, although old policies are sometimes criticized as racist

and new sensibilities have emerged against overt ethnic intolerance (a duality studied by Sasson-Levy,

2008). Social boundaries between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, which had never been as strong as racial

boundaries in the US, have gradually become even more permeable: ethnic boundaries are being recasted

as cultural boundaries based on stereotypic hexes, lifestyle, conduct and cultural preferences (e.g. Sasson-

Levy, 2008), including loudness (Schwarz, 2012). Furthermore, despite having constructed Mizrahim as

lacking in modernity and Westernness, Zionist ideology also included them in the national collectivity

through assimilation and de-Arabization (Shenhav, 2006). Martial death in particular has become a symbol

of national unity of Israeli-Jews of all ethnicities, a dimension further discussed below. These axes of

class, national and ethnic symbolic hierarchies serve as background for the judgment of mourning

performances.

Methods

5 Jews of North African or Middle-eastern descent, as contrasted to Ashkenazim, Jews of European descent.

Although each of these categories is ethnically, culturally and economically diverse, this dichotomy is highly

salient in the way Israelis understand ethnicity.

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Moral judgments are often invisible or implicit: people rarely pronounce loud verbal judgment over the

mourning of others during funerals, and they avoid it for strong moral reasons discussed below. This

precluded participant observation as a viable method, and led me to base my analysis on semi-structured

interviews. Interviews were conducted with 61 Israelis (42 women, 19 men; age 20-80, median 34) over a

10-months period in 2010/2011 as a part of a wider research project on sound and society. The sample is

not representative (hence no distributional claims are made), but is extremely diverse in terms of ethnicity,

status/occupation groups, education level, lifestyle, age, and geographic residence. To achieve these high

levels of diversity, interviewees were recruited from five designated groups: affluent Ashkenazi retirees,

subscribers of a classical orchestra; middle-class married urbanites who moved to the countryside;

residents of a nationally and ethnically-diverse working-class town; university students; and librarians.

They were asked about their attitudes to sounds in different social context, including funerals. The large

number and extreme diversity of interviewees supplied me with a wide variety of moral logics and ways

of using them. Whenever quoted, interviewees are characterized in terms of gender, age and ethnicity, and

while discussing class—also class/occupation.

Interviewees were asked "what do you think of the habit of screaming and weeping loudly at

funerals?" The replies were usually not abstract musing or scholastic generalizations that may be

attributed to the interview situation alone. Instead, many interviewees referred to actual cases of funerals

in which they participated, recalling their actual emotional and moral reactions to performances of

concrete co-mourners. Interviewees did not limit their accounts to sounds, but also gave detailed accounts

of their judgments of (and emotional reactions to) non-sonic components of mourning performances.

Interviewees who did not refer to concrete personal experiences were encouraged to do so with

follow-up questions. Other follow-up questions were aimed at obtaining thicker and more comprehensible

accounts (“what do you mean by 'hypocrisy'?,” “what indicates it was a 'show',” “why do you think they

told her to be quiet,” etc.). Some interviewees also spontaneously mentioned funerals in other parts of the

interview, e.g. as an example of intergroup differences in sonic styles.

This design relies on the assumption that people in different everyday arenas (including funerals)

are constantly engaged in monitoring the appropriateness of other people's conduct (Sayer, 2005a;

Thévenot, 2002). Unlike the abstract evaluation of hypothetical questions by philosophers, this monitoring

is usually unconscious as long as the conduct of others follows the expectations of the evaluator. However,

once this conduct departs from these expectations (for better or worse), it evokes judgmental reactions of

praise, rebuke, or ambivalence. Evaluators may follow their gut reaction (that is, their moral emotions,

which in themselves rely on cognition, evaluation and unreflexive application of deeply inculcated cultural

logics)6 or reflexively problematize and re-evaluate their gut reactions through the application of culturally

available moral logics. The interviews were aimed at collecting data on both gut reactions and reflexive

evaluation. First, asking a general question that reifies the phenomena (loud mourning) encouraged

interviewees to engage in simulated evaluation of the practice, and thus expose the moral logics available

to them. However, the open, casual Hebrew wording ('ma da'atkha': 'what do you say about') did not force

interviewees to engage in abstract scholastic moral judgment: interviewees who had not thought about

lamenting in moral terms could have interpreted it as a question about their subjective attitudes,

experiences and feelings.

Secondly, following the abstract question interviewees were encouraged to reminisce concrete,

contextualized mourning performances, and elaborate on their interpretations and evaluations of these

performances and their emotional reactions. While moral simulations are a legitimate methodological

strategy for identifying the discursive repertoires available to interviewees, this strategy has limited

capabilities: it supplies us with knowledge of the repertoire but not of its contextualized application;

knowledge on how practices can be judged, rather than how the particular interviewee did judge or would

have judged any real life performance; of honorable judgments rather than visceral ones (Pugh, 2012). By

encouraging interviewees to tell me stories about actual funerals in which they participated, I could study

not merely which logics exist, but also how particular interviewees used them creatively in context toward

particular others. Furthermore, by collecting data on both concrete emotional experiences and abstract

judgments, I could unveil the self-criticism directed by some interviewees to their gut reactions. This

“critique of critique” is important, because it exposes intra-cultural tensions (cf. Pugh, 2012 on meta-

feelings).

6 These moral emotions are often believed to constitute the core of morality: Tavory, 2011; cf. Sayer, 2005a;

Vaisey, 2009.

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In some cases, while telling the story interviewees became highly involved emotionally, as they

seemed to re-live their emotional reactions to behaviors they considered ethically flawed. My analysis of

logics does not exclude these emotional reactions, but rather treat them as data (cg. Pugh, 2012) and

explores their internal moral logic.

Interviews were recorded, fully transcribed, and coded for different arguments. Then these

arguments were aggregated into wider categories of moral logics. The coding system has been revised and

re-applied until proved exhaustive and coherent.

Logics of moral judgment

Three main ethics or logics of moral evaluation could be discerned in the data. This section will portray

these logics in their archetypical form, accompanied by demonstrations from the data. This will enable us

to identify the cultural repertoire available to actors for evaluating and justifying the appropriateness of

mourning performances. Some interviewees believed in a single right way to mourn, whereas others

professed pluralism. Some celebrated loud mourning and others denounced it. But all shared the same

ethical repertoire: diametrically opposed stances were often justified with the same tools (cf. Lowe,

2006:30). These ethics represent three distinct criteria for evaluating performances: civilizedness/self-

control, where value lies in the power to restrain emotional expression and adhere to norms of civility;

authenticity, where people are valued for their loyalty to their genuine, unique and spontaneous selves; and

therapeutic care, where value lies in maximization of mental welfare by supplying the psychological needs

of self and others. This late-modern trinity of criteria is not endemic to the evaluation of mourning: it may

also be identified in the evaluation of conduct in other settings in which emotions are assumed to inform

action.

