Where the state cannot protect property, a reputation for retaliation substitutes, and violence norms outlast the conditions that created them.
Nisbett and Cohen's experiments found Southern US men responded more strongly to insult than Northern men, tracing it to herding ancestry where livestock were stealable and the state was distant. The norm outlived the conditions.
In practice
- A trade with no effective contract enforcement develops a reputation for retaliation that outlasts the arrival of courts.
- An industry where reputational damage is the only sanction produces disproportionate responses to small slights, long after formal remedies exist.