Public Humiliation Research Articles

Shaming, Condemning, and Calling for Consequences: Contemporary Anti-dialogic Responses to Harmful Speakers in Public Discourse

ABSTRACT Many now criticise the purported tendency to condemn, shame, or call for consequences for those we disagree with in public debate, suggesting these actions are the antithesis of democratic participation. In this paper, I situate these frequently critiqued forms of anti-dialogic expression within an emerging tradition that recognises the democratic value of these kinds of expression, and elucidate the democratic credentials of speech acts more commonly derided as a contemporary cancel culture. I argue that these kinds of anti-dialogic counterspeech are a route to empowerment for otherwise silenced voices in the public sphere, and a necessary disruption to patterns of domination and subordination that enable harmful speech to proliferate in the public sphere. Acts of public shaming, condemnation, and calls for consequences that both eschew and seek to frustrate public debate can bolster inclusivity in the public sphere and undermine the unjust patterns of exclusion to which democratic deliberation ordinarily adheres.

Deviance or Devotion: Women Dressed as Men in Late Medieval England

On the 18th September 1417, Matilda Burgin and Margaret Usshar were brought before the ecclesiastical court of the Bishop of Durham for attempting to enter Durham Cathedral in order to approach the shrine of St Cuthbert from which women were banned. So to enter, they put on masculine clothing and for these crimes they were punished with the public humiliation of wearing the offending clothing in full view of their community. This article will first examine the case of Matilda and Margaret, their arrest in Durham Cathedral and the social, spiritual and sartorial consequences of their very public punishment. It will then compare their experience with that of other medieval women and gender non-conforming people who were arrested in masculine dress. Finally, this article will examine the possible influence the popular religious literature of cross-dressing saints may have had on Matilda and Margaret. This article will ask whether Matilda and Margaret’s own personal devotion to St Cuthbert drove them to put on masculine clothing to see his shrine? Or was it a disdain for the gendered segregation upheld by the Bishop of Durham and a disobedience of the command of St Cuthbert? Or something else entirely.

An inquiry into queer experiences of regimes of morality in Indian schools: a phenomenological institutional ethnography

Previous studies indicate various atrocities against queer individuals in schools globally. However, no in-depth inquiries have been conducted into the experiences of queer individuals in Indian schools. A novel form of ethnography – phenomenological institutional ethnography (PIE) based on Schutz’s phenomenology of life-worlds and Smith’s institutional ethnography was devised to conduct a qualitative inquiry into the experiences of queer individuals. Participants included 19 queer individuals from different regions of India. Findings revealed five forms of disciplinary mechanisms in schools: regimenting through silencing, moral dictation, name-calling, public shaming, and physical abuse, which deleteriously affect the development of self-concept among queer individuals, and leads to experiences of alienation and inauthentic self-expression, guilty conscience and internalized homophobia, and compromised mental health and low self-esteem. Developing inclusive policies to provide a supportive school environment in India for the queer population is suggested.

Too much or not enough? Self-reported experiences of relational distress based on level of sexual desire

ABSTRACT The diagnostic of sexual desire disorders is based on not only physiological and psychological symptoms but also on the extent of distress about these symptoms. Using data from a 2022 national survey of 3,000 respondents in Austria, this paper explores the range of relational distress individuals experience about their level of sexual desire. Participants were asked, ‘Have you ever been ostracised or ridiculed in your life for feeling too much (not enough) sexual desire? If yes, in what way?’ Gender and sexual minorities were more likely than cisgender and heterosexual participants to report negative reactions to their level of desire. The paper presents the results of a thematic analysis of the 341 written answers to the latter question. The analysis identified three themes: a) harassment, such as mocking, bullying, or public humiliation; b) the pathologization of desire as a sexual disorder; and c) negative social classification with respect to gender, age, or sexual orientation. By investigating different types of negative social reactions that individuals experience with respect to their level of sexual desire, the paper critically questions an individualised notion of sexual distress that has often been the basis for biomedical and psychological interventions by highlighting social factors that produce distress in the first place.

No More the Nice Guy: Coping with Abusive Supervision through Service Sabotage Behaviours

‘Atithi Devo Bhav’, implying that guests must be treated as Gods, is the philosophical belief of Indian society indicating the importance of treating the customers with utmost respect and courtesy. The current study examines service sabotage behaviours by utilizing time-lagged method to collect data in three waves from 332 employees from Indian hotel industry. The study highlights the effects of abusive supervision on the employees who perceive disrespect, public humiliation or rude supervisory behaviours towards them as breach of psychological contract, and they retaliate by displaying deviant workplace behaviour such as service sabotage. The unique proposition of the research is to investigate the sequential mediating role of psychological contract violation and retaliation intention on the relationship between abusive supervision and service sabotage. The research utilizes psychological contract theory and frustration–aggression theory to draw logical inferences from the findings. Findings indicate that when employees perceive mistreatment or injustice, they experience psychological contract violation that instigates an urge to retaliate against the unfair treatment by engaging in negative service behaviours, for example, sabotage. Therefore, the hospitality organizations must implement practices and processes to take care of any unjust, unfair or hostile behaviour at play in the organization, as the success of the industry is dependent on the service quality and frontline employees’ encounters with the customer. The study provides some interesting and useful managerial and theoretical implications.