In its strongest form, the ethic of self-control celebrates the older ideal of bearing in silence

(Jalland, 2006; Wouters, 2002): "You shouldn't take things so hysterically. O.K., it's the first boom, it's

really, it's hard, you get bad news. Eh.. people should be strong and really hold themselves back" (m36,

Arab).7 Self-restraint is a marker of worth in hierarchies based on distance from the "natural." This self-

control ethic has often justified domination over others perceived as less-cultured, more natural, and has

been traditionally associated with masculinity;8 Protestantism; Westernness; and the bourgeoisie

(Bederman, 1996; Bourdieu, 1984).

According to different interviewees, the value of self-restraint lies in maintaining one's honor and

respectability; in maintaining the separation between the private (inner emotion) and the public (display);

in adherence to religious rules and ideals (two religious Jews and one Muslim maintained that loud,

uncontrollable mourning is religiously inappropriate); or in being considerate to others and their

impression management (extremely intense demonstrations of grief may make the mourning of others

seem lukewarm and inadequate in comparison, e.g. "You shouldn't wear your heart on your sleeve, like, we

know, we all feel sad now, and it's a bit.. awkward. There are people whose sadness is quieter, more

internal": f26, Mizrahi, criticizing the behavior of her cousin in their grandmother’s funeral).

While self-control ethic was explicitly used as a moral logic in verbal arguments, it was also

manifested implicitly through the body of the actors. Sentiments such as disgust and contempt are "forms

of emotional reason" (Sayer, 2005b:948; cf. Ignatow, 2009), embodied and often pre-reflexive acts of

moral judgment.9 Some of the interviewees who had encountered loud mourning performances described

emotional/bodily reactions such as embarrassment (“It also embarrasses me, it embarrasses me very

much, breaking-down”10 (f26, Mizrahi), aversion, reservedness, or ridicule (one interviewee even reported

uncontrollable laughter as her reaction to what she perceived to be highly ridiculous and embarrassing a

performance). Others simply said it "rubs [them] the wrong way" (f71, Ashkenazi). These reactions are

key components of symbolic boundaries, group membership and group habitus (cf. Lawler, 2005 on the

disgusted middle-class subjectivity).

7 All quotes are excerpts from the interviews, unless stated otherwise. 8 In some societies, gendered mourning roles are complementary, as men are expected to display self-control,

whereas women should display expressive grief: Jonker, 1997. 9 For Rozin et al., 1999, contempt and disgust are embodied reactions to moral breaches of the ethics of community

and divinity, respectively. 10 hitparkut, here referring to a co-mourner who publically lost emotional control.

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The authenticity ethic is the very opposite of the self-control ethic. This ethic assumes that people

may choose between "authentic" and "inauthentic" behaviors and should prefer the former. For modern

people, self-authenticity has become warrant for self-claims to moral life, and the will to live authentically

became a master motive that shapes modes of action and self-evaluation (Weigert, 2009).11 Since claims to

authenticity are often claims to value, people want to be considered authentic, and the production of

authenticity has become part of impression management [for both people (Gubrium & Holstein, 2009) and

objects (Peterson, 1997)]. Sociologists have shown how the rise of the authenticity ethic shaped ways of

action in various sites (e.g. Bernasconi, 2010 on sexuality; Vannini & Burgess, 2009 on academic life),

and explored the complex challenges it poses to those who wish to live authentically (Petersen, 2011). But

what "authenticity" actually means?

For Boltanski and Thévenot (2006[1991]), authenticity belongs to the "inspired world," one of six

worlds available for actors for justification and critique. Within this world, the value of an individual

derives from her uniqueness; hence people should reject social dramaturgy, established norms and

traditions, and embrace spontaneous action based on inner conviction. Whereas their account is a-historic,

the authenticity ethic is highly modern. Taylor (1989) traced the sources of authenticity and self-

expression ethics in the enlightenment and romanticism. Nolan (1998) claims that only once the authority

of external moral points-of-reference had dramatically waned (following social rationalization processes)

have people turned to subjective emotions for moral orientation, decision making and self-understanding.

The authenticity ethic relies on the highly modern assumption that emotions derive from the core of the

self and define the true identity of individuals (McCarthy, 2009). Boltanski and Chiapello [2005(1999)]

differentiated between three kinds of authenticity, which they identified with three stages in the history of

capitalism: first—authenticity as emotional sincerity, the 19th century critique of the bourgeois preference

of "good manners" (i.e. emotional reservedness) over emotional "sincerity" in relationships. Later came

the notion of authenticity as uniqueness: the 20th century critique of Fordist mass production and the

ensuing standardization and massification of subjectivity. Finally came authenticity as autotelicity: the

critique of the colonization of ever more life-spheres by strategic "promotionalism" (Wernick, 1991) and

capitalist rationalism. Here, an action is authentic only if not directed at anything beyond itself (such as

fame or profit): the pure, spontaneous expressiveness (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005).

All three authenticities were employed by my interviewees: the preferences of emotional sincerity

over good manners; of uniqueness over uniformity; and of autotelicity over strategizing are all valid moral

imperatives. The authenticity ethic has been employed by both Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, younger and

older interviewees, and for opposite reasons—to discredit loud performances as "a show," a mere

convention, a mask of uniformity covering the differences between unique individual emotions; but also to

laud loud mourning performances for their emotional authenticity; and to criticize silent mourning

performances as inauthentic. A total of 18 interviewees have used at least one version of the authenticity

ethic.

The first authenticity critique (of restraining "good manners") reflects in critiques such as "when

you see Christian funerals on TV you're shocked from the restraint. And I don't think of it positively.

Rather negatively. I believe they feel (…) People should discharge what they have on their hearts" (f76,

Ashkenazi), or in defenses of loud Mizrahi mourning such as "it comes from within, it is not superficial"

(f80, Ashkenazi)

The second authenticity critique, focused on the precedence of individual self-expression over

compliance with cultural scripts, may be demonstrated with a 25-year-old female university student of a

Bukharan descent, who said: "when I die, let's not wail over me. Let's be quiet." To her, the loud

lamentation common among her older co-ethnics "seems rather like a show, not like sadness," an

impression created "simply, since everyone does it. After all, it isn't reasonable that all the women at a

certain funeral felt just the same and hence behave the same.. For me, real sadness is individual. I mean, I

wouldn't have a problem with a lamenting woman who does it individually, not because that’s how it's

11 In this sense, authenticity is only one among many moral logics, not a universal meta-criterion for the evaluation

of all performances as in Alexander (2004). Indeed, any performance should convince, but this does not

necessarily amount to a demand for the complete erasure of the gap between interiority and exteriority.

