278 THE HANDBOOK OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION: THEORY AND PRACTICE
Vamik D. Volkan (2004) in his theory of collective violence, in his recent book Blind
Trust, puts forth that when a chosen trauma is experienced as humiliation and is not
mourned, this may lead to feelings of entitlement to revenge and, under the pressure of
fear/anxiety, to collective regression.
The view that humiliation may be more than just another negative emotion, but may
indeed represent a particularly forceful phenomenon, is supported by the research of a
number of authors, such as James Gilligan (1996), Linda M. Hartling and Tracy Luchetta
(1999), Donald C. Klein (1991), Helen Block Lewis (1971), Evelin G. Lindner (2000),
Richard E. Nisbett and Dov Cohen (1996), and Thomas J. Scheff and Suzanne M.
Retzinger (1991).
Until very recently, however, few researchers have studied humiliation explicitly – the
phenomenon of humiliation typically figures only implicitly in literature on violence and
war. When humiliation is treated explicitly, it is often used interchangeably with shame
or conceptualized as a variant of that emotion. Humiliation has only very recently been
studied on its own account, among others, since 1996, by Evelin G. Lindner (2000), and
by Jennifer S. Goldman and Peter T. Coleman (2005). Humiliation is a complex
phenomenon of acts and feelings that can occur without shame being involved. As in the
case of Nelson Mandela, people who face humiliating treatment may sternly reject feeling
humiliated or ashamed. And even when they feel humiliated, victims of torture and
maltreatment recount that part of their success in being resilient was not to feel ashamed
while indeed feeling humiliated.
Considering feelings of humiliation may shed more light on violence and terrorism
than other explanations. We do not perceive conditions such as inequality, or conflict of
interest, or poverty, as automatically negative. As long as all players accept justifications
(poverty as “divine order,” for example), there might be pain, but no shared awareness of
a problem that needs fixing, no conflict, and no violent reactions. And conflict, even if it
occurs, is not automatically destructive either – it can be solved mutually and creatively.
It is when feelings of humiliation emerge that rifts are created and trust destroyed. If
feelings of humiliation are not overcome constructively, cooperation fails. In the worst-
case scenario, violence ensues.
As Lindner (2006) explains, at the current historic juncture, two new forces bring
humiliation to the fore in unprecedented intensity. “Globalization” (or the coming-
together of humankind), in concert with the human rights revolution, increases the
significance of feelings of humiliation. As long as people live far away from each other,
in isolation, relative deprivation goes undetected. But, today, Western soap operas and
Western tourists walking about are teaching the less privileged of the world to recognize
their own deprivation. At the same time, the human rights call for equal dignity teaches
underlings around the world that their poverty, their relative deprivation, is no longer to
be accepted as divinely ordained, but represents a violation of their very humanity. When