Journal of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies

Introduction: My Personal Path to the Significance of Humiliation and Dignity in a Global World

This article is about humiliation, globalization, human rights, and dignity. The central question is the following: Could it be the case in a globalizing world in which people are increasingly exposed to human rights advocacy, that acts of humiliation and feelings of humiliation emerge as the most significant phenomena to resolve?

In this paper, I will briefly describe how I researched the concept of humiliation that formed the starting point for my subsequent theoretical work on the subject. I continue to build a theory of humiliation using a transdisciplinary approach that entails elements from anthropology, history, social philosophy, social psychology, sociology, and political science.1Apart from laying out my research, I will also briefly present the current related research carried out by other scholars. Thereafter, I will discuss how the phenomenon of humiliation is embedded into a larger historical timeline. I will describe in what way I see globalization at work. At the end I will address what can be done about the destructive effects of humiliation.

After three decades of global experience I have come to the conclusion that we, the human inhabitants of the earth, are more similar than different, and that there is ample common ground on which we can build. I suggest that this common ground connects people and draws them into relationships. If this desire is cherished, respected, and nurtured, and if people are attributed equal dignity in the process, it can help turn separating differences into valuable diversities and into sources of enrichment, both globally and locally, as opposed to sources of disruption. The common ground I am referring to is that basically all humans yearn for recognition and respect. The desire for recognition unites us as humans; it is universal and can serve as a platform for contact and cooperation. I suggest that many of the observable rifts among people stem from a related universal phenomenon, namely the humiliation that is felt when recognition and respect is lacking. Withdrawal or denial of recognition and respect, experienced as humiliation, could be seen as the strongest force that creates rifts between people and breaks down positive relationships. I do not believe that ethnic, religious, or cultural differences alone create rifts; on the contrary, diversity can be a source of mutual enrichment. However, diversity is enriching only as long as it is embedded into relationships that are characterized by respect. It is when respect and recognition fail, that those who feel victimized are prone to highlight differences to “justify” caused rifts, not by these differences, but by something else, namely humiliation.

I believe that my personal background offers a suitable perspective to address these issues. In order to understand a globalizing world, I suggest that we need “global” research, conducted in part through the support of researchers with global outlooks and global experience. A specific biography made me acquire a profoundly global perspective and identity. This experiential background led me to conceptualize psychology in a specific way, first as being embedded into broader historical and philosophical contexts, second as being profoundly intertwined with global changes, and third as currently gaining in global significance. Given these beliefs, I avoid single interest scholarship, work transdisciplinarily, and probe how even local micro-changes may be embedded into larger global changes.

In my case, the lack of a clear sense of belonging during childhood (I was born into a family of displaced people) made me particularly sensitive to identity quests. It urged me to learn about and become part of what I see as a rich and diverse world culture that belongs to us all rather than being part of any particular national sub-culture. Nagata (1998) wrote in “Being Global: Life at the Interface” that immigrants live “at the interface.” I have accustomed myself to living in many cultures and in many interfaces; more so, I have made the very interface my home (see also Bond, 1997).

My personal development parallels many recent epistemological trends. For example, psychologists have begun to overcome their “physics envy” (Ray & Anderson, 2000, p. 180), and integrate quantitative research approaches into larger contexts, allowing for a triangulation with qualitative research paradigms. My work also parallels the new trend towards relational theories in social science, a trend that goes beyond traditional individualist concepts that do not capture the complexities of a relational, emotional, and social world—Jordan and Hartling (2002) articulated this by developing the relational-cultural theory at the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute.2 I believe that both, my personal maturation, as a person and scholar, and current epistemological trends are intertwined with and nurtured by a growing awareness that humankind is one single family. As long as people lived in more isolated venues this was not possible; people from different cultures could not easily understand each other. Cultures were regarded as a priori separate, not as part of one single culture of homo sapiens in which people reacted to one another in relational ways and were more similar than different. In contrast, today, global interdependence is increasing. Not just diplomats, but ordinary citizens now interact beyond their national borders. Parallel to this development, an awareness of the need for positive global relationships is growing. Global terrorism is only one of many buzzwords that signifies the negative fallout when global relationships are not nurtured.

Although the numbers are increasing, there are still few people with broad global backgrounds and anchoring. Presenting oneself as having a “global horizon” is considered more acceptable today, yet most people still respond to the question “where are you from?” with the name of a country. This outlook entails a framing of the world in terms of my people, my history, in relation to your history and your people. I chose to develop an identity as a citizen of the global village, and thus all people’s history is my history and all people are my people. This does not mean a rejection of local, national, or regional identifications; it means lovingly including them within larger outlooks, broadening inner horizons, and going beyond usually taken-for-granted inner boundaries. In my case, side-effects of this inner development are, among others, a longer time horizon as to my academic analysis and transdisciplinarity in my academic positioning, both of which represent those above-mentioned trends and are perceived as avant-garde.

Thus, my perspective and standpoint is not only particularly global but also future-oriented. My experiences and analyses will probably continue to become more mainstream, both in the daily lives of laypersons and in scientific practice. Ray and Anderson’s (2000) surveys and interviews indicated the growth of a new movement they coined the “cultural creatives.”3 I appear to be at the forefront of this movement according to their characterizations. I share a global outlook, a quest for broader meaning(as opposed to narrow gratification through material possessions or status), and a desire to build bridges—between what they call “Moderns” and “Traditionals” as well as toward what we might call “Pre-Moderns.” According to Ray and Anderson I also bridge the “Consciousness Movement” and “Social Movement” that make up the “Cultural Creatives Movement.”

My intuition that humiliation, a deeply relational concept, plays a core role in a globalizing world is deeply anchored in this global life world. Few people from the rich west try to enter into deep relationships with the rest of the world. Even when westerners travel, they often merely visit—from their country to the destination country—maintaining the illusion that the west is independent from everyone else and that discord can be attributed to cultural difference, cultural inferiority or backwardness, or, in the worst case, another country’s unfathomable evil motives. Many travelers overlook that the world also contains a rich and positive common ground that is connected and probably more relevant than any cultural difference.

As already mentioned above, over the years my sense grew that basically all humans yearn for recognition and respect. Withdrawal or denial of recognition and respect, experienced as humiliation, could be the strongest force that creates rifts between people and breaks down positive relationships. Thus, I came to believe that the desire for recognition unites us as human beings, that it is universal and can serve as an arena for contact and cooperation. I now suggest that many of the observable rifts among people stem from a corresponding phenomenon, namely the humiliation that is felt when recognition and respect is lacking. Differences—for example, cultural differences—might not always be primary; many might be secondary to humiliation. People might instrumentalize differences to “justify” rifts that were caused by humiliation.

Therefore, I came to ask whether the most significant phenomenon to resolve in a globalizing world increasingly exposed to human rights advocacy might be acts of humiliation and feelings of humiliation. I believe this thesis is correct, and in the remainder of this paper I would like to suggest a frame of current and past events that defends this conceptualization. In my work, I treat humiliation as a historical-cultural-social-emotional construct that changes over time rather than as an a-historic emotional process.4 I believe that today’s living generations find themselves in a crucial historical transition shifting from an older world grounded in ranked honor—an honor world (with the experience of honor-humiliation)—to a potential vision of a future world of equal dignity (and the quite distinct experience of dignity-humiliation).