Furthermore, performances of self-control should convince that they do not erase this gap, that is, that they

represent the strenuous restraining of authentic grief rather than mere emotional indifference. The English norm

that demands the bereaved to control their emotions, yet performatively hint that their emotions are so strong and

deep they can hardly be controlled (Walter, 1994) may well be interpreted as a response to this challenge. Yet,

these convincing performances do not follow the authenticity ethic as defined above.

9 Schwarz / Dead Honest Judgments

9

being done."12 Ashkenazi interviewees expressed similar critique, e.g. "it's not about emotions, it's a

culture of an ethnic group (…) I don't know what it gives them"; or "[crying is] understood, and

acceptable, on condition that it is sincere, [because in some funerals] the bereaved and those around him

are expected to demonstrate their grief in.. a fashion that may be exaggerated" (m34, Ashkenazi).13

The third authenticity critique construes loud, conspicuous mourning performances as

inappropriately instrumental or communicative (rather than spontaneous), motivated by desire to attract

attention; to "artificially" augment the impression that one feels sadness or empathy; or even to

competitively show that one is more bereaved than others. Thus, one interviewee criticized loud mourning

by saying: "I don't like it. It's no good. Sometimes it's a show (…) I don't believe it." After criticizing her

uncle who "whined like a baby" in her father's funeral although he didn't love him, she explained that such

loud mourning performances are not expressive, but rather instrumental, a way of communicating a

message: "You want to cheer them up, to say 'oh dear, it hurts me so much that your father passed away,'

that stuff" (f51, Mizrahi). Whereas this behavior could be praised as a demonstration of altruistic care, it is

denounced for staining emotional expression with goal-oriented action, as noble as it may be.

Other interviewees believed that loud performances may be either expressive/authentic or

instrumental/inauthentic, allowing the circumstances guide their judgment. Thus, one interviewee

criticized the conduct of a schoolmate at the funeral of a common friend: "She lay down on the floor in his

funeral, 'N-O!!,' started screaming and everything, like. She made a completely unnecessary drama. Now,

try telling her.. It's her pain, can you tell her anything? You can't. But in my opinion it was pure attention

[seeking]. Now, if it were his mother, I could have completely understood it" (f25, Mizrahi). Here

judgment is based on prior acquaintance with the performer’s character (described as “needy” and

attention-seeking) and on her role (a mere acquaintance rather than a close relative). Another interviewee

(f34, immigrant from Belarus) said she considers women's loud mourning a mere show, but would believe

the authenticity of a man, who would have to violate gender norms to do the same.

Finally, the therapeutic ethic offers a different, utilitarian criterion of evaluation: a good

performance is one that has the best impact on the mental wellbeing of the bereaved. Once psychological

wellbeing has gained recognition as one of the most important social goods, thanks to the popularization

of psychological world-views by experts (Illouz, 2008; Nolan, 1998), it is no surprise that utilitarian

morality has been expanded to recognize the maximization of psychological wellbeing as an ethical

principal.

Emotional expression is justified since it is considered "healthier" to let the pain out: the bereaved

have the privilege to ignore the sensibilities of others and do whatever serves their psychological cause,

regardless of impression management considerations (which are construed as mental health threats): "I

think anything that helps you release the grief at that moment is good (...) whether [the bereaved] feels he

needs to shout, whether he feels he needs to sing, whether he feels he needs to.. even laugh, for me it's

legitimate" (f41, Ashkenazi).14 One interviewee felt sorry for those who do not dare cry in public, or "don't

know" how to express emotions. She said loud mourning is "a need. Very much. Since if you keep it, it eats

you from inside, and once you let it out, and people see you let it out, then it rather lets you.. discharge,

people truly understand you, it doesn't eat you. Once it's inside, it eats you" (f23, Arab).15 Whereas the

therapeutic ethic shares with the authenticity ethic the decline of the traditional imperative to "be brave,"

here the motivation is not rejection of inauthentic behavior as such, but rather a utilitarian endeavor to

minimize the mental damages of loss. Ten interviewees employed this logic. One of them expanded this

ethic to claim people should also take into consideration the health of co-mourners, who may be

"traumatized" by loud mourning. She told of a friend who had lost her mother as a teenager and collapsed

in the funeral, allegedly because of the dramatic loud cries: "once her aunties started screaming and

12 Collier (1997) documented the same critique in a Spanish village, where younger women declined traditional

strict mourning customs: for them, wearing black for years after loss was not only meaningless (“one doesn't feel

a death any less deeply if one wears black or not”: p.186), but also an hypocritical act, since virtuous conduct

should be guided by authentic feelings and desires, not by custom or will to honor the dead. 13 Social scientists often assume that emotional experience and expression are necessarily socially/culturally

constructed, hence they see no contradiction between emotional authenticity and cultural regulation or uniformity.

However, lay people do often assume such a contradiction. For them, uniformity indicates social, external

regulation of emotional display, rather than cultural construction of authentic interiority/subjectivity. 14 Thus, the medicalized ‘bereaved role’ entails privileges and exemptions comparable to Parson's sick-role. 15 Interestingly, the therapeutic ethic is very much in line with the principles of emotional management identified by

Wikan (1988) among Egyptians.

10 Schwarz / Dead Honest Judgments

10

crying as if they were insane, the girl fainted and lost consciousness, for maybe four hours she remained

unconscious. And in the hospital they said it's because there was a lot of physical and emotional pressure

on her (…) it's like, you start hearing them [mourning loudly], and you like look at them, and you [in a

loud, reproaching tone]: 'what's wrong with you?!'" (f23, Mizrahi).

As my data demonstrate, both the authenticity- and the psy-ethics are flexible: they can be used to

either justify or criticize both quiet and loud mourning performances, at the agent's discretion. This is so,

because unlike the self-control ethic, their evaluation criteria refer to interiorities, which cannot be

accessed directly: the morality of conduct depends on its correlation to the actor’s interiority in the former

case; and to its (beneficial or harmful) impact on the interior, psychological well-being of self and others

in the latter. Put differently, the susceptibility of moral logics to flexible use depends on their kind of

referents. Ethics with interior referents open a space for interpretation by enabling divergence between

being and seeming.16 Only then can the same act be evaluated differently by different evaluators based on

the same evaluation criteria.

