Systemic Humiliation in America

Daniel Rothbart is Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, USA. In addition to serving as Co-Director of the Program for the Prevention of Mass Violence, he chairs the Sudan Task Group, an organization that seeks to build long-term peace in Sudan, Africa.

This volume explores contemporary social conflict, focusing on a sort of violence that rarely receives coverage in the evening news. This violence occurs when powerful institutions seek to manipulate the thoughts of marginalized people-manufacturing their feelings and fostering a sense of inferiority-for the purpose of disciplinary control. Many American institutions strategically orchestrate this psychic violence through tactics of systemic humiliation. This book reveals how certain counter-measures, based in a commitment to human dignity and respect for every person's inherent moral worth, can combat this violence. Rothbart and other contributors showcase various examples of this tug-of-war in the US, including the politics of race and class in the 2016 presidential campaign, the dehumanizing treatment of people with mental disabilities, and destructive parenting styles that foster cycles of humiliation and emotional pain. 

Addresses timely and often overlooked topics (humiliation, shame, and dignity) Takes a broad and interdisciplinary approach, incorporating insights from the fields of sociology, social psychology, criminology, moral philosophy, and conflict analysis Provides many examples and applications of "systemic humiliation" in the United States, examples that hold applications outside of the US as well

1. Power and Humiliation
Part I: Social Conflicts and the Politics of Emotions  2. Can Systemic Humiliation be Transformed into Systemic Dignity?3. Insults as Tools of Systemic Humiliation4. Systemic Humiliation and Practical Politics: Class Thematic Reasoning and the Rise of Donald Trump
Part II: Race, Violence, and the Road to Justice  5. The Civil War at 150 Years: Deep Wounds Yet to Heal6. Transforming the Systemic Humiliation of Crime and Justice: Reawakening Black Consciousness7. Truth-Telling from the Margins: Exploring Black-led responses to Police Violence and Systemic Humiliation
Part III:  Mental Health, Stigma. and Dignity 8. "To Wander Off in Shame": Deconstructing the Shaming and Shameful Arrest Policies of Urban Police Departments in Their Treatment of Persons with Mental Disabilities9. Systemic Humiliation in Families10. Madness, Violence, and Human Dignity: Transforming Madness for Dignified Existence