Research Projects

 

Napier HumanDHS Group

Lynne Edwards wrote (16th October 2007): "I am interested in the medium to long term in setting up a small group of academics from different backgrounds at Napier University who could belong to the HDHS group."

 

Refugees & Humiliation: How Dignity is Degraded When You Are a Refugee, or a Displaced or Stateless Person

This is a large research project with 21 research teams of young scholars and their academic advisors, that is conducted in cooperation with the United Nations University.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 states that 'all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.'
In this research project we ask: What happens when rights and dignity are violated? What are the long-term effects? What is, for example, the long-term effect on people who are born, live and die as refugees, in refugee camps? What are the inter-generational effects? How are second and third generation refugees affected?

 

Terrorism & Humiliation: Why People Choose Terrorism

This is a large research project with 9 research teams of young scholars and their academic advisors.
Why do people choose terrorism? This question merits deeper probing. This research project aims at shedding more light on the choices made by people who choose terrorism. The aim of this research is to help prevent terrorism more efficiently.
We are currently looking for an umbrella organization for cooperation and are grateful for your support and advice!advice!

 

Yashpal Jogdand, Dalit Humiliation and Resistance in Western India

On September 29, 2006, four members of the Bhotmange family belonging to the Mahar (untouchable) caste were slaughtered in Khairlanji, a small village in Bhandara district of Maharashtra, India ( The Hindu, Nov. 21, 2006). The 'provocation' for the bestial killings was that Bhaiyalal Bhotmange's wife, daughter, and two sons were educated and asserted their right to a life of dignity and self respect despite their poverty and low caste status. Please read more here.

 

Hildegunn Nordtug, Implicit Prejudice against Arab Immigrants

Hildegunn Nordtug has just earned her Master's degree in Social and Community Psychology at the University of Trondheim, Norway
Hildegunn wrote her thesis, Implicit Prejudice against Arab Immigrants, on social desirability as response bias with a survey on sexual harassment and violation among youth. She was also working as a research assistant for associate professor Ute Gabriel on an experiment about prejudice.

 

Tonya Hammer, Myths, Stereotypes, and Controlling Images in Film: A Feminist Content Analysis of Hollywood's Portrayal of Women's Career Choices

Tonya Hammer, Assistant Professor with the University of Houston-Clear Lake, Texas, U.S.A.
In 2008, Tonya finished her doctoral dissertation entitled: Myths, Stereotypes, and Controlling Images in Film: A Feminist Content Analysis of Hollywood's Portrayal of Women's Career Choices, at the Counselor Education and Supervision department at St. Mary's University, San Antonio, Texas.
Myths, stereotypes and controlling images are imbedded in cinema. Women can be disempowered and marginalized by these images and it is important to explore the images found in this medium and the potential they have to affect women’s career choices. The content analysis of 81 films revealed themes including but not limited to the idea that relationships should be secondary to careers in women’s lives; women are secondary to men in the workplace; women in power are depicted in isolation; women are portrayed in traditional careers more than non-traditional careers; regardless of career choice women are often depicted in a negative light and women of ethnicities other than White are not adequately represented in mainstream media, in any area, much less with regard to career choices. Through film women are learning that they are secondary to men in one more area of society and that, in essence, there is nothing wrong with this perception.

 

Lone Alice Johansen, African Solutions to African Intergroup Conflicts:
Ubuntu and Humiliation, A Study of Ubuntu and Its Effect on Perceived Humiliation in an Interactive Track Two Dialogue Seminar

Lone Alice Johansen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway
Lone Alice Johansen is currently working on her master thesis on African conflict resolution traditions (ubuntu) effect on perceived humiliation. She wants to investigate how the humiliation that is connected to being part of an ethnic/cultural group in conflict can be reduced by using ubuntu. To explore Ubuntu's effect on perceived humiliation she is going to do an empirical study at a dialogue/conflict resolution seminar in Norway. Here students from Sudan, Great Lakes Region and Ethiopia/ Eritrea will participate as representatives for their conflict areas. She wants to use a method combining questionnaire, participant observation and semi-structured interviews.
The semi-structured interviews will be conducted before and after the dialogue seminar. The interviews (pre and post the seminar) and the participant observation will focus only on one of the three groups who are going to take part in the ISFiT Dialogue seminar, and at the post seminar interview it may be possible to conduct a group interview. As opposed to the qualitative approach to the study, all of the three groups will receive a questionnaire before and after the seminar.
She has tried to reformulate the "human inventory index" into an index for humiliation experienced as a group member. She searches for other ways of measuring humiliation that are more connected with conflict and experienced humiliation because of ones group belonging and asks whether there is a way to measure humiliation that is more related to how people experience humiliation in conflict.