On the judgment of judgment. While the three moral logics portrayed above enabled interviewees

to engage in evaluation of mourning performances, a different meta-moral logic limited the space of moral

evaluation by criticizing the very act of critique, putting mourning beyond the reach of moral evaluation.

This tendency is often espoused with a liberal morality, according to which anyone may do as they wish as

long as no harm is done to others. Liberal statements that everyone has the right to mourn as one pleased17

were common in the data, without preventing the same speakers from making judgmental statements.

However, nine interviewees went as far as delegitimizing acts of judgment by others, explicitly claiming

that mourning practices are beyond judgment. Some interviewees emphasized that even when exposure to

loud mourning is unpleasant, judgment is not allowed.

Denying oneself and others the entitlement to judge and condemn the practices of others is a highly

modern tendency (Lukes, 2008:153-155; Wouters, 2002), which may rely on liberal, multicultural, or

relativist sentiments. It led some interviewees to either criticize their own criticality, that is, their own use

of the logics portrayed above—or to avoid using them in the first place. The judgment of judgment is thus

a meta-criterion that delimits morality rather than guides it. This pluralism may be either multicultural

(assuming that differences represent cultural/ethnic conventions that should all be respected in an anti-

racist, multicultural fashion);18 or individual (understanding diversity in mourning as legitimate individual

idiosyncrasies, which are often viewed as instinctive, uncontrollable, and even unconscious—and hence

beyond moral responsibility and judgment).19 The critique of critique can rely not only on anti-racist or

psychological liberal grounds, but also on nationalist ones. Since sacrifice of life in the army symbolizes

for many Israelis national unity, criticizing mourning practices of Mizrahim may be read as a challenge to

their inclusion within the national collective, e.g. "Each ethnic group and its own habits. That it grates on

the ears of those who aren't used to it? Maybe. So they shouldn't come. But so many, all the wars we've

gone through, all the sons we've buried, and how many of them were Mizrahim? What, [blowing air] have

anyone even thought of criticizing it? No. and there have been no critique till this very day" (f80,

Ashkenazi). Be it because of nationalism, liberalism, anti-racism or psychologism, the critique of critique

marks mourning as a territory beyond social regulation and judgment for people who are often highly

judgmental about sonic practices in other contexts discussed in the interviews.

Having presented the main ethics represented in the data, I wish to explain my choice to discuss

specific ethics rather than the "worlds" to which they belong. In the terms of On Justification (Boltanski &

Thévenot, 2006), the authenticity ethic belongs to the "inspirational world," whereas the self-control ethic

belongs to the "domestic world," where good manners are "trappings of worth" (p.169), proofs of

character and good upbringing. However, confining ourselves to this reductionist portrayal would sacrifice

16 Only then can the moral challenge to act morally be distinguished from the performative challenge to seem

moral, as suggested by Goffman (1959: 251). 17 On the individualization of mourning and replacement of general cultural scripts with personal, family or

subcultural scripts see Walter, 1994. 18 Those who advocated this stance were not necessarily radical relativists believing that cultural variance put any

custom beyond moral judgment: some of them strongly condemned some other manifestations of what they

considered to be loud Mizrahi/lower-class practices, yet they put mourning beyond the reach of "good manners."

While customs are not always beyond normativity, widening the boundaries of custom may narrow the sphere of

moral judgment. 19 Unlike the authenticity ethic, here behaving authentically is not construed as an ethical choice, but rather as an

involuntary response.

11 Schwarz / Dead Honest Judgments

11

the historical and cultural specificity of these ethics in favor of philosophical abstractions. The problem

exacerbates with the therapeutic ethic, which cannot be neatly categorized: it is a utilitarian ethic

(industrial-like), but one directed towards a new object—psychological wellbeing, increasingly perceived

as a civic right.20 For sociologists, the specificity of ethics is just as important as their generality. The

ethical trinity of psy-wellbeing, authenticity and self-control (alongside the critique of critique) constitutes

a moral ecology which is unique to late-modernity (and employed beyond the sphere of mourning). It is

not merely "inspirational justifications," but those modern inspirational justifications whose authority

comes from inner emotions (not from supernatural beings) and is always subject to the hermeneutics of

suspicion; not any "good upbringing," but the one associated with Western middle-class respectability; not

merely "rational utilitarianism, " but the one that aspires to the maximization of psychological well-being.

While the social game cannot be understood without knowing its pieces, it cannot be reduced to

them. Having presented the pieces (the ethics used for critique within my data), the next section will focus

on how this historically-specific trinity is actually used, while introducing actors, context, positions, and

identification strategies.

Strategies of identification

The former section presented the tools used for judgment of emotionally-laden performances. These are

the discursive and moral logics, through which people can give meaning and ascribe value to ways of

conduct, a culturally and historically specific moral repertoire that shapes judgments and behaviors. This

section will explore the ways in which these tools are used, which are creative, but not chaotic.

The case I would like to make is that moral evaluations are shaped not only by the available moral

repertoire but also by the identifications of actors (Jenkins, 2008). Sociologists have recently shown how

moral judgment is used in demarcation of group boundaries—not only for exclusion and closure, but also

for the constitution of self-value and dignity by those lacking other forms of socially recognized worth

(Kefalas, 2003; Lamont, 1992, 2002; Paul, 2011). Whenever people negotiate evaluation criteria they

redistribute socially acknowledged worth (Bourdieu, 2000). Whenever people morally evaluate the

conduct of others, they position themselves vis-à-vis those others; make claims regarding the social value

and the identities of these others and of themselves; and try to win recognition for these claims. Just like

judgments of cultural taste (Bourdieu, 1984:6), moral judgments classify the classifiers: they are

statements about the identifications evaluators ascribe themselves or want others to ascribe them, about

the collectivities to which they aspire to belong, and those from which they wish to dissociate themselves.

Moral resources are important instruments in this identity and boundary work (Lamont 1992, 2002). This

self-definitional dimension is so central to morality, that it can even define the moral realm itself: for Iddo

Tavory, the difference between moral and amoral actions lies in the strong self-definitional character of the

formers—they qualify actors as belonging to a certain kind of people, categorization which is strong,

emotionally laden and relevant across fields (Tavory, 2011). However, evaluation classifies not only the

actor but also the evaluator. If people are aware of the self-definitional dimension of moral judgment, their

identifications—their desire to occupy certain positions in the social world and avoid others—would

constrain their choices of moral logics and ways to employ them. People do not only “develop lines of

action based on who they already think they are” (Swidler, 2001:87), they also develop lines of judgment

that take identification into consideration. Semiotic codes attach meanings to moral logics, and actors

know that by employing these logics they attach these meaning to themselves. While Swidler did not

elaborate on this issue and left the broad categories used for social classification at the margin of her

empirical account, it should be noted that by introducing identification we may well re-introduce social

structure: for example, once practices are racialized, racial identifications often become a departure and

reference point for their evaluation.