Americans have always taken pride in the image of promoting happiness for all, promising unprecedented wealth enshrined in the enthusiastically idealistic “American Dream.” Why is the United States called “the head of the snake” by Bin Laden (National Commission, 2004, p. 2)? And why is this a view harbored not only by one individual, but one inspiring hundreds of active followers, and thousands, or even millions of sympathizers? How can so many people hold on to such gloomy outlooks as martyr death? Money does not seem to motivate them, at least not the leaders. Bin Laden and his supporters have enough money. Mohammed Atta had nothing standing between him and a comfortable western life.5 So, what does motivate these people? Envy? Humiliation?

Would it not be wise to tackle such questions in a comprehensive way in order to avoid descending into nuclear, chemical, and/or biological destruction? Terrorists are hard to track and difficult to combat; they eclipse traditional warfare methods. Embracing new security strategies that include the mindsets of people in violent conflicts appears one wise alternative. Feelings of humiliation may lead to violent acts of humiliation and spirals of retributive violence. Humiliation-for-humiliation may represent the only real Weapons of Mass Destruction we face. Highjacking planes (9-11) or hacking neighbors to death with machetes (genocide in Rwanda 1994) are all “cost-effective” methods of mayhem that work when leaders manipulate followers into becoming willing perpetrators. Feelings of humiliation can represent the Nuclear Bombs of the Emotions (Lindner, 2002b, pp. 127-129).

On April 28, 2003, conservative Lord Douglas Hurd (British Foreign Secretary 1989-1995, in office during the first Gulf War) spoke about the state of the world after the 2003 Iraq war.Hurd had just returned from a tour through the Arab world and reported that the populations there were in a state of “sullen humiliation.” Not the governments, he noted—they were rather friendly towards the west—but the people in the streets. Hurd referred to the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, saying that U.S. policy was stimulating the Bin Laden phenomenon rather than counteracting it. Hurd’s observations were confirmed by others. Telhami wrote,

Today militancy in the Middle East is fueled . . . by a pervasive sense of humiliation and helplessness in the region. This collective feeling is driven by a sense that people remain helpless in affecting the most vital aspects of their lives, and it is exacerbated by pictures of Palestinian humiliation. There is much disgust with states and with international organizations. (2003a, p. 16)6

Having lived and worked in Cairo, Egypt, for seven years (1984-1991) as a counselor and clinical psychologist—I can only agree with Hurd’s and Telhami’s observations. Most importantly, feelings of humiliation were also relevant long ago, not just subsequent to 9-11. Western analysts, with the relatively short historical horizon that prevails in western culture, often underestimate the much longer timeframes within which other cultures place their feelings and deliberations. Western experts therefore tend to quickly dismiss the humiliation hypothesis, because in their eyes “valid” tangible grievances prior to 9-11 are lacking. However, I suggest that it might pay to look at longer timeframes and consider that not all players follow the western construct of homo economicus who is interested primarily in short-term material gain. The need to be recognized, validated, appreciated, and respected as an important and weighty player on the world stage might be as salient as feelings of humiliation when respect is perceived to be lacking (whether the factual backgrounds feeding these feelings are real or imagined).

In 1994, after years of international experience—in the fields of medicine and psychology in Asia, Africa, Middle East, America, and Europe—I began to ask what the most significant obstacle to peace and social cohesion was. My hunch was that dynamics of humiliation could be central. This conclusion was based on my clinical experience as well as other evidence. For example, there is a widely shared notion that Germany was humiliated through the Versailles Treaty in order to render it harmless. However, this strategy was counterproductive. It gave Hitler the necessary platform for leading Germany into World War II and the Holocaust, as a “remedy” for past and future national humiliation. In fact, Marshal Foch of France said in 1919 about the Versailles Treaty: “This is not a peace treaty—it will be a ceasefire for 20 years.”

In 1996, I began to examine the available literature and was surprised that humiliation had not received much academic attention. Search terms such as “shame” or “trauma” rendered innumerable hits, however, not “humiliation.” I was astonished, because if humiliation indeed could trigger a war like World War II, certainly, there must be a large body of research. However, this was not the case. I thus designed a doctoral research project on humiliation for a doctorate in psychology.

Before proceeding further, let me make note that in everyday language, the word humiliation is used in at least three ways. First, the word humiliation points to an act, second at a feeling, and third at a process: I humiliate you, you feel humiliated, and the entire process is one of humiliation. In this text, the reader is expected to understand from the context which alternative is referred to, because otherwise language would become too convoluted.

The definition of humiliation that I have developed and use in my work is as follows: Humiliation means the enforced lowering of a person or group, a process of subjugation that damages or strips away their pride, honor or dignity. To be humiliated is to be placed, against your will (or in some cases with your consent as in cases of religious self-humiliation or in sado-masochism) and often in a deeply hurtful way, in a situation that is greatly inferior to what you feel you should expect. Humiliation entails demeaning treatment that transgresses established expectations. It may involve acts of force, including violent force. At its heart is the idea of pinning down, putting down, or holding to the ground. Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of humiliation as a process is that the victim is forced into passivity, acted upon, and made helpless. People react in different ways when they feel that they are unduly humiliated. Some people feeling humiliation may experience rage; this may be turned inwards, as in the case of depression and apathy. However, rage may also turn outwards and express itself in violence, even in mass violence when leaders are available to forge narratives of group humiliation. Some people hide their anger and carefully plan revenge. The person who plans for “cold” revenge may become the leader of a particularly dangerous movement (see an interesting article on extreme mass homicide by Dutton, Boyanowsky, Ehor, and Bond, 2005).

I conducted a four-year doctoral research project The Feeling of Being Humiliated: A Central Theme in Armed Conflicts. A Study of the Role of Humiliation in Somalia, and Rwanda/Burundi, Between the Warring Parties, and in Relation to Third Intervening Parties from 1997 to 2001 (Lindner, 1996) at the University of Oslo. I carried out 216 qualitative interviews in Somalia, Rwanda, and Burundi addressing their history of genocidal killings. From 1998 to 1999 the interviews were carried out in Somaliland, Rwanda, Burundi, Nairobi, Kenya; and Egypt. I also conducted interviews in the same period in Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Belgium. Some of the interviews were filmed (10 hours of film and images of Somaliland and Rwanda), others were taped on mini discs (over 100 hours of audiotape), and in situations where this seemed inappropriate, I made notes. The interviews and conversations were conducted in different languages; most of them in English (Somalia) and French (Great Lakes), many in German or Norwegian.

As the title of the project indicates, three groups had to be interviewed, namely both the conflict parties in Somalia and Rwanda/Burundi, and representatives of those who intervened. These three groups stand in a set of triangular relationships (at least minimally—where there are more than two opponents, as is the case in most conflicts and the pattern, obviously, has more than three corners). Both in Somalia and Rwanda/Burundi, representatives of the “opponents” and the “third party” were approached.7The results confirmed the original hypothesis that, indeed, humiliation plays a role for war and genocide not only in Europe, but also outside of Europe, and not only in a far-removed historic past, but also today. The ways how humiliation plays a role, are addressed in more detail throughout this article. Since the conclusion of the doctoral research in 2001, I have expanded my studies, among others in Europe, South East Asia, and the United States.