 

Pamela M. Creed, The Dominant American Narrative between 9/11/01 and the Invasion of Iraq

Pamela M. Creed, Ph.D. Candidate, Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, Washington DC, USA

The Dominant American Narrative between 9/11/01 and the Invasion of Iraq, an introduction to a potential dissertation, presented at the 2006 Workshop on Humiliation and Violent Conflict, Columbia University, New York, December 14-15, 2006. This evolved into a completed dissertation titled: Myth, Memory and Militarism: The Evolution of an American War Narrative. The dissertation aims to analyze the dominant American narrative between 9/11/01 and the invasion of Iraq through positioning theory and the literature on American national myths, humiliation and conflict.

 

Zuzana Luckay, The Concept or Regaining Dignity and the Manifestations of this Process in Post-Apartheid South- African Literature

Zsuzsanna Lucskay, PhD researcher, P.J. Šafárik University (UPJS) in Košice, Slovakia

The central topic of my PhD research is the concept of regaining dignity and the manifestations of this process in post-apartheid South African literature. Whether a quality or state of being worthy of esteem or respect, dignity is a very complicated and sensitive issue for various reasons. The deliberate degradation of dignity has often been used as a power-tool in history. In the past few decades the role of dignity has changed significantly worldwide, but especially in countries, which underwent radical political changes. It is now a human right protected by the constitution in South Africa (and other countries) and by international law. I believe that dignity cannot be granted or given, instead it is the circumstances, which allow it to be upheld that can be created and maintained. In an unjust political system (like apartheid or communism) the circumstances for maintaining dignity are rather difficult or lacking altogether. Nonetheless, the end of an oppressive system does not entail the consequential appearance of dignity. I investigate the mechanisms of the process of regaining dignity, the circumstances for its maintenance and its various aspects on a social and individual level. Dignity has sociological, psychological, philosophical, legal, moral, cultural, ethical etc. aspects but I would like to take literature, language and the text as the focal point for studying the phenomenon. I would like to examine the sources and aspects of dignity and its role in the lives of individuals via contemporary South African literature. For my analysis I intend to use a selection of contemporary South African novels in English.

 

Ashraf Salama, World Architecture for Equal Dignity (WAED)

Dr. Ashraf Salama, King Fahd University, Saudi Arabia
Architecture makes tangible meanings; it creates metaphors of the ideals and beliefs of a group (Rapoport, 1979). It is created in a field of tension between reason, emotion, and intuition. It is the manifestation of the ability to conceptualize and execute the idea of building rooted in humane tradition (Salama, 1995). Concomitantly, our belief is that cultural diversity should receive more respect and attention and should be integral to architectural education and practice and truly manifested in the built environment. Read a book chapter on Incorporating Knowledge about Cultural Diversity into Architectural Pedagogy (1999), by Ashraf Salama. In this respect, our belief is translated into several thematic issues we intend to address in our planned activities.

 

Neil Altman, The Concept of Humiliation and Equal Dignity

Neil Altman, New York University
"The immediate concrete object over which people fight may be property or land or any other form of material resource, but, psychologically, it is the humiliation of being crushed, overwhelmed by force, and threatened with psychological annihilation that is the most potent stimulus for violence. The psychological counterpart to "kill or be killed" is "humiliate or be humiliated" (Altman, Humiliation, Retaliation, and Violence, in Tikkun Magazine, Jan/Feb 2004).