In my data, no strong correlation could be found between moral logics and identities: moral

judgments are not determined by identity factors such as the actor's class, age or ethnicity.21 However,

20 Psychological frameworks have gained such predominance that wellbeing is increasingly understood in

psychological terms: being respected, feeling good, being able to express one's emotions, etc. Thus, old rights

such as the right to health gain new meanings. 21 Some collective patterns may be discerned in the data (e.g., Arabs and Jews from Asian ex-soviet republics did

not use the critique of critique, and were most prone to use the self-control ethics); however, a representative

12 Schwarz / Dead Honest Judgments

12

thinking about the ways in which interviewees used these logics in terms of identification strategies, such

as boundaries delineation, activation, relocation, or blurring (Tilly, 2004; Wimmer, 2008), enables us to

make sense of their choices and what they mean for the evaluators and their audiences. Unlike 'identity'

(which is seemingly fixed and predetermined), identification is always agentic, performative, dialogic and

dialectic (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000; Jenkins, 2008). Identification is also embodied, not only because it

may rely on durable embodied habits, but also since the body restricts the range of identities an actor may

reliably claim (as identifications and external categorization are dialectically constitutive: Jenkins, 2008).

Furthermore, whereas access to moral vocabularies is seemingly universal, their employment by different

actors is interpreted differentially, with different implications on the social worth ascribed to them.

Thus, a moral judgment that would gain symbolic benefits for one actor could threaten the social

worth of another. Actors may thus avoid using moral logics in ways which would endanger their

identifications or deny them socially recognized worth. The identification of actors with current and

aspired social positions and their awareness of identification threats (to be classified in ways inconsistent

with these identifications) may thus encourage or deter actors from some evaluative moves, delimiting the

repertoire effectively available to them. This is not to say, however, that social actors (ab)use moral logics

cynically: despite logic inconsistencies in lay morality, actors take both their judgments and their social

identifications seriously. Furthermore, if morality is a realm of self-definitional action, the relative stability

of identifications (stabilized by narratives, practices, and the actor's accumulative investment in them)

would result in a heightened level of commitment of people to their moral judgments—commitment that

according to Lowe (2006) singles out moral repertoires from other cultural repertoires. By employing

abstract moral values, actors ascribe themselves and others concrete social value and identity, negotiating

the redistribution of positions, identities and social worth. This is where social structures of identities and

cultural structures of morality meet.

Moral logics in context

The point of departure for this discussion is the strong identification of loud mourning with both

concrete social groups (Mizrahim) and abstract values (traditionalism, lack of control) that lack symbolic

capital. Identification with loud mourning practices—both conventionalized laments and unstructured

screams—may hence be dangerous, threatening to stain individuals and damage their social worth as

judged by others. 21 interviewees (34%) have explicitly spoken about differences in mourning between

"ethnic groups" and their respective "cultures" (although not explicitly asked about it). Ashkenazi

mourning was described as quiet, restrained, internalized, respectable, modern, and private/individual;

whereas Mizrahi mourning was described as loud, uncontrollable/hysterical, emotional, chaotic,

externalized, traditional, and public ("I've never encountered Ashkenazim who scream, cry, and so.

Because Ashkenazim are more restrained, Mizrahim—they let it all out": f23, Ashkenazi, upper-middle

class). One interviewee (f70, upper-middle class) went as far as suggesting that loud mourning practices

draw on Mizrahi belief in ghosts, thus casting it as primitive and superstitious.

One way in which culture shapes action is by investing practices with meanings: actors then often

take into consideration the implications of different paths of action on their impression management, the

way paths of action operate as statements about themselves and their attitude towards others (Goffman,

1959; Rosaldo, 1993; Swidler, 2001).22 The meanings associated with loud mourning practices may make

identification with these practices harmful, especially for Mizrahim who may be viewed as confirming

negative ethnic stereotypes (cf. Desmond & Emirbayer 2010:335-7). Some Mizrahim prefer to distance

themselves from these practices as much as possible, as part of their general strategy of self-repositioning

by relocation of ethnic boundaries (Tilly, 2004; Wimmer, 2008).23 Another possible strategy is

"transvaluation" (Wimmer, 2008)—insisting on the superiority of the stigmatized practice, e.g. by

suggesting that quiet mourning is inauthentic, psychologically ineffective, or that it testifies emotional

indifference to one's dear ones. However, not all these strategies seem equally promising and feasible to all

survey is needed before such claims can be substantiated. More importantly, all main logics were employed by

interviewees from diverse demographic backgrounds. 22 However, since actors often sincerely identify with the social positions they claim, this alignment of action with

claimed identity cannot be reduce to shallow impression management: it also consists of deep action. 23 This strategy is sometimes criticized as hishtaknezut—"Ashkenazization" or "acting white."

13 Schwarz / Dead Honest Judgments

13

actors, regardless of their social positions, aspirations and resources.

For those who move in certain trajectories in the social space, being exposed to unrestrained

emotional expression may be literally unbearable, as the next example demonstrates:

"Funerals of Moroccans are not quiet. No. they are full of weeping, and much shouting, and a lot

of emotions going out. I think that's why I try to avoid them. People seem ridiculous to me while

behaving that way, and they make these sounds, and I just prefer not to [go]. Even to my best

friend's funeral I didn't go. I preferred to keep her honor where I believe it should be, rather

than.. To me it seems grotesque, this mess going on in funerals." [f25, Moroccan descent,

university student].

Similarly, she reported avoiding prenuptial Henna ceremonies and weddings in which there are ululations,

and preferring events in which ethnically-marked loud gestures are spread in a "more boutique fashion, so

that grandma ululates only once in a while." The word "boutique," denoting in Hebrew small luxury

shops, expresses her desire to turn her ethnicity from a burden to an asset. During the interview, she also

condemned some sonic and other manners of her parents as "barbaric" and low-brow. This student, who

said she "passes" as Ashkenazi, employs a strategy of contingent detachment (Mizrachi & Herzog, 2011):

she distances herself as much as possible from stigmatized, shamed mourning (and other) practices of her

parents and their co-generationals, and participates in their shaming. Her commitment to the ethic of

civilizedenss—self-control, considerateness and respectability (she portrayed loud mourning as

disrespectful, staining the honor of the deceased)—rather than to the authenticity ethics was an integral

part of her broader identification strategy.