Few researchers have studied humiliation explicitly. In many cases the term humiliation is not differentiated from other concepts; humiliation and shame, for example, are often used interchangeably, among others by Tomkins (1962) whose work is carried further by Nathanson. He describes humiliation as a combination of three innate affects out of altogether nine affects, namely as a combination of shame, disgust, and dissmell (sic) (Nathanson in a personal discussion, October 1, 1999; see also Nathanson, 1992).Smedslund developed Psycho-Logic, within which he describes anger, forgiveness, and humiliation (see 1998, 1993, 1991).

In my work, however, humiliation is distinctly addressed on its own account and differentiated from other concepts. Humiliation is, for example, not regarded as a mere sub-variant of shame. Instead, shame carries a host of pro-social connotations. People with no shame, for example, are seen as unfit to live together constructively—for example in Elias (1994) and his work on civilization. Shame is an emotional state that is only salient when we accept it, albeit painfully, while being humiliated is an assault we typically try to repulse and by which we feel enraged. Thus, following my conceptualization, Hitler managed to transform feelings of shame into feelings of humiliation among the German populace. Marks and Mönnich-Marks (2003) demonstrated this point in their work. They interviewed Germans and asked them about their motives for supporting Hitler. One interviewee, born in 1917, described the boring and hard life in his village and how Hitler’s vision lifted him out of his lowly condition. He reported how Hitler showed him that his lowliness was not something to shamefully accept, but part of the humiliation of Germany and Germanness to be rejected and fought.

The view that humiliation may be a particularly forceful phenomenon is supported by the research of Retzinger (1991) and Scheff and Retzinger (1991) who studied shame and humiliation in marital quarrels. They showed that suffering caused by humiliation is highly significant and that the bitterest divisions have roots in shame and humiliation. Also Vogel and Lazare (1990) document unforgivable humiliation as a very serious obstacle in couples’ treatment. Hale (1994) explored the subject in his book The Role of Humiliation and Embarrassment in Serial Murder. Humiliation has been studied in such fields as love, sex and social attractiveness, depression, society and identity formation, sports, history, literature, and film.

Scheff and Retzinger extended their work on violence and the Holocaust, studying the part played by “humiliated fury” in escalating conflicts—a term coined by Lewis (1971 in Scheff, 1997, p. 11)—between individuals and nations.8 Smith (2006), professor of sociology at Loughborough University, UK, was introduced to the notion of humiliation through my research and now incorporates it into his work in fascinating ways by inserting the concept of humiliation into his understanding of Norbert Elias’ and Zygmunt Bauman’s work. Volkan and Montville are carrying out important work on psycho-political analysis of intergroup conflict and its traumatic effects (Montville, 1990, 1993; Steinberg, 1996; Volkan, 1988, 1992, 1994, 1997; Volkan, Demetrios, & Montville, 1990; Volkan & Harris, 1995). In the realm of psychology and trauma, Staub’s work continues to be highly significant (1989, 1990, 1993, 1996). The special issue of the journal Social Research in 1997 was stimulated by the book Decent Society by Margalit (1996). Staub makes the point that bystanders need to stand up—and not “by”—when humiliation is being perpetrated on their neighbors, while Margalit draws our attention to the fact that we need to stand up not just against singular acts of humiliation. We have to build societies with institutions that do not humiliate their citizens.

Other theorists are working specifically on the notion of honor and humiliation. For example, researchers Nisbett and Cohen (1996) refer to the form of honor that operates in more traditional branches of the Mafia or, more generally, in blood feuds. Wyatt-Brown (1982) extends these ideas by looking at the history of American Southern Honor and humiliation while Miller (1993) wrote a book entitled Humiliation and Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort, and Violence. He links humiliation to honor as understood in historical and literary classics like The Iliad or Icelandic sagas, namely humiliation as a violation of honor.

There is a significant literature in philosophy on the politics of recognition, claiming that people who are not recognized suffer humiliation and that this leads to violence (see Honneth, 1997, on related themes). German philosopher Max Scheler (1912) set out these issues in his classic book Ressentiment. In Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (The Nature of Sympathy), Scheler (1954) focused on human feelings, love, and the nature of the person. He stated that a person at her core is a loving being, ens amans, who may feel ressentiment when not recognized. The philosophy of the politics of recognition, building on Scheler, supposes that it may lead to violence when people suffer humiliation as a result of non-recognition.

Only very few researchers have focused directly on humiliation. For example, Klein (1991) edited the special issues of the Journal of Primary Prevention devoted to the topic of humiliation in 1991, 1992, and 1999. Hartling and Luchetta (1999) pioneered a quantitative questionnaire on humiliation (Humiliation Inventory) where a rating from 1 to 5 is employed for questions measuring items such as “being teased, bullied, scorned, excluded, laughed at, or, harassed.” The questions probe the extent to which respondents feel harmed by such incidents throughout life, and how much they fear them.

As soon as we turn to issues related to humiliation, then a wide field of research opens up: Research on mobbing and bullying touches upon the phenomenon of humiliation and therefore should be included.9Research on mobbing and bullying leads to the field of prejudice and stigmatization,10which draws on research in trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),11aggression, power and conflict,12stress,13and last but not least emotions.14 In cases where humiliation is studied in cross-cultural settings, cross-cultural psychology must be included, and the anthropological, sociological, and philosophical embeddedness of humiliation processes into different cultural contexts. If humiliation among groups or nations is studied, then history and political science play a central role.

Bear in mind that this overview only reflects my awareness of relevant literature. To my knowledge, only Miller, Hartling, and the two above-mentioned journals explicitly use the word and concept of humiliation at the center of their work. However, more research may be available that is not considered here.

The questions that formed the starting point for my research in 1996 were the following15:What is experienced as humiliation? What happens when people feel humiliated? When is humiliation established as a feeling? What does humiliation lead to? Which experiences of justice, honor, dignity, respect, and self-respect are connected with the feeling of being humiliated? Which roles do globalization and human rights play in the process of humiliation? How is humiliation perceived and responded to in different cultures? What role does humiliation play in aggression? What can be done to overcome violent effects of humiliation?

How can these questions be addressed? Consider the case of so-called “honor killings.” For example, a family in Norway whose daughter was raped might send their child into trauma therapy. A family in a different cultural context might kill the daughter as the only means to redeem what they perceive as the family’s humiliated honor. The latter solution might be sought in a cultural context where honor killing is felt to be a duty. The stark and brutal example of so-called honor killing shows that what is experienced as humiliation and what it leads to, together with experiences of justice, honor, dignity, respect, and self respect, varies deeply depending on the overall cultural context. Even the very use of the above honor-killing example in my writings and lectures has elicited angry protests, among others from Egyptian friends who claimed that it revealed my arrogance and humiliated them (for example, January 2007, Cairo). Or, in Japan, merely going around in public with the leaflet of the Osaka Human Rights Museum, where occurrences of discrimination in Japanese society are being displayed, caused some Japanese people embarrassment (as happened to me, 2004). The self-critical documentation of occurrences of humiliation within Japanese society carries a palpable taboo that makes many Japanese citizens feel uncomfortable, except for the most courageous. The list of examples illustrating the culture dependence of experiences of justice, honor, dignity, respect, and self-respect could be continued at length, but lack of space prevents it here.