 

Jennifer S. Goldman

Jennifer Goldman, Post-Doctoral Researcher at ICCCR, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York
Jennifer's dissertation The Differential Effects of Collective- Versus Personal-level Humiliating Experiences (2008) focused on the role that humiliation plays in exacerbating violent social conflict. She looked at how different "emotional roles" associated with humiliation might lead individuals to either act aggressively as a result of being humiliated, or not. She also looked at how the emotional roles might affect the vividness and strength of the emotional recall of humiliation. The purpose was to gain some empirical understanding of one way in which the humiliation-aggression cycle might work. Given the relatively small amount of empirical research that has already been done in this field, I was enjoying the entrepreneurial flavor, and also found the process quite challenging at times as well. Please see also:
Please see:
• Peter T. Coleman and Jennifer Goldman, Conflict and Humiliation, note prepared for the Workshop on Humiliation and Violent Conflict, Columbia University, New York, November 18-19, 2004.
• How Humiliation Fuels Intractable Conflict: The Effects of Emotional Roles on Recall and Reactions to Conflictual Encounters by Jennifer S. Goldman and Peter T. Coleman, work in progress, Teachers College, Columbia University, 2005.
• A Theoretical Understanding of How Emotions Fuel Intractable Conflict: The Case of Humiliation by Jennifer S. Goldman and Peter T. Coleman (2005), paper prepared for Round Table 2 of the 2005 Workshop on Humiliation and Violent Conflict, Columbia University, New York, December 15-16, 2005.
• Humiliation and Aggression, abstract prepared by Jennifer Goldman for Round Table 2 of the Workshop on Humiliation and Violent Conflict, Columbia University, New York, December 14-15, 2006.

 

Michael Sayler

Michael Sayler, Ph.D. at the Fielding Graduate Institute
Michael Sayler is a minister in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His dissertation at the Fielding Graduate Institute is entitled Humiliation and the Poor: A Study in the Management of Meaning (Ph.D. dissertation, Fielding Graduate Institute, 2004, available through the University of Michigan dissertation service), a study of how homeless people (in an affluent society) manage the meaning of humiliating experiences.

 

Katrine Fangen

Katrine Fangen, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Sociology, University of Oslo
I am conducting a post-doctoral study of Somalis living in Norway. The study is divided in two project-periods, a one-year study of Somali concepts of health, especially mental health, and how they cope with psychic problems. The other project-period lasts for four years, and the research-theme is identity and integration. This project will focus on different groups of Somalis, ranging from Somalis with higher education to unemployed Somalis, from religious Somalis to secular ones, young and old, men and women, single persons and families. The point is to find out about different coping strategies of Somalis in Norway, and how various identity solutions and levels of integration are related to background factors such as status in Somalia, own and parents education, etc.
My empirical material consists of interviews with both Norwegians and Somalis who work with Somali clients of various types. Many of these Somali helpers work as so-called natural helpers, that is, they have no formal education but use their own life-experiences and high status in the Somali milieus as a competence for working as bridge-builders between the formal social and health services and Somalia clients. They also work directly with Somalis who have problems in marriage or in parent-child relations. In addition, I interview Somalis in different positions in society, both families and single persons, both young and old. I will also participate as an observer in two focus-groups, the one consisting of women coming together to discuss the issue of pain, and the other a group that is meant to educate natural helpers. In 2005, I will do a short fieldwork in Somalia and visit a women's project in Mogadishu, which is a rehabilitation project for women who have experienced rape and abuse.
One of my concerns is how war, refugee-camps, transit and life in exile, including discrimination on the work-market and the housing-market, affect those Somalis who have suffered such experiences. One focus will be how experiences with humiliation express itself in the life of Somalis in exil, how Somalis verbalise these experiences, and which kind of help they wish or could think of applying for.

 

Ana Ljubas

Ana Ljubas, M.Sc. Researcher at the Department of Psychology, University of Regensburg, Germany
I'm currently working on my doctoral thesis examining the influence of culture on communication styles, intimacy and conflict resolution practices in intercultural couple relationships. I am looking at how mixed couples (German-French) have developed their communication patterns and established intimacy, taking into account their different cultural background and reflecting upon gender roles.
At the moment I am conducting interviews with mixed couples (being married vs. having been divorced) of different ages, one sample living in different regions of Germany, the other sample living in several French departments. Based on initial interviews a questionnaire will be designed which will be used for a comparative study also including non-mixed couples (living in France/Germany). According to those empirical findings that underline the cultural component of the expression of feelings and thoughts in the context of couple relationships, I am looking at how the investigated couples are managing their specific situation highlighting affective, behavioral and cognitive components of their experiences.

