ABSTRACT
Humiliation is a latent basis of motivation for engaging in conflicts. This chapter, therefore, examines three diagnoses of humiliation dynamics characterizing today’s globalized world: Evelin Lindner’s argument that humiliation proliferates due to the contradiction between human rights emphasizing the dignity of every human being and material conditions which negate these promises for many people; Jörg Friedrichs’ exposition of culturally distinct notions of what define basic human self-worth and consequently distinct notions of what is humiliated as people fail to accord the appropriate form of respect; and Dennis Smith’s diagnosis of humiliation as socially enforced displacement triggered by sociopolitical processes. Humiliation is often thought of in terms of interactional situations in which a perpetrator intentionally subjects a victim to degradation through actions or expressions. However, this chapter argues that to appreciate current humiliation issues, four other mechanisms need to be considered: (1) symbolic humiliation, (2) representative humiliation, (3) humiliation qua non-recognition and (4) self-perceived humiliation. Understanding both content matter and mechanisms of contemporary humiliation issues is instrumental in order to anticipate potential conflicts, as they are often mobilized through different humiliation dynamics.