Thus, I see humiliation not as an a-historic emotional process but as a historical-cultural-social-emotional construct that changes over time. I see the currently living generations in a crucial historical transition shifting from an older world grounded in ranked honor—an honor world (with the experience of honor-humiliation)—to a potential vision of a future world of equal dignity (and a quite distinct experience of dignity-humiliation). In traditional hierarchical societies, elites were socialized into translating feelings of humiliation into an urge to fight back in a duel-like fashion. They defended their honor against humiliation with the sword (in duels, or in duel-like wars, with increasingly lethal weapons), while underlings (women and lowly men) were expected to humbly, subserviently, and obediently accept being subjugated without invoking or expressing any feelings of humiliation. This conceptualization of the world began to hold sway about ten thousand years ago, when hierarchical societal systems emerged as more complex agricultural societies evolved—see William Ury (1999) for a comprehensive description. Until recently, such hierarchical societal systems were regarded as thoroughly legitimate, even as divinely ordained. Today, in many places, people still subscribe to such concepts.

According to Ury (1999), most of humankind’s history went by relatively peacefully, with small bands of hunter-gatherers cooperating within noticeably egalitarian societal structures. The available abundance of wild food provided hunter-gatherers with an expandable pie of resources and a win-win frame. Roughly 10,000 years ago, homo sapiens had populated the globe, at least its easily accessible regions, and untouched land became scarce. One could not just wander off to the next virgin valley full of wild food; the neighboring valley was already inhabited by other people (circumscription is the anthropological term). One had to stay put, become more sedentary, and make do with the land under one’s feet. Intensification is the anthropological term for the use of land as resource for livelihood, in other words for agriculture. Agriculture introduced a profoundly new way of life, much more malign than previously, because land is either mine or yours, a state-of-affairs that represents a win-lose logic and, in turn, fuels war. International relations theory uses terms such as the security dilemma to describe how arms races and war were almost inevitable in this atmosphere of fear of attack from outside one’s community (see, among others, Jervis, 1978). Hierarchical societies evolved in response to the new circumstances of agriculture and the security dilemma, with masters at the top, and underlings and slaves at the bottom. Examples of the so-called early civilizations are those in Mesopotamia, Egypt, or, later, the Roman Empire.

However, very recently—a few hundred years ago—humankind began to face a second deep transition, as deep as the one that occurred roughly 10,000 years ago. Technological innovations began to enable humans to relate to their home, planet Earth, in profoundly new ways. People around the globe today communicate and meet as never before, while increasingly using knowledge, not land, as the resource for their livelihood. Ury suggests that homo sapiens are about to create a global knowledge society, thus returning to the win-win frame of hunter-gatherers (knowledge, unlike land, is an expandable resource), and thereby regaining the potential for relatively peaceful egalitarian societal structures for the global “tribe” of humankind.

Some of the predicted changes can already be seen with the rising awareness of human rights ideals helping to change the hierarchical order. With this advent, the notion of humiliation changes its attachment point. It moves from being solely the privilege of the elite to becoming a right of those at the bottom, the disadvantaged. In the new framework, the downtrodden underling gains the right to feel humiliated. Underlings around the world, today, are increasingly socialized in new ways and “allowed” to feel humiliated by their “lowliness,” a lowliness that is now defined as illegitimate. The master elites, on the other side, face the opposite call: they are called upon to regain humbleness and are not anymore given permission to resist this call by labeling it as humiliating. Elites who arrogate superiority lose their age-old right to cry “humiliation!” when asked to descend and become humble.

The human rights revolution could be described as an attempt to collapse the master-slave gradient of the past 10,000 years to a new level of equal dignity and humility. The practice of masters arrogating superiority and subjugating underlings is now regarded as illicit and obscene, and human rights advocates invite both, masters and underlings, to join in shared humility at the even level of equal dignity

It is important to note that the horizontal line in the middle of Figure 1 is meant to represent the line of equal dignity and humility. This line does not signify that all human beings are equal, or should be equal, or ever were or will be equal, or identical, or all the same. This horizontal line is to represent a worldview that resists the hierarchical ranking of human worth and value. Masters are invited to step down from arrogating their perceived higher worthiness, and underlings are encouraged to mentally and practically rise up from lowliness. Masters are humbled and underlings empowered.

Brigid Donelan kindly comments on this model as follows (personal message, December 20, 2004).

This is a model with twin features: one a historical trend and the other a contemporary potential/choice. We may think of humanity evolving through stages of pride, honor and dignity. We can also see that each stage is “alive and well” within each contemporary individual, as a choice/potential. The value of the model lies in clarifying the choice, and suggesting a trend towards emergence of a “global knowledge society,” for which there is certainly evidence, and benefits for all.

In this new context, human rights advocates need to make clear that they do not expect underlings to translate their newly legitimized feelings of humiliation into violent retaliation; it would be inherently contradictory for human rights promoters to encourage underlings to merely replace elites and become new dominators and humiliators. Human rights advocates should encourage underlings to do more than bring down abusive masters; they should encourage the dismantling of the very hierarchal systems that are now regarded as unjust. Human rights stipulate, furthermore, that this ought to be done without the sword and without further humiliation—in the spirit of Gandhi or Mandela (1996, at least at the end of his career).Thus, human rights advocates encourage men and women to evolve from the path of translating feelings of humiliation into apathy or aggression and learn how to use feelings of humiliation in more constructive ways so as to bring about constructive, peaceful, social change. Today, more has to be done than bringing down Apartheid and building a new decent South Africa. A ramshackle global village needs to be transformed into a decent global village. Scholars such as Zehr (2002) and Margalit (1996) address this task when they focus on social and societal institutions, and how they must be reformed to no longer humiliate citizens. Scholars and practitioners such as Stiglitz and Squire (1998), or Monbiot (2003)—to name only two names out of a vast array of literature—discuss how the global system could be changed in order to grow congruent with human rights ideals.

I see the increasing awareness of human rights in the context of what anthropologists call the ingathering of humankind (Ury, 1999), namely the coming together of all humankind into one single family. I suggest the term global village as deeply indicative, entailing profoundly transformative seeds for change. A rise of the vision and reality of one single global village is concurrent with something extremely significant, namely the almost subversive loss of ground for the notion of outgroups (together with all outgroup biases, prejudices, and hostile outgroup ethics).16Thus, in my view, human rights ideals represent ingroup ethics whose scope is expanded to the entire global village. Usually the so-called “scope of justice” (Coleman, 2003) for ingroup emphasizes social cohesion and its maintenance, so do human rights.

However, this is not all. As mentioned above, human rights ideals do not condone the mere replacement of old tyrants with new ones; they envisage the dismantling of entire hierarchical systems. Human rights ideals represent an encouragement for underlings to continuously challenge domination and oppression (Deutsch, 2002; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Thus, I conceptualize human rights ideals to represent ingroup ethics as we know them from age-old history, however, now applied to the entire globe and, furthermore, intertwined with an egalitarian message.