This self-distancing from ethnically-marked stigmatized practices is a claim for inclusion and for

non-ethnicized self-identity (cf. Mizrachi & Herzog, 2011): the 'culturization' of ethnic boundaries in

Israel has rendered performative identity (life-style and habitus, including sonic styles: Schwarz, 2012)

ever-more consequential and sensitive, as the case of mourning testifies. Her claim for inclusion is made

as an individual: while talking about it, she noted "it seems to me you've stumbled here on quite a standard

deviation"—yet this claim is embedded within a broader narrative on modernization and intergenerational

assimilation ("for my parents it seems.. stupid that I don't come to these things. Like, for them, you should

mourn loudly. (...) We are a generation away from each other").

Conversely, for Ashkenazim, demonstrating openness and a sympathetic attitude toward these

practices is an opportunity to accumulate "multicultural capital" (Bryson, 1996): cosmopolitan liberal

tolerance/openness as a high-status marker. Some Ashkenazi interviewees simultaneously distanced

themselves from loud mourning (describing it as “foreign” or “belonging to another culture”: f44,

Ashkenazi, upper-middle class)—and constructed themselves as progressive by stressing it is a “good

custom”, since it is authentic ("real"), therapeutic ("if you let the pain out, that's what needs to get out"),

legitimate ("everyone and his thing"), or even "cool." The very topic of ethnicity is highly sensitive for

Ashkenazim: talking about ethnic difference or hinting at cultural hierarchies may stain the speakers as

quasi-racists, or at least disqualify them as "progressive" (ne'orim) (cf. Sasson-Levy, 2008). Some

interviewees used code-words such as "culture" or "mentality" in lieu of (or before) explicitly referring to

ethnicity. High-status progressive identity thus consists of a mixture of personal commitment to self-

control and multicultural attitude toward others (the idea that "the more progressive ones are also more

refined and more quiet"—as quasi-reluctantly formulated by one interviewee: f58, Ashkenazi, librarian—

is always a latent point of reference that shapes discourse and action, although explicitly evoked only

rarely).

While recognizing that low-status practices have some value is a common practice that may support

claims for worth and 'progressive' identity, the opposite strategy—inverting hierarchies and devaluating

high-status practices—is much less common. While the idea that strong grief emotions may be expressed

involuntarily and be too strong to restrain was not uncommon in the data, only one interviewee drew the

logical conclusion that silent mourning reflects shallower, milder emotions—which is a common

conclusion among Afro-Americans in the US (Rosenblatt & Wallace, 2005). It was a poor Mizrahi

beautician/masseuse (f29) from a poor town who contrasted Mizrahi real mourning (e.g. her mother-in-law

who scratched herself to bleeding) with Ashkenazi mourning, which she assumed would be quiet and

milder, and which she characterized in a belittling tone as “a sort of sadness, kind of, I guess“. It may be

suggested that this transvaluation strategy (which she also employed in other contexts) is more likely

among people like her who have no identification claims for assimilation in the middle-class.24

24 Living in empathetically working-class occupational and residential environments may also make people less

14 Schwarz / Dead Honest Judgments

14

However, the ethnic dimension is not the only one that informs mourning practices and their

judgment. The three ethics discussed above have unique histories, and are also identified in generational

and class terms. The authenticity- and psy-ethics are emphatically late-modern moralities that were

introduced by a new generation—as demonstrated by Collier's account of the shift from an ethic of duty

to ethic of desire and authenticity since the 1960s (Collier, 1998). Binkley (2004) identifies a similar shift

from repressive self-discipline to the “new morality of individuality, authenticity, and therapeutic release”

with the baby-boomers of the 1970s—the new, creative post-Fordist middle-classes who revolted against

the ethic of their parents. This class identification may explain why among Englishmen, self-restrained

mourning has become rather a working-class practice (Walter, 1997). In Israel the introduction of new

moral logics has not dismantled the identification of self-control with social worth, due to the centrality of

ethnicity in social stratification and of Westernness as a major capital: in Israel, unlike England and like

Bangladesh, the colonial discourse on self-control as Westernness is still an effective social weapon.

Hence, as shown above, assimilation strategies may entail commitment to the self-control ethic.

However, the next case offers a different articulation of class, generation and ethnicity, in which the

psy-ethic is propagated by a member of the younger generation against the ethics of her parents. Here

different ethics—the therapeutic ethic and the ethic of self-control—were employed within an actual

debate on the mourning practice of a particular relative in a specific funeral. This case clearly

demonstrates the dual nature of critique—as simultaneously an abstract debate about values and a

concrete instrument of claiming and distributing social value. The excerpt is taken from an interview with

a 25-year-old university student from an upper-middle class, Iraqi-descent family. For her, loud mourning

"brings people a kind of relief. (…) We had a funeral in the family (…) and my grandmother

started screaming there, and that, and automatically everybody was trying to calm her down,

saying to her 'stop, relax, be quiet, be quiet'—god dammit, let her scream! Like, how else do you

want her to get out what she's got [inside]?"

Interviewer: And why do you think they were telling her to be quiet?

Interviewee: "Because, because maybe a person who screams and cries like that, it shows he's,

he's out of control in a way. And that's something that we, as a society, obviously don't see as a

positive thing, maybe we.. People who tell her 'be quiet' want her best interests, but I don't think

it's in her best interests. Yes, maybe they think 'oh, she's miserable, let's calm her down, let her

calm down, let her calm down'."

Interviewer: O.K. But you think, that emotionally, it's better to simply let

Interviewee: "you can't help it, sometimes, it's also, also shouting, it's a kind of relief, which

helps you release what you've got, and then, afterward—that's it, you feel, a kind of catharsis,

and you feel that's it, you're clean."