 

Ana Ljubinkovic, Ethnographic Research on Victims of Humanitarian Intervention

Ana Ljubinkovic, Doctoral Researcher at Essex University, UK
The aim of my doctoral research is to reveal and analyze practical and theoretical implications of the paradox embedded in the fact that the use of force in the implementation of human rights generates human victims. Theoretically, the paradox may be expressed in the following way: since the subject of human rights is universal, individual, and includes every single human being, humanitarian intervention that generates human victims violates the very subject of human rights. At the practical level, the paradox concerns peculiar powerlessness of the victims of humanitarian intervention: a) the difficulty in identifying the perpetuator; b) frustration generated by association of the perpetrator with the morality of human rights; c) impossibility of complaint since human rights are 'the last resort' (See Donnelly, J. Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, London: Ithaca , 1989, p.13); d) socio-political invisibility since the victims are often regarded as inevitable 'collateral effects' of the humanitarian intervention. Through extensive use of ethnographic methods as well as archival research, and experiments, this research intends to analyze the complex socio-emotional condition of the victims of humanitarian intervention. Furthermore, it aims to reveal the vision of the humanitarian intervention through the eyes of its victims and indicate the a dangerous gap that exists between universalistic morality and the reality of humanitarian intervention, in which its victims often perish.
The study case for this research is military humanitarian intervention in Somalia, Operation Restore Hope, implemented by the US in 1992/3. Although it is widely recognized that Operation Restore Hope generated controversial outcomes, most of the literature suggest that the US motivation to intervene was genuinely humanitarian. However, from the empirical research conducted so far it emerges that there is strong conviction among the recipient population that the US had self-interested motives, and that these were actually the main cause of the failure. Being convinced that the US intervened out of self-interest but not being able to discover and understand the nature of that self-interest, appears to be, for Somali people, one of the most unbearable and humiliating aspects of the intervention.

 

Lene Hulbakviken Lafosse, Research on "Stories of Trauma, a Study of Space for Action and Possibilites"

Lene Hulbakviken Lafosse Cand. Polit. at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway
Lene Hulbakviken Lafosse is currently working on her thesis for the Cand. Polit. degree at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her project is titled "Stories of trauma, a study of space for action and possibilites." Through the telling of life stories she will show the implications of human caused trauma in the life of young adults/adults from the Middle-East and/or North Africa presently living in Norway. Lene's academic focus is especially the telling of stories, life-stories/narratives and literatur as a means to unravel individual and social structures and encounters in societies. She has a particular interest in the Middle-East and North Africa and her main concerns are the expression of power in various social interactions and various social groups/sectors such as in politics, between the sexes and in the family.

 

Annette Anderson-Engler, Research on "Children of Vietnam Veterans - The Effects of Humiliation and Social Disorder on Collective Memory"

Annette Anderson-Engler, doctoral student at Saybrook Graduate School in San Francisco, California
Her research focuses on humiliation and displaced identity in children of combat soldiers. She is currently researching the link between children of Vietnam Veterans and humiliation as it relates to the displacement of their identity. She uses Narrative Inquiry as methodological approach. This research critically examines the issue of transgenerational transmission of trauma between the identity of post war combat soldiers and their children. The title of her dissertation is Children of Vietnam Veterans - The Effects of Humiliation and Social Disorder on Collective Memory.
 Annette was awarded her Masters degree in Conflict Analysis and Resolution at Nova Southeastern University and received her BSW in social work from the University of North Texas. She is currently a member of Association of Conflict Resolution and Amnesty International.

 

Myra Mendible, Book Project Spectacles of Humiliation: The Politics and Culture of an Emotion (Working title)

Myra Mendible, Associate Professor
Spectacles of humiliation play an increasingly pervasive and persuasive role in transnational media and entertainment forms. My current book project responds to this trend by exploring the politics of humiliation as signifying practice in a variety of popular discourses and representations. Specifically, I examine the consumption and meaning of humiliation as media commodity; its structural relation to pleasure, desire, and spectatorship; and its ideological function in postmodern war imagery. The study looks at television as it mediates and constructs competing images of humiliation, integrating the notion of “witness,” which structures the humiliation dynamic into an analysis of spectatorship. Focusing on the centrality of mass media in regulating and socializing groups within given contexts, my interdisciplinary approach considers a variety of contemporary cultural narratives in which humiliation plays a formative role, integrating analyses of mass phenomena ranging from “tabloid TV” shows, to news broadcasts, to foreign policy and war-making. I hope to reveal some of the ways these narratives shape social identities such as nationality, race, or sexuality and structure our position as citizens, spectators, and moral actors.