Welcome to Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS)

•  It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

•  Humility is Grace
Humiliation is Disgrace
-- Victor Zurbel, 2004

•  Pessimism is a luxury we can afford only in good times, in difficult times it easily represents a self-inflicted, self-fulfilling death sentence
-- Evelin Lindner & Jo L., Auschwitz survivor, 2004

•  Wringing your hands just slows you down from pushing up your sleeves!

•  There is a time for pessimism, that is, for considering worst-case scenarios in order to appropriately prepare for them. This does not mean one should not be hopeful, but only that one should be prepared for adverse outcomes rather than blithely assume that all will turn out well. Rather than being naively (indiscriminately) optimistic or pessimistic, it is better to be strategically optimistic and pessimistic. -- Seymour Epstein, 2005

We are a global and transdisciplinary network and fellowship of concerned researchers and practitioners, dedicated to to stimulating systemic change, globally and locally, thus ending cycles of humiliation throughout the world.

We believe that by eliminating these harmful cycles, space is opened for mutual respect and esteem to take root and grow. We believe that the sustainability of social cohesion and ecological survival requires a frame of cooperation and a spirit of shared humility - and not a mindset of humiliation. In this new context, many previously malign and intractable processes and conflicts can be brought to a new and benign level.

As researchers we study the dynamics of humiliation, the antecedents and consequences of humiliating behaviors, and interventions that can help break the cycle of humiliation and restore human dignity. As practitioners we attempt to bring incidents of humiliation in national and international affairs to the attention of people across the globe, to create public awareness of the destructive effects of such humiliation, and to promote alternative approaches that generate human dignity and respect.

Many reject research on "evil" as naïve appeasement. This is not our view. We believe that "understanding" and "condoning" ought not be conflated. Nelson Mandela showed the world that humiliation does not automatically lead to mayhem. His example attests to the constructive ways out of humiliation that merit to be studied and promoted. We wish to learn from those constructive elements in Mandela-like or Gandhi-like approaches (please note that we are aware of the various criticisms that may be aimed at Mandela or Gandhi) - for example, Mandela could have instigated a genocide of the white elite, yet he did not.

In our work, we wish to make research relevant to practice and vice versa (as in participatory action research). We invite you, researchers and practitioners from around the world who share our goals, to join us. Please read our call for creativity, a detailed description of our mission and a short description of what we mean when we speak about humiliation. See also our newsletters and our collection of quotes.

On this website, and in our work, we attempt to use a culture-neutral approach, as much as it is at all possible, since our scope is global. This entails that we pay the price of losing some credibility in all cultural realms, since we do not serve any dominant cultural propensity - see a discussion, for example, in What the World’s Cultures Can Contribute to Creating a Sustainable Future for Humankind, a paper prepared by Evelin Lindner for the 11th Annual Conference of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS), 23th June-1st July 2008, in Norway.


Read more about this video clip here


 

What is our aim?

We wish to help discontinue humiliating practices wherever they occur, globally and locally. In order to do this we aim at building bridges between research and practice. We wish to raise awareness of the workings of humiliation through research and education, and "change the world" more directly through interventions. In other words, we wish to focus on the interplay of both, subjective and institutional aspects of humiliation (Nancy Fraser (2000) discusses this in Rethinking Recognition).

Human rights ideals, emphasizing that each human being is born with equal dignity that ought not be humiliated are central to our work. We are aware of the debate questioning whether human rights are universal, or not, and whether their advocates are arrogant Western imperialists, or not, and we are aware that feelings of humiliation accompany this debate on all sides. We wish to contribute to building a future world society that includes all humankind in constructive and dignified ways.

The vision of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS) is to contribute to reducing - and ultimately eliminating - destructive disrespect and humiliation around the world. Our efforts focus on generating research, disseminating information, applying creative educational methods, and devising pilot projects and policy strategies. With these initiatives we wish to promote a new level of consciousness that is characterized by caring, mutual respect and sensitivity to dignity, thereby fertilizing new and constructive community action.

Research shows the important effect of "framing." In experiments, when players are asked to play the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game as a "community game," they tend to cooperate, while players who think they are playing a "Wallstreet game" tend to cheat. Although the structure of the game is identical, the mere difference in the label has a profound effect upon whether or not players cooperate (see for more information, for example, Lindner 2000).

For our work for more dignity (and less humiliation), we believe that the principle of Unity in Diversity represents a dignifying framing. We wish to promote more unity and at the same time more diversity. We think that this can be made operational by applying the Subsidiarity Principle (matters are handled by the smallest or lowest competent authority, a principle applied, for example, by the European Union). This, in turn, can be made operational, we believe, by Walking the Talk or the Appreciative Approach. We are convinced that this is valid for global and local institutions and organisations as much as for how we construct our identity (and even our brain works in this fashion, by using hierarchies of loops), and not least for our own HumanDHS work.