The grandmother mourns through uncontrollable screaming. Her descendants judged this loss of control to

be inappropriate, because (she believes) they employ the general view of "society" that losing control is

bad. By applying the ethic of self-control, which dubs this mourning style inappropriate for a modern,

Western subject, they acted as subjects of shaming in order not to become objects of shaming (i.e., to

distance themselves from the shamed mourning practice). They try to calm grandmother down. The tone

she ascribed them was not therapeutic and empathetic but rather educational and authoritative (the

imperative "be quiet!"—as told to young children—rather than a soft "don't cry"). She depicts their action

as automatic one (without reflecting about grandmother's actual interests), motivated by the prevalent ethic

of self-control (yet she falls short of explicitly saying they are motivated by shame, which would to be too

harsh an accusation). The interviewee disagrees. For her, "the best interests" of her grandmother are not to

have her respectability defended, but rather to have her psychological wellbeing defended. While

acknowledging the good intentions of her relatives, she challenged their ethical conception of the good.

vulnerable to shaming. However, there might be other reasons why most interviewees did not engage in

transvaluation, including (1) the formulation of my question (focused on loud mourning); and (2) my own class

and ethnic background that could make Mizrahi interviewees feel less comfortable to openly criticize the

Ashkenazi psyche. However, it is probably also influenced by class identification and the personal social

networks composition of interviewees. Two interviewees proved familiarity with the idea that quiet mourning

indicates indifference by defending themselves against it: “it was a kind of Ashkenazi funeral. Not that.. it was

very touching, by the way (…) very touching, but.. there were no shouts” (m34, mixed-ethnicity, lawyer); “I think

that whoever screams or cries more, it doesn't mean it hurts him more” (f64, Ashkenazi-ethnicity, upper-middle

class).

15 Schwarz / Dead Honest Judgments

15

The granddaughter suggests that discharging emotions, experiencing catharsis, and getting the pain out of

one's system are more important than impression management and respectability, that is, that

psychological internal goods are more important than social external goods.25

However, this framework does not represent a complete withdrawal from the game of legitimacy

and recognition. Over the last generation, the therapeutic ethic and discourse have gained social

legitimacy. The first to adopt them were high-status young members of the new middle-classes, who thus

differentiated themselves from both the working classes and the traditional middle-class self-control ethic

of their parents (Binkley, 2004, Illouz, 2008; Pfister, 1997).

This case demonstrates how strategies are developed within the matrix of class, ethnicity and

generation: her family was highly vulnerable to shaming since they were not only Mizrahim living in a

mainly-Ashkenazi neighborhood (where Ashkenazim outnumber Mizrahim in a 1:2.5 ratio according to

census data), and not only because they were upper-middle class (according to Wilce, urban elite-aspiring

classes are most vulnerable to shame, i.e. the perception of ethnic customs through the lens of powerful

Others)—but also because they were residents of a lucrative neighborhood, where most residents (at least

at their age cohort) were constantly anxious about good manners and defending their symbolic status

(Birenbaum-Carmeli, 2000). The interviewee herself, however, criticized this good-manners ethic: like

many other younger people, she believed a healthy psyche is more precious than respectability (Binkley,

2004). By turning to the therapeutic ethic, she posed a moral challenge to her relatives.

The two women whose moral judgments I discussed at length in this section share a lot in terms of

sociodemographic categories: they are both young, university students, Mizrahi, of (broadly speaking)

middle-class background. However, they are very different in their boundary work and identifications. The

former asked to differentiate herself from the social background in which she was raised (a low-status

peripheral town) and from her Mizrahi ethnicity, and to acquire an ethnically-unmarked identity through

the embracement of middle-class culture, which se associated with self-control, respectability and

considerateness. She gradually acquired various sonic sensitivities, preferences and styles in line with this

identification project, which also frame her attitude to loud mourning. This identification move that

informed her moral judgment was in no way determined by her structural position, yet it was designed in

relation to it. The second student, for whom being upper-middle class is taken for granted, differentiated

herself from the very same traditional middle-class self-control ethic and from silencing as an assimilation

strategy. She did so on behalf of rising psychological sensitivities, the new psy-ethics. Static identities

(sociodemographic categories) are thus proved to be of little avail in explaining moral judgment: among

my interviewees, all three moral logics were common across ethnic, class and age lines. However, a close

look at the dynamics of identification, identity claims, and attitude toward existing structure of symbolic

boundaries may help understand why different people use shared cultural repertoires in different ways.

Conclusion

This article analyzed judgments of loud mourning practices and performances by Israelis of diverse

backgrounds. I analyzed both the internal logics of evaluative statements, and their embeddedness in wider

social contexts. Doing so has revealed the dual nature of critique—simultaneously a relatively-

autonomous cultural system of abstract evaluation criteria and a set of instruments for concrete

identification and positioning. Moral evaluations are not determined by structural positions or group

interests in any vulgar manner, yet social actors cannot forget that moral judgment of others is always also

negotiation over their own identities and social worth, and that the most abstract claims may have very

concrete implications for themselves.

The findings also offer more refined and complex an answer to the disputed question regarding the

power and malleability of cultural contents: are moral logics mere instruments that may be creatively used

to justify actions at the actor's discretion? Above I suggested that the flexibility of cultural logics depends

on their referents. Indeed, different strategies may use the same moral logics to draw contradictory

conclusions, but not all moral logics may be used this way. Some moral logics prescribe concrete paths of

external action, and hence constrain evaluation rather strongly; while others refer to the interiorities of the

actors and others, which are not directly visible and hence leave a leeway for interpretation and creative

25 By doing so she departs from the sociological logic of Goffman (1959) and Bourdieu. The distinction between

internal and external goods, borrowed from Alasdair MacIntyre, is quoted in Sayer, 2005a.

16 Schwarz / Dead Honest Judgments

16

use.

Now it may be clear why the two processes documented in the literature—the rehabilitation of loud

mourning (Jalland, 2006; Wouters, 2002) and its delegitimation (Wilce, 2009)—are not as different as they

may seem: both rely on the same moral vocabulary, referring to the same criteria of worth—civilizedness

and authenticity. They diverge on whether these two criteria yield contradictory or consensual judgments

of loud mourning: one may consider loud mourning as either authentic emotional expression, or as

inauthentic traditional conventions; and similarly, consider quiet crying as either suppressed emotional

expression or a personal, less other-oriented way of expressing authentic emotions. In the first case, the

introduction of the ethic of authenticity would yield further stigmatization of traditional wailing (as

documented by Wilce), further bolstering the civilizedness ideal; whereas in the former case it would

result in the increased expressivity discussed by Jalland and Wouters. This is only possible thanks to the

flexibility of the authenticity ethic, which has an internal referent and may thus yield contradictory

judgments. The Israeli case demonstrates that both interpretations may co-exist in the same cultural

setting.

