This chapter situates the distinctive nature of dignity within the marketplace and offers tractable ways for scholars to integrate it in consumer research. We first shed light on the theoretical and practical power of dignity as grounded in psychology, examining it on different levels: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and cultural. We then begin to conceptualize the construct of consumer dignity and propose three specific levers by which it may be affirmed or denied: recognition, agency, and equality. Finally, we present emerging evidence to illustrate the operation of these levers and discuss how consumer dignity might be applied to build inclusive firms, organizations, and societies.

The book starts with the description of a violent scene inside a classroom, and this chapter elaborates on patterns of beating and humiliation that many readers will find disturbing. This chapter tackles violent punishment by school authorities in Egypt in its historical, social, cultural, classed and gendered dimensions. It describes the ways in which teachers explain and situate their practices and unpacks how violent punishment might be related to a “culture” of the poor or their structural conditions and how constructions of masculinity and femininity intersect with gendered punishment and surveillance. The chapter underlines how punishment is changing in its forms and intensities, and the complex ways in which it is both accepted and contested by students and families. Through the example of a “demonstration in support of beating” in 2011, it explores the distinctions between repressive, exploitative and disciplinary punishment implicit in the discourses of students and families.

A great deal of international and domestic conflict is driven by feelings of humiliation. But what does political humiliation consist of? In this chapter I argue that a key part of political humiliation involves the sense of being replaced. After looking at several case studies including the rhetoric used by ISIS recruiters, the rise of revanchist Russian and Chinese foreign policies, and the language deployed by white supremacists to frame and justify their grievances, I point to some features of the sense of replacement. These include the loss of status and perceived break of a promise or denial of an entitlement – both coupled with a reactionary brand of nostalgia that aims to return the world to how things were before these losses occurred. Part 1 introduces the idea of humiliation in international and domestic conflict. Part 2 uses four case studies to suggest that replacement is key in making sense of political humiliation. Part 3 offers several reasons why it’s particularly important to understand the dynamics of replacement.

Aided by Kant’s account, in “The Analytic of the Sublime,” of how “respect” is accessed, these pages show that effectively endless series of specific representations in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as well as King Lear open a moment of suspension, or space of “negativity,” within which that which Theseus terms “noble respect,” or France calls “inflamed respect,” can emerge. This route to respect may at first seem purely negative, yet its resulting humiliations of self-conceit release the good will of respect that is latent in the human. In these plays the attainment to respect is achieved in a reciprocal “amendment” or “art of known and feeling sorrows” that transpires most fully between spectator and play. Puck — standing amended beyond his play — envisions that which will “ere long . . . restore” these “amends.” He speaks as a minor prophet of a theatrical redemption that is outside time and in liminal space, even sweeping aside the play that was.

It is humbling to be human. Humilitatem and humanitas have always been connected. So, Shakespeare’s characters know when they are "not gentle, not humble" [Love’s, 5,2,617]. But living in an age of service, their creator was also conscious of the fine line between humility and humiliation. Persistently, his plays therefore stage the "Cinderella" scenario of a "proud humility" [All’s Well, 1,1,172], as if he had internalized the self-abjection by which power abases itself in "the gown of humility" [Coriolanus, 2,3,36]. Almost all of Shakespeare’s references to humility describe it as an act. Hence, "I have sounded the very base-string of humility" [1Henry IV, 2,5,5], reports his most winning king. In staging his own "abject position," as a professional "waiter" on the mighty, "our humble author" [2Henry IV, Epi, 23] thereby seems to anticipate modern skepticism towards the false modesty of the "humbled visaged" [Love’s, 2,,34], the "meekness and humility" that is "cramm’d" with "arrogancy, spleen and pride" [Henry VIII, 2,4107-108]. This chapter on humility argues that Shakespeare’s dramatization of the supposed virtue has never been more relevant than in our own populist times, when the clown prince dives into our hearts, "with humble and familiar" smiles [Richard II, 1,4,25-27].

