World Soap for Equal Dignity

HumanDHS is primarily grounded in academic work. We are independent of any religious or political agenda. However, we wish to bring academic work into "real life." Our research focuses on topics such as dignity (with humiliation as its violation), or, more precisely, on respect for equal dignity for all human beings in the world. This is not only our research topic, but also our core value, in line with Article 1 of the Human Rights Declaration that states that every human being is born with equal dignity (that ought not be humiliated). We agree with Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, who advocates the building of bridges from academia 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." We would like to add that we believe that good scholarship can be relevant and consequential not only for public policy, but for raising awareness in general.



We look for interested people, who would like to develop our WSoapED page. Please see our Call for Creativity.



In 1998 and 1999, Evelin Lindner met with Health Unlimited Kenya, East & Central Africa, and learned about their work with radio programs in the Great Lakes regions and she furthermore learned about Search for Common Ground and their work in Burundi. Read an article on the power of radio in effecting conflict in Africa in the August issue of New Internationalist Magazine focusing on Search for Common Ground's Studio Ijambo in Burundi.
Our quest for dignity is to build bridges from social science to other areas of life. Social psychologist Jan Smedslund suggests that one of the primary strategies to spread the message of equal dignity (that ought not be humiliated) would be to develop and broadcast, on radion and televion, "soap operas" that have an educational mission (in a personal conversation with Lindner, October 2004). This approach has been used already, for example with the aim to raise awareness as to HIV/Aids (personal conversation with social psychologist Reidar Ommundsen, October 2004).




 


Links

Please note that the entire HumanDHS website is maintained by volunteers, since its inception in 2003, and this is mainly done by Evelin Lindner. Until 2012, she usually pasted interesting news into this Links section. From July 2012 until 2017, she tagged interesting information on delicious.com. From 2017 onward, you see Evelin's personal list of interesting web links on Twitter:

Radio Soap Opera for Conflict Transformation in Nepal - August 2007

Can Soap Operas Save the World?

Health Unlimited

Common Ground

Telenovelas