The article identified a trinity of logics that structure late-modern evaluation of emotionally-laden

action. Whereas the ethics of authenticity (as they developed since the romantics to the post-Fordist era)

have posed individuals new moral challenges (Binkley, 2004; Petersen, 2011), creating new states of

worthiness and opening the way to new critiques—hierarchies based on the self-control ethic, traditionally

incarnated in Western men, are still powerful. A third common ethic has directed the instrumental

rationality toward the maximization of a new kind of goods, psychological wellbeing, while relying on

popularized psy-experts knowledge (Illouz, 2008; Nolan, 1998). This trinity is not endemic to Israel: the

ethics of self-control and authenticity may be identified worldwide (e.g. Jalland, 2006; Walter, 1997;

Wouters, 2002; Wilce, 2009), as well as the therapeutic ethic (Afro-Americans often judge white mourning

to be so private and restrained as to pose a severe mental health threat that could amount to suicide:

Rosenblatt and Wallace, 2005). More important: this moral grammar is used for evaluating the

appropriateness of conduct in other emotionally-laden contexts, beyond funerals. For example,

contemporary discourses on anger are usually defined by the same three axes:

1. Emotional authenticity: criticizing those who are not connected to their feelings and who

suppress anger; and praising emotional authenticity and openness;

2. The self-control imperative: criticizing unmanaged anger as irrational. Anger should only be

expressed through careful communication that would yield mutual understanding and

harmony rather than escalation. Praising calculated, intentional expressions of anger by

parents as rational educational instruments; and

3. The psy-ethic: anger viewed as a threat to the well-being of self and others that must be

cautiously neutralized, as both expression and suppression of anger may result in

psychological damage.

This schema may easily be applied to other contexts in a similar manner—although the degree of

exhaustiveness of any such application demands empirical inquiry.

Like the moral worlds of Boltanski and Thévenot, these three logics are irreconcilable, as expressed

in their contradictory "investment formulae": access to a state of worthiness in any world (i.e. according to

any single logic) entails the sacrifice of worth in others. It is impossible to simultaneously fully control

oneself, act fully authentically (that is, in an uncontrolled and non-instrumental fashion), and maximize

the psychological wellbeing of self and others. As seen above, expressing one's authentic emotions or

following one's ethnic tradition may result in trauma for the fresh orphan; whereas helping grandmother

retain her respectability may threat her psychological wellbeing, and vice versa. "Being virtuous in terms

of one moral vocabulary may cause an individual to be perceived as being deviant in another" (Lowe,

2002:119). However, despite these contradictions, it is possible to try to avoid extreme violation of all

three logics, knowing that an extremely inauthentic or extremely uncontrolled behavior may evoke

judgment within the relevant world. In such an economy of worth and morality, a prudent strategy could

be not to pursue a state of worthiness in any single world, but rather to avoid states of unworthiness in all

worlds.26 There is evidence that in some cases when contradictory ethics persist, "balancing strategy" is

the most successful moral strategy (Robbins, 2007:308-309). If so, Boltanski and Thévenot's metaphor of

"worlds" is misleading: people employ different logics of judgment simultaneously, not in turns, as people

26 This strategy should not be confused with Boltanski and Thévenot's 'compromises,' where people identify the

intersection of moral worthiness in two worlds, not the symmetric difference of their states of unworthiness.

17 Schwarz / Dead Honest Judgments

17

shape their conduct and judgments in relation to the whole matrix.

The simultaneous usage of different moral logics could be demonstrated with the excerpt that

opened this article. Hierarchies of worth based on truthfulness to nature (authenticity) and those based on

distance from nature (self-control) seem contradictory. However, in reality they may be brought together.

In the opening quote, loud mourning is simultaneously reproached for being inauthentic ("a theater," done

"for the public"); and unrestrained ("What one feels inside can be endured in silence"). Here, a practice is

criticized simultaneously by ad-hoc employment of seemingly contradictory independent criteria of worth:

the speaker cannot accept it as either authentic or respectable.

This seemingly incoherent critique may teach us two important lessons: first, that the regime within

which evaluative logics are employed is different than suggested by Boltanski and Thévenot: people are

often required by evaluators to satisfy multiple ethics simultaneously rather than excel (achieve grandeur)

in any one of them. The most solid, critic-proof performance would be then simultaneously reasonably

authentic, psychologically efficacious, and yet reasonably respectable and controlled. This of course

should not imply any consensus over an "ideal" performance or a single set that would yield consensual

evaluations (as demonstrated above, even within any social class or ethnic group evaluations are plural

and contested), but rather that avoiding multiple stigmatization threats may shape moral evaluation and

conduct no less than aspiration to virtuosity according to any single ethic. In such a regime, the inertia of

the self-control ethic could well have curtailed the subversive potential of the authenticity ethic to fully

rehabilitate expressive mourning practices practiced by low-status actors.

The second lesson is that moral evaluation does not take place in a vacuum and cannot be abstracted

from its identification implications and meanings, which may encourage actors to prefer some evaluative

moves over others. . Evaluation redistributes recognition, social worth, and social identities, and this is no

secret for evaluators. As demonstrated above, by using particular parts of the available repertoire of moral

logics in particular ways actors negotiate their own social position and worth, identify with some social

identities and distance themselves from others. The speaker in the opening quote is a Ukrainian immigrant,

rich in cultural capital and member of the creative classes, who lives in an ethnically-diverse poor town.

Like many other immigrants from the ex-Soviet Union, she tries to retain her sense of value and dignity

and avoid segmented assimilation into the Israeli working-class by defending her cultural capital from

devaluation and drawing symbolic boundaries against allegedly non-Western, uncivilized others. While it

is always possible to use different logics simultaneously, doing so in this context obviously supported her

attempts throughout the interview and beyond it to identify herself as Westerner and differentiate herself

her surroundings.

Adopting the same line of critique may have different impacts on the actor's impression

management, depending on her ethnicity, age, class position, residential context, aspirations, and even her

phenotype. Moral statements thus cannot be understood independently of the embodied speakers in a

social context. Hence, although everyone nay be familiar with all different logics, not everyone is as likely

to use them in the same way. As shown above, judgment of funeral performances (in Israel and beyond it)

is an act of negotiation over the distribution of symbolic value and the drawing of symbolic boundaries.

Making the wrong judgment of others could thwart one's own identification endeavor or devalue oneself.

Whereas people's moral judgment of mourning performances cannot be predicted based on

sociodemographic factors, these identities are the point of departure for projects of identification, and

supply the context necessary for understanding the dangers and opportunities associated with embracing

different lines of critique.

We shall then analyze two analytically independent structures in relation to which evaluation is

shaped: the structure of available moral logics, and the structure of social identities, their differential

availability to different actors and their characterizations and meanings. The dual nature of moral

judgment and critique demands that we study both the pieces and the players, both the horizontal plurality

of moral logics and the structuring, vertical impacts of their use, both the structures of moral logics and

those of social identity. The meeting point of these structures is where strategies are developed, where

moral evaluation takes place.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Mathieu Hauchecorne and the AJCS anonymous reviewers and editors for their

generous and helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

18 Schwarz / Dead Honest Judgments

18

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