In his history plays, Shakespeare shows how the hierarchical shame- and honor-based political system called monarchy leads to an endless cycle of violence. But he also shows us through the character of Falstaff and his famous speech about honor how debunking or satirizing honor has no effect on honor- and shame-driven personalities. In the context of current US politics, this can explain the inability of the two sides to hear one another. Henry V, often celebrated as a national hero, becomes a killing machine when he ascends to power, pursuing wars that are as futile as they are bloody. In contrast, Henry VI, the exception that proves the rule, adheres to the guilt ethic of Christianity, which renders him powerless to protect himself from the violence generated by the shame culture in which he lived. Richard III shows the power of shame and humiliation to stimulate violence on a scale that ultimately consumes him as well.

We have seen in Chapter 9 that we have many avenues to improve medication safety in anesthesia and the perioperative period, with considerable evidence and expert consensus to support them. However, human nature, just as it leads to errors, also often drives resistance to implementing safety interventions. Complicating our efforts to improve safety are safety paradoxes that, although would seem to improve safety, actually may work against safety. Achieving improved patient safety requires a deep understanding of not just how things go wrong when error-prone human beings work within complex systems but also why changes that would have a high probability of reducing the risk of errors are so often resisted. Needed changes can be resisted by individual physicians and by entire leadership of a large healthcare system. We return to the concept of violations, and emphasize that failure to hold violators accountable will effectively undermine safety efforts. Finally, an effort to understand why we do not change is absolutely imperative, as our continued refusal to change to safer methods continues to imperil our patients.

During France’s turbulent ‘revolutionary century’ after 1780, historians of collective protest such as Charles Tilly and George Rudé have highlighted a crucial transformation in forms of collective protest after the mid-nineteenth century. From ‘reactive’ violence against new intrusions of the state and capitalism, food and anti-tax riots, to ‘proactive’ mobilisations through unions, election campaigns, strikes and demonstrations, these new tactics instead sought to gain influence and control over national institutions. This chapter uses several case-studies, ranging from the murder of royal officials in July 1789 to the protracted torture and burning of a noble in southwestern France in 1870, to question elements of this model. First, the transformation discerned by Tilly was neither sharp nor complete, and ‘proactive’ protest was already well in evidence at the time of the French Revolution. Second, a focus on the causes and types of violent collective behaviour has failed to analyse adequately the actual practice of violence, particularly the place of humiliation and the meanings of decapitation. Finally, however, we stress that insurgent crowds always tended towards verbal and symbolic violence – the use of threatening language, occasional destruction of property, and ritualistic action – that channelled violence within cultural limits.

This chapter discusses examples of gendered commission and impact of sexual violence committed by government forces against Syrian women and men since March 2011. It also discusses the effect of sexual violence on the status and roles of Syrian women before and within the Syrian armed conflict. It analyses the reasons why sexual violence was used, its consequences (which are closely linked to its reasons), and the extent to which government forces achieved their goals by using violence of a sexual nature. The author’s analysis shows that the patterns of sexual violence followed the chronology and dynamics of the conflict, becoming more extreme as attempts to repress opposition failed. The author argues that while the types of sexual violence by government forces evolved, its use exploited gender roles and cultural and social norms throughout the conflict. In doing so, sexual violence was effective in fulfilling the government’s goal of terrorising, humiliating, and disempowering families and, through them, communities. In detention, it is noted that sexual violence was also used as a tool of torture to extract information and force confessions.

The chapter concludes the section by describing the relatively open operations of the Underground Railroad in the Free Soil Region. The roots of a distinct Free Soil culture of violence based on open defiance lay in the emergence of an African American ethos of self-assertion and community self-defense and in the abolitionist movement’s break with the culture of dignity, which led the movement to embrace the use of restrained violence to defend the “free soil” of the North. As a consequence, Underground activists in the region pioneered new and more open modes of operation. In Upper North strongholds such as Detroit; Oberlin, OH; central New York State; and Boston, abolitionists and vigilance committees publicly announced the passage of fugitives from enslavement and their efforts to provide assistance. The chapter concludes by examining the region’s increasingly open and successful defiance of state and federal fugitive slave laws, paying particular attention to the communal, interracial, and public nature of the resistance with which activists defended the region against the intrusion of slave catchers, regardless of the latter’s behavior.

Avishai Margalit argues in his chapter that it is more urgent and more important to prevent injustice than to promote justice. From his point of view, refraining from evil takes precedence over pursuing the good. As a way to illustrate this approach of questions of justice, both at the national and international levels, Margalit gives a number of examples taken from history.