 

What we do

Our endeavor is innovative, at many levels, and thus, by definition, we do not yet have a long-standing organization that can look back on years of activities. The organizational structure or our group is that of a network and thus entails a wide range of activities by our members. In our research we study the workings of humiliation, in our educational activities we address them, and in our intervention projects we attempt to translate research into practice.

HumanDHS is a network of scholars, researchers and practitioners that is independent of any religious or political agenda. At the core of our work is the use of transdisciplinary approaches for generating and disseminating knowledge about human dignity and humiliation. We are committed to a wide range of knowledge creation and dissemination, from shifts in awareness and practice at the local micro-level to larger changes at the level of the global community.

We believe that research in social science should not remain within the academic realm only. Like the natural sciences, social sciences should be taken into "real life." Professor Shibley Telhami explains this point as follows, "I have always believed that good scholarship can be relevant and consequential for public policy. It is possible to affect public policy without being an advocate; to be passionate about peace without losing analytical rigor; to be moved by what is just while conceding that no one has a monopoly on justice."

Also within our group, we want to live our values and create an innovative global network where we emphasize respect for equal dignity and refrain from old-style autocratic communication modes. We also wish to "walk the talk" and create a humiliation-free, collaborative learning environment characterized by appreciative enquiry, mutual respect, mutual empathy, and openness to difference in our research, our communication style with others, as well as in our meetings and dealings within the group.

HumanDHS is developing a global network that serves as a platform for everybody who wishes to contribute to this work. Committed to creating a better future for our world, for our children and grandchildren, our members are dedicated to providing effective and creative platforms for building bridges in situations of disagreement and conflict and for generating a program of future-oriented activities that result in a viable global community.

Sociologist Neil J. Smelser, with his value added theory (or strain theory), analyzes what is necessary for a new social movement to emerge:
1. Structural conduciveness – things that make or allow certain behaviors possible (e.g. spatial proximity).
2. Structural strain – something (inequality, injustice) must strain society.
3. Generalized belief and explanation – participants have to come to an understanding of what the problem is.
4. Precipitating factors – spark to ignite the flame.
5. Mobilization for action – people need to become organized.
6. Failure of social control –authorities not clamping down (see, e.g., Swedberg, Richard (1990). Economics and Sociology: Redefining Their Boundaries: Conversations With Economists and Sociologists. Princenton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

We, as HumanDHS, address all six points:
1. We use the structural conduciveness of the internet.
2. We react to structural strain (humiliation fueling terrorism, for example, or humiliation causing general well-being to diminish).
3. We contribute to efforts to develop a shared understanding of what the problem is (we begin with what Ray & Anderson call the Cultural Creatives).
4. We try to ignite the “flame” of dignity,
5. and mobilize action,
6. while using the inclusive approach that human rights call for.


 

Some reflections

"Pessimism is a luxury we can only afford in good times, in difficult times it easily represents a self-inflicted, self-fulfilling death sentence. This insight, to me, is real Realism or real Realpolitik, far from blue-eyed Idealism. We have to courageously resist the current tendency to suspect those who work for a better world to be hopeless idealists. This would mean Realpolitik letting disaster happen (by deepening fault lines instead of transcending them), and us not at least attempting to prevent this. Strange real Realpolitik!"
Evelin Lindner, 2004.

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
Howard Zinn (You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A personal history of our times, 2004, p. 208)


 

What you can do

Please click on Who We Are, where you can read more about us, our Global Coordinating Team, Global Core Team, Global Advisory Board, Global Partners, Global Supporters, and Annual Meetings. You can also meet with our Board of Directors, including Evelin G. Lindner (Founder), Donald C. Klein, Linda M. Hartling, Richard Slaven (Business Manager), Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Eric Van Grasdorff, Victoria Fontan, Maggie O'Neill, Grace Feuerverger, Arie Nadler, Michael Britton.

You have furthermore access to an Introduction to our work, to our History, to our Mission Statement , to our Call for Creativity, our Welcome to Newcomers, and our Collection of Quotes.

See also a short definition of humiliation, read on eliminating humiliation, on the larger sociological context within which our work is positioned, on possible futures for our planet and which future our group wishes to promote, read also on the methods we wish to use, guided by appreciative enquiry. See our intervention rationale here.

We have four agendas, the first one is to build our group as a global network and alliance (see Who We Are). The other three are our Research Agenda, our Education Agenda, and our Intervention Agenda.

We also plan to create a Human Dignity Shop.

And you can contact us here. If you wish to make a donation, please click here.