In former times, guardians of ingroup ethics often defended hierarchical rankings of human worthiness with the “need” for safe, stable, and coherent societies. Confucianism, still today, just to name one example, is not far removed from such conceptualizations; obedience to authority is regarded highly. As long as the world had not begun to evolve into a single global village but contained many villages, this served a purpose. Villages (or units like nations or states) faced a dangerous Hobbesian “might-is-right” world and had to stay internally cohesive and perpetually prepared for war. Males typically were sent out to die in war, and obedient readiness for aggression, honed in the language of honor was a suitable adaptation. At any time, outsiders were prone to attack and fear of surprise attacks was constant. As discussed above, international relations theory uses terms such as a security dilemma to describe this dire situation.

The new global ingroup ethics, or human rights ideals, however, aim at a new combination, not maintenance of social cohesion embedded within hierarchical rankings of human value, but maintenance of social cohesion linked to attitudes, behaviors, and institutions that promote equal dignity for all. I believe that this transition—enshrined as the Geneva Conventions’ central human rights call for equal dignity for everyone (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)—is gaining mainstream acceptance mainly because of the rise of a vision and reality of one single ingroup of humanity.

As soon as there is one single ingroup left on the globe, fear of surprise attacks from distant outsiders is bound to subside. What gains visibility, however, is interaction with insiders. This interaction is fraught with quests for recognition, appreciation, and respect, quests that may lead to feelings of humiliation and their violent handling, if unsatisfied. While formerly distant outsiders held the many villages of the world in fear of sudden and incomprehensible attack, today we share one single global village not with faraway outsiders, but with close, fellow insiders, who ask us whether we respect them as equals. We enter a relational era. Isolated differences, or separate interests lose significance, while the quality of relationships gains weight.

Therefore, no longer is it the case that fear of a distant enemy is the emotion that subordinates all other emotions and deliberations, but feelings of humiliation that begins to dominate, feelings of humiliation in the face of lack of recognition for equal dignity, or, more precisely, feelings of dignity-humiliation. Fear was an inescapable emotional state that was bound to hold center stage as long as a strong security dilemma defined the condition of the peoples of the globe. If humiliation played a role, then it was the terminology of honor and honor-humiliation that negotiated this fear like a collective armor. Yet, at present, the security dilemma weakens in the wake of increasing global interdependence and gives rise to the new possibility of equal dignity for all, and in its wake, gives rise to feelings of dignity-humiliation when respect for equal dignity (real or imagined) is wanting. Elsewhere, I analyze why dignity-humiliation is bound to be more salient than honor-humiliation (Lindner, 2006e): while most forms of honor-humiliation keep most humiliated people within the ingroup, dignity-humiliation excludes them from humankind.

To the detriment of us all, the feelings of humiliation that currently hold our hearts and minds are not always honed into Gandhi/Mandela-like wisdom for constructive change. “Pre-emptive prevention” of expected future humiliation, for example, was perpetrated in the Rwandan genocide in 1994 as in Hitler’s Holocaust in World War II. Global terrorism seems to follow a similar logic, led by humiliation entrepreneurs who instrumentalize feelings of humiliation among the broad masses for violence.

I have coined the word egalization to match the word globalization (Lindner, 2003a, 2003c; see the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies website at www.humiliationstudies.org/whoweare/evelin15.php). I conceptualize the growth of malign global injustice and rampant inequality that provide humiliation entrepreneurs with willing perpetrators as a “lack of egalization” (egalization versus systematic humiliation), while I reserve the term globalization (versus fragmentation) for the rather benign coming together of humankind. Egalization is a useful new term because it

differentiates equal dignity from words such as equality, because the main point is not equality. The point is equal dignity, even though there is a connection between equality and equal dignity. (The connection is “hidden” in the human rights stipulation that equal chances and enabling environments for all are necessary to protect human dignity.)

The term egalization is meant to avoid claiming that everybody should become equal and that there should be no differences between people. Egality can coexist with a functional hierarchy that regards all participants as possessing equal dignity; egality cannot coexist, though, with hierarchy that defines some people as lesser beings and others as more valuable.

If we imagine the world as a container with a height and a width, globalization addresses the horizontal dimension, the shrinking width. Egalization concerns the vertical dimension, reminiscent of what Hofstede [2001] calls power distance.

Egalization is a process away from a very high “container” of masters at the top and underlings at the bottom, towards a flat “container” with everybody enjoying equal dignity.

Egalization is a process that elicits hot feelings of humiliation when it is promised but fails. The lack of egalization is thus the element that is heating up feelings among so-called “globalization-critics.” Their disquiet stems from lack of egalization and not from an overdose of globalization. What they call for is that globalization ought to marry egalization (Lindner, 2003a, p. 9).

The most important change that is brought about by the rise of the vision and reality of one global village, or one single ingroup of humankind, is the rise of the significance of feelings of humiliation as compared to fear. During the past millennia, feelings of humiliation were secondary, they were used and taught as tools to deal with the fear of unexpected attacks from other villages. Honor was worn like a collective armor and defended against honor-humiliation, particularly by males, and this was embedded into the service of these males in the defense of their groups against outside attackers.17Now, in human rights contexts, feelings of humiliation are no longer attached to honor but to equal dignity. The soiling of honor no longer elicits feelings of humiliation but failing respect for equal dignity. In addition, feelings of dignity-humiliation are less a collective phenomenon prescribed within group relations, but primary, direct, salient, and personal for each individual who feels them within his or her personal relationships (Schwartz [1994] writes about new cultural dimensions of values beyond individualism/collectivism).

However, since both cultural contexts, those of unequal honor and of equal dignity, coexist in transitional times, both forms of humiliation often merge, blur, and enhance each other. An Iraqi man, for example, might not find anything wrong in honor killings, where a raped girl may be killed to repair soiled family honor; however, he might criticize American occupiers of hypocrisy when they do not obey their own human rights rhetoric.18 Human rights contexts represent new scripts, or templates, for ethics and morals, and they require affected human beings to acquire new competencies. Where formerly obedience was a deed, it is now another skill that has to be honed, namely the skill of building cohesive relationships of respect for equal dignity among all global village citizens.

Much has been written on human rights and the emerging global context of the information age and globalization, with the unprecedented novel challenges as to new identities, new skills, and new world orders.19The challenges for the global village, apart from containing tyrants and terror, are well described in the United Nations Millennium Declaration:

Globalization is not the problem. The problem is in fact the release from globalization which both economic agents and nations states have been able to negotiate. They have been able to operate so freely because the people of the world have no global means of restraining them. Our task is surely not to overthrow globalizing, but to capture it, and to use it as a vehicle for humanity’s first global democratic revolution (p. 23).

Perhaps Douglas Hurd’s message could be projected into the future as follows. Global village building, as did the nation-building process, requires support from all world states and citizens enacted through global institutions as they may be developed from current UN institutions. Perhaps one day we will have a global passport, a global welfare net, and global institutions that protect people within a global democracy. Perhaps one day tribal and national identities will be secondary to the core identity of global citizenship everywhere on the globe. The principle of subsidiarity will perhaps be the blueprint for organizing global structures as well as for building personal identities: shared humanity at the core, as primary element, and cultural diversity at the periphery, cherished and celebrated but secondary—Unity in Diversity (Bond, 1998). There will be no need for enemies; all will be neighbors, good as well as bad neighbors. And democratically legitimated police aided by a global culture of responsible social control and respect will keep bad neighbors” in check. A roof of super-ordinate global institutions, democratically legitimated, will protect global citizens in the same way democratically legitimated nation states at present attempt to guard the interests of their national citizenry.

Thus a decent global village could be built, following the call by Margalit (1996), for a decent society. I call for eliminating humiliation, and a Moratorium on Humiliation20to be incorporated within public policies.

Many criticize that humiliation cannot be eliminated and that a Moratorium of Humiliation is not realistic. This argument is partly valid, partly not. It is valid because one of the problems with the notion of humiliation is its complexity. As explained earlier, the same word is used for a) feelings—“I humiliate you,” b) acts—“You feel humiliated”, and c) for processes including institutional humiliation, where the act is embedded into institutions—like Apartheid. Feelings of humiliation clearly are part of human emotions and cannot be eliminated nor should they. However, it is still possible to hold on to the call to decrease or eliminate acts and institutions of humiliation. Consider Apartheid and Apartheid-like social and societal structures such as autocratic cultures in schools, workplaces, and homes. Presumably all human rights promoters agree that it is beneficial not only to decrease such structures, but to eliminate them. Public policy planning ought to diminish acts of humiliation, those that are institutionalized as well random occurrences, and heighten awareness as to acts of humiliation, how destructive they can be, and how they need to be avoided.

Human rights stipulate that every human being is equal in dignity. Yet, this ideal is attained nowhere. On the contrary, we find many social settings where human worthiness and value are ranked (men are regarded to possess more worthiness than women, colored people face discrimination), and it is this ranking of human worthiness that human rights declare to be illegitimate. We have to overcome what Fuller (2003) calls rankism. Rankism has humiliating effects as soon as we take human rights ideals seriously.

According to my conceptualization there are, simplified, three ways out of feelings of humiliation: a) passive depression/apathy, b) the active “Hitler way” (violence, war, genocide, terror, etc.), and c) the active “Mandela way” (constructive social change that includes the humiliator—Mandela did not unleash genocide on the white elite in South Africa). Considering Mandela, we recognize that he did not attempt to put in place a perfect society right away; he explained to his followers that such impatience would be counterproductive. Social change is a process and one must remain mindful of the goal. The goal is to eliminate institutionalized humiliation and diminish rampant acts of humiliation with a Moratorium on Humiliation.

Will a Moratorium on Humiliation, if incorporated and mainstreamed in public policy planning, increase human security and decrease perils such as global terror? Yes. What if killing terrorists, “eliminating” them, “hunting them down,” and “smoking them out” only leads to their defiance? What if military approaches are only second-best, because the feelings of humiliation smoldering within broader masses provide reservoirs for new terrorists? Do we not need better methods for securing the world? Respect, recognition, and safeguarding equal dignity for all were terms that did not figure large in the old Realpolitik. However, this does not mean that they should not be introduced into a new Realpolitik necessary for a new globalizing world. Public-policy planning has to embrace the entire global village and include considerations for safeguarding social cohesion therein. Merely “hitting” at “terrorists” in a “War on Terror” is proving outdated, ineffective, and insufficient, even counterproductive. Although the intent and motives may have been laudable, this overarching strategy appears futile. A Moratorium on Humiliation, operationalized, mainstreamed, and incorporated in public policy planning might be more suitable.

In practice, a triple strategy seems appropriate. Institutions need to be built, both globally and locally, to ensure that people are not oppressed, discriminated against, or humiliated—as called for by Margalit (1996). For example, at the global level, a mechanism is sorely missing that helps the world avoid genocide as it is presently occurring in the Sudan. United Nations institutions are not yet developed sufficiently. However, better institutions are not the whole solution. They must be filled with different contents as compared to former times (see Hamburg, 2002).

The institution of marriage might serve as an example. Before, it was a contractual relationship, it was sufficient to enter the institution and follow its rules. Today, a marriage is a fluid relationship that requires continuous attention and nurturing. No partners can lean back and trust that the institution is guaranteeing the marriage’s success. Constant relationship work is needed. Likewise, relationships between groups at local and global levels require continuous nurturing. First, attention needs to be given to this new mechanism, and second, the social skills for doing so must be learned (see Sluzki, 1993).

Bennet (2004) wrote about Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and his allegiance to a “we won’t-be-fooled-again attitude.” Sharon received advice from his mother in the early 1980s, when he was negotiating with the Egyptians: “Do not trust them! You cannot trust a piece of paper!” Sharon’s answer was the application of brute force on his “marriage partner,” the Palestinians. While the insight is correct, in the past as much as in the present, that a piece of paper indeed is not sufficient and that anybody blindly relying on a contract may be fooled, the remedy found by Ariel Sharon belonged in the past. Historically, the use of physical force as a strategy had been common and efficient, in marriages and elsewhere. But today, relationships are expected to be maintained differently. Human rights ideals turn the use of force into illegitimate humiliation. No wife, no fellow human being, in a world steeped in the human rights message can accept sheer force and respond with humility; violence is the more likely outcome. No longer do old methods work in a new framework of novel moral norms and expectations.

Attention to build relationships of equal dignity, acquire appropriate social skills, and continue mutual engagement and nurturing embedded within appropriate institutions, is the triple strategy that needs to be applied today. All three elements of this new strategy must be designed to prevent and avoid dynamics of humiliation in a world where human rights ideals of equal dignity define our world, because human rights turn the holding down of people by force into an unacceptable violation.

With respect to violent conflict, both at the global and local level, as mentioned earlier, the paradigm of good quality policing of neighborhoods needs to replace the paradigm of war. The global village, as in any village, needs to maintain its inner security by quality policing. War is typically waged with neighboring “villages.” In the case of the global village, there is no “neighboring village.” Thus the paradigm of war loses its anchoring in reality, and the paradigm of policing is what becomes relevant. Quality policing connects coercion with respect.

During my time in Egypt, I was amazed at the low rate of crime and unrest in Cairo, a huge metropolis of approximately fifteen million people. I soon understood that a high amount of social control is part of Egyptian culture. I frequently witnessed incidents that gave testimony to this. When I analyzed conflict resolution and containment scenes in the streets of Cairo, I observed a twenty-to-two ratio, or at least a ten-to-two ratio. Ten or up to twenty physically powerful men regularly appeared at the scene to calm and pacify two clashing opponents. The young men did not need to exert brute force because they outnumbered the quarrelers. Their overpowering count enabled them to combine coercion and respect. Respect alone would not suffice, nor would coercion through outnumbering alone.

If this scenario is to be taken as a blueprint for attending to violent conflict, it is a combination of coercion and respect that has to be striven for by the international community, the United Nations, and bystanders in general (see, for example, Bartoli, Girardet, & Carmel, 1995; Avruch, Narel, & Combelles-Siegel, 2000). Resources for the prevention, containment, and resolution of conflicts around the world are to be increased. Overpowering numbers of blue helmets/global policepersons with credible overpowering mandates and well-devised overpowering strategies are required, embedded in an overall approach of respect.

New Application of Traditional “Male” and “Female” Role Descriptions

The approach of combining coercion and respect can also be mapped onto traditional male and female roles. What is combined is “female” talking, understanding, empathy, perspective-taking, and healing on one side, and a “male” potential for overpowering, coercion, and force on the other. “Male” strength and well-dosed counter-aggression are required to hold the fighters. “Female” awareness of the cohesion of social fabric is needed to take the fighters seriously. To combine the “male” aspect of force with “female” empathy could be described as a modern recipe of conflict resolution. The old “male” strategy of hitting, of destructive force, is no longer appropriate in an interdependent modern global village, while the “male” ability to use restraining force continues to be an important tool, though in a steadier and more longstanding application combined with empathy and respect.

UNESCO’s Culture of Peace Programme urges precisely the strengthening of the “female” aspect in conflict resolution efforts. The list is a long one: using multi-track, “track II” and citizen-based diplomacy; installing early warning institutions; rethinking the notion of state sovereignty; setting up projects to better study and understand the history of potential conflict areas, collect this information and make it available to decision makers; using psychology not only on a micro-level, but also on a macro-level, taking identity as a bridge; keeping communication going with warring parties; talking behind the scenes; including more than just the warlords in peace negotiations; developing conflict-resolution teams with less hierarchy and more creativity; setting up mediation teams; installing “truth commissions”; allowing warring parties to feel the world community’s care, respect, and concern; taking opponents in a conflict out of their usual environment; taking the adversaries’ personal feelings and emotions seriously; recognizing the importance of human dignity; introducing sustainable long-term approaches on the social and ecological level; progressing from spending aid-money after a disaster to allocating resources to prevent it; and so on (see also Bar-On & Nadler, 1999).

In short, the global village embodies one single ingroup sphere. The traditional “male” role of going out, fighting the enemy, and conquering the unknown represented a uni-dimensional, unilateral and often rather short-sighted approach. However, through globalization, it has lost significance since it was only appropriate outside the village or around its borders. The world as a single global village no longer provides an outside. Men as travelers and explorers were responsible for this development that now makes their traditional strategies in many ways inappropriate and dysfunctional. Maintaining social cohesion in an ingroup sphere means complex, relational, multilateral, farsighted, integrative, and holistic strategies such as mediation, alternative dispute resolution, and police deployment (for example peacekeeping forces) instead of traditional military combat. Subsidiarity, quality (and not quantity) of life, culture of peace—these are all keywords and concepts stemming from traditional female role descriptions, showing how much the new strategies are, conceptually, female approaches.

Thus, globalization opens space for women and female strategies, embracing women and men into, and combining them with, the traditional male strategy of coercive containment. Human rights ideals call for egalization to be the broader guiding framework for globalization.

For the underserved around the world, be it women or discriminated minorities of any kind who wish to carry out a successful and constructive uprising, Mandela would have yet additional threefold advice in the spirit of the strategies he implemented so wisely. First, disadvantaged populations who wish to change their situation constructively, have to psychologically step outside of the master-slave dyad and learn to think autonomously. Second, they have to stop merely re(acting) to the master’s actions and definitions, and begin to act. Third, they must teach their master elites that change is necessary and unavoidable, both normatively and practically, and that a peaceful transition is preferable to violence and war.

For third parties trying to secure peace around the world, yet another threefold approach seems significant. First, it is important to identify the fault lines between moderates and extremists in opposing camps. We are not the Singhalese or Tamils, for example, but the Mandelas (moderates) as opposed to the humiliation-entrepreneurs (extremists) on both sides. Next, third parties need to facilitate alliances between moderates of both camps to transform violent reactions to feelings of humiliation among extremists. Third, humiliating living conditions of the broad masses must be minimized, because otherwise frustrated masses will be open to recruitment by humiliation-entrepreneurs.

Sultan Somjee, Kenyan ethnographer honored by the UN for his efforts to preserve indigenous people’s peace traditions, says in response to the Iraqi Prisoner Abuse of 2004, “Humiliation does not have nationality, religion, color or gender. Humiliation of one human being humiliates humanity and our dignity of being.” I would add, only if we avoid institutions, attitudes, and behavior with humiliating effects will we create a future for our world in the spirit of Kofi Annan’s promotion of the 2004 Olympic Games, namely “celebrate humanity.”

1. See, for example, Lindner (2006d), Lindner (2006a), Lindner (2006b), Lindner (2006c), Lindner (2006e), Hudnall and Lindner (2005), Lindner (2005), Lindner (2004), Lindner (2003b), Lindner (2002), Lindner (2001c), Lindner (2001b), Lindner (2001f), Lindner (2001d), Lindner (2001a), Lindner (2000a), Lindner (2000b), Lindner (1999). The concept of humiliation may be deconstructed into at least seven layers, Lindner (2001e), each requiring a different mix of interdisciplinary research and analysis. The seven layers include a) a core that expresses the universal idea of “putting down,” b) a middle layer that contains two opposed orientations towards “putting down,” treating it as, respectively, legitimate and routine, or illegitimate and traumatizing, and c) a periphery whose distinctive layers include one pertaining to cultural differences between groups and another four peripheral layers that relate to differences in individual personalities and variations in patterns of individual experience of humiliation.

2. I was influenced early by Victor E. Frankl and his work on Sinn (meaning) (1963, 1972). Recently I detected a related Japanese approach of “Meaningful Life Therapy” by Morita & Levine (1998; see also Reynolds, 1987).

3. Ray & Anderson (2000) carried out surveys and interviews. They reported a newly emerging movement, the Cultural Creatives, who have a global outlook, even if lacking global experience.

4. For mechanisms of emotional production, classic names come to mind, such as Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, George Herbert Mead, or Erving Goffman. See also Collins & Makowsky (1993) and Collins (1999).

5. I remember an Iranian friend living in Norway, a scholar at university, telling me that he came to the West full of hope, feeling that he was “one of us.” However, so he recounted, his feelings turned sour when he realized that he was frowned upon, discriminated against, and repeatedly humiliated as “one of them.” He did not expect to meet such contempt for “other” people, particularly those coming from the Arab world or Africa. He explained that the west should not be surprised that some people, returning home from such disappointing encounters with the west, would promote anti-western views. He referred to Frantz Fanon (1963, 1986), who experienced a similar shift from admiration to humiliation and subsequent rage.

6. See also Telhami (2003b); Zakaria (2001). See also work by Stern (2003). American commentator and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman defines humiliation as “the single most underestimated force in international relations” (quoted from a CNN International News Program, 2003)

7. The following people were included in the “network of conversations” that was created in the course of the research:

Survivors of genocides were interviewed (people belonging to the groups targeted for killing). In Somalia this included, among others, the Isaaq tribe, in Rwanda the Tutsi, in Burundi Hutu and Tutsi. The group of survivors is typically divided into two parts, those who survived because they were not in the country when the genocide happened—some of them returned after the genocide—and those who survived the onslaught inside the country. The German background of this fieldwork consisted of the network of contacts that I established, over some decades, with survivors from the Holocaust and, especially, their children.
Freedom fighters were included in the “network of conversation.” In Somalia, interviews were conducted with SNM (Somali National Movement) fighters in the north of Somalia. They fought the troops sent by the central government in Mogadishu in the south. In Rwanda the interviewees were former Tutsi refugees who formed the RFP (Rwandese Patriotic Front) and attacked Rwanda from the north in order to oust the extremist Hutu government that carried out the genocide in 1994. In Burundi there were also Hutu rebels. In Germany, the equivalent of these contacts were exchanges with those aristocratic circles in Germany that fed opposition against Hitler, but also with those, especially in my family, who advocated human rights during WWII and paid a high price for their compassion. Furthermore, my contacts with people from the occupied countries who tried to sabotage German oppression, for example the Norwegian resistance movement, belong in this group, as well as representatives of the allies who helped put an end to German atrocities.
Some Somali warlords who have their places of retreat in Kenya were interviewed.
Politicians were included, among them people in power before the genocide and who survivors secretly suspected of collaborating or at least as silent supporters of those who perpetrated the genocide. The equivalent in Germany is the atmosphere of underlying suspicion in which I grew up, generally mistrusting everyone of a certain age, but in particular suspicion towards people in power from the past, a suspicion that only diminishes as the years pass and people die.
Somali and Rwandan/Burundian academicians who study the situation of their countries were interviewed. For Germany the last striking manifestation in this field, and a focal point for discussions, has been Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s book on Hitler’s Willing Executioners (1997).
I included representatives of national NGOs working locally for development, peace, and reconciliation. In Germany, responses to the atrocities of World War II permeates everyone’s life—even those born after the war—my intimate knowledge of a culture of German self-criticism may stand as an equivalent to the pre-occupation with past, present, and future anticipated bloodshed that characterizes people’s lives in Somalia, Rwanda, and Burundi.
Third parties were interviewed, namely representatives of UN organizations and international NGOs who worked on emergency relief, long-term development, peace, and reconciliation in all parts of the world.
Egyptian diplomats in the foreign ministry in Egypt who dealt with Somalia were visited; Egypt is influential in the OAU.
African psychiatrists in Kenya who dealt with trauma and forensic psychiatry were asked about their experiences with victims and perpetrators from Rwanda/Burundi and Somalia. Many nationals from Somalia and Rwanda/Burundi have sought refuge in Kenya, some in refugee camps, others through private arrangements. Some, both victims and perpetrators, seek psychiatric help. The equivalent in Germany is those researchers who focus on the effects of the German Holocaust and other World War II atrocities.
Those who have not yet been interviewed are the masterminds of genocide in Rwanda, those who planned and organized the genocide. They are said to be in hiding in Kenya, other parts of Africa, French-speaking parts of Europe, in the United States, or Canada. Some are in prisons in Rwanda and in Arusha, Tanzania, awaiting trial. However, accounts of people close to Somali dictator Siad Barre have been collected. In the case of Hitler and those who supported him, a culture of openness and frank discussion is currently unfolding in Germany—the whole country has entered into a phase of “working through” these past experiences, and people who never talked before, do so now, more than 50 years after WWII.

The topic has also been discussed with more than 500 researchers in related fields. The current state-of-the-art has been mapped, showing that few researchers have turned their attention to this field. A Theory of Humiliation is currently being developed and a larger book project is being developed.

8. Consider Scheff (1988, 1990a, 1990b, 1997, 2003), Masson (1996), Vachon (1993), Znakov (1990). Furthermore, see Charny (1997), and his analysis of excessive power strivings. Psychiatrist Gilligan (1996) focuses on humiliation as a cause for violence.

9. See Leymann and Olweus for work on mobbing (Leymann [1990, 1996]; Leymann & Gustafsson [1996]; Olweus [1993, 1997]). The confusion around the use of the terms mobbing and bullying stems from the fact that these phenomena are used differently in different countries. Leymann suggests keeping the word bullying for activities between children and teenagers at school and reserving the word mobbing for adult behavior at workplaces.

10. Social Stigma: The Psychology of Marked Relationships (Jones, 1984) is a central book on stigmatization.

11. A huge body of research and literature exists. (See Bremner et al., 1992; Eitinger, 1990; Everly, 1993; Figley, 1989; Gerbode, 2000; Havermans, 1998; Horowitz, Weine, & Jekel, 1995; Kardiner, 1941; Lavik et al., 1999; McCann & Pearlman, 1992; Nadler & Shushan, 1989; Pearlman, 1998, 1994; Perry, 1994; van der Kolk et al., 1984; van der Kolk, 1994; van der Kolk & van der Hart, 1991, 1989; van der Kolk & Kadish, 1987).

12. Political scientists Bachrach and Baratz (1962) were among the first to address power and conflict in their article “The Two Faces of Power,” placed in the context of the American civil rights movement of the1960s (See also Tedeschi, Schlenker, & Bonoma, 1973).

13. Standard reading on stress psychology is Lazarus’ Psychological Stress and the Coping Process (1966) and Lazarus & Folkman’s Stress, Appraisal and Coping (1984). Stress is not necessarily negative, it may also be a stimulating challenge and there are individual different perspectives on why some people thrive under stress and others break (See Carver, 1998; Epel, McEwen, & Ickovics, 1998; Cohen et al., 1998; Calhoun & Tedeschi, 1998; Saakvitne, Tennen, & Affleck, 1998).

14. A rich overview of the new approaches to emotion research is found, among others, in Dai and Sternberg (2004), Forgas (2001), and Mayne and Bonanno (2001).

15. I thank Dagfinn Føllesdal for his support in formulating these questions.

16. Sherif et al. (1988) carried out classic research on in- and outgroups, see the famous Robbers’ Cave experiment. See also Ross & Ward (1995).

17. Berger (1970) wrote “On the Obsolescence of the Concept of Honor.” See also Taylor (1993) who describes the paradigm shift from honor to dignity and recognition. According to Taylor, social hierarchies are the basis for honor and the collapse of these hierarchies is the precondition of honor’s transmutation into dignity and recognition. The Enlightenment emphasizes the equality of every human person and the abolition not just of social hierarchies but of the concept of honor. I thank Eric van Grasdorff for making me aware of this work.

18. However, not only are times of transition prone to produce normative confusion and inconsistencies, also the new skills that are required for the new world are still lacking.

19. See, among others, the work of Bauman, 1998; Castells, 1996, 1997b, 1997a; Giddens, 1991; Legrain, 2002; Sennett, 1996; Smith, 2006; Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Wilkinson, 1996.

20. Similar to the Moratorium on Trade in Small Arms, or the Moratorium on Commercial Whaling. For an example read Patten and Lindh (2001).

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Evelin Gerda Lindner, MD, PhD, PhD (Dr. psychol., Dr. med) is the founder of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (www.humiliationstudies.org) and affiliated with the University of Oslo, Department of Psychology (http://folk.uio.no/evelinl/); the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Department of Psychology (http://psyweb.svt.ntnu.no/ansatte/person.php?uname=eveling); the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris; and the Columbia University Conflict Resolution Network, New York. Dr. Lindner is a senior lecturer at NTNU and teaches, among many other locations, in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. She considers herself a citizen of the world. To contact Dr. Lindner email her at e.g.lindner@psykologi.uio.no.