Morality in the anthropocene: The perversion of compassion and punishment in the online world.

Although much of human morality evolved in an environment of small group living, almost 6 billion people use the internet in the modern era. We argue that the technological transformation has created an entirely new ecosystem that is often mismatched with our evolved adaptations for social living. We discuss how evolved responses to moral transgressions, such as compassion for victims of transgressions and punishment of transgressors, are disrupted by two main features of the online context. First, the scale of the internet exposes us to an unnaturally large quantity of extreme moral content, causing compassion fatigue and increasing public shaming. Second, the physical and psychological distance between moral actors online can lead to ineffective collective action and virtue signaling. We discuss practical implications of these mismatches and suggest directions for future research on morality in the internet era.

The suffering of students in physical education. Unsettling experiences and situational conditions

ABSTRACT Background The state of research on unsettling experiences of students in physical education can be characterized as fragmented. The available studies focus on select emotions (e.g. fear), specific forms of discrimination (e.g. ableism), or different types of social interactions (e.g. bullying). In this way, the state of research reveals different aspects of students’ suffering in physical education (PE) in a puzzle-like manner, while systematic investigations of the overall picture of PE as a complex meaningfully structured phenomenon remain open. Purpose The study presented in this paper aims to systematically capture the breadth of unsettling PE experiences by taking different perspectives of students into account, while also doing justice to PE in its situational logic. Based on a social constructivist approach, the following research questions will be addressed: (1) What kind of experiences are interpreted as unsettling by students in PE? (2) Which situational conditions are associated with students’ unsettling PE experiences? Methods A qualitative research approach based on written short narratives was employed to answer the research questions. Current and former secondary school students (N = 677) from Germany participated. Grounded theory coding methods and sequential analysis were used for the data analysis. Results Our data indicates a wide range of students’ unsettling PE experiences (e.g. public humiliation, social exclusion, and forms of violence). On a supra-individual level, two major categories of unsettling PE experiences were identified: (1) The vulnerability of the students perceived through revealed inadequacies and (2) the social oppression of the supposedly ‘lazy, weak and unfit’. Students’ experience of vulnerability can be traced back to situations of physical exposure and performance failure while their experience of social oppression draws back to suppressive actions by teachers and fellow students. For each of these categories, we identify typical ways in which students deal with their unsettling experience. On a structural level, a hierarchizing culture of PE that fosters unsettling experiences is revealed. Discussion As a central strength, our study can provide condensed explanations for the emergence and consequences of unsettling PE experiences from the students’ perspective. Our findings relate to and enrich existing discourses regarding the situational emergence of vulnerability, overarching mechanisms of marginalization, and the hierarchizing culture of PE as a basis for social oppression. It is particularly tragic that affected students feel left alone and can hardly escape harmful situations, which perpetuates their suffering. Thus, pedagogical concepts that emphasize students’ diversity and the dismantling of hierarchies are needed and should be advanced further.

Gender wars and cancel culture in academia: Umut Özkırımlı in conversation with Laura Favaro

The Oxford English Dictionary defines cancel culture as «the action or practice of publicly boycotting, ostracizing, or withdrawing support from a person, institution, etc., thought to be promoting culturally unacceptable ideas». Though accurate, this definition is incomplete since cancel culture goes way beyond boycotting or ostracizing. It includes a wide spectrum of sanctions, spanning from public naming and shaming, censorship and job loss to intimidation and outright attacks in the form of verbal and physical abuse. This article discusses the mechanisms and negative impacts of cancel culture in academia by focusing on the case of Laura Favaro, who was ‘cancelled’ after publishing an article on the findings of her research on academia's ‘gender wars’. The concerted attempts to silence certain – particularly feminist – perspectives on sex and gender have severe and wide-ranging implications for researchers and the scholarly endeavour as a whole, contributing to the toxic atmosphere created by the neoliberalisation of university.

From Moral Indignation to Affective Citizenship: Public Shaming of Celebrity Emigration from Russia During the War Against Ukraine

The article analyzes the public shaming campaigns that followed celebrity emigration from Russia at the beginning of the war against Ukraine. It shows that celebrity emigration represented a challenge to the construction of a nation morally and emotionally united around the war. The special status of celebrities in modern society as figures that provide the public with a focus of common identification and attention makes celebrity emigration during the war particularly challenging both for the state authorities and for the public. Through systematic analysis of commentary on social media, the article reveals the communicative process of public shaming of these public figures, which works through acts of revelation of their moral failure and othering, including by highlighting their ethnic and class differences. By expressing moral outrage, individual commenters on social media are not only conducting symbolic destruction of these celebrities’ moral character and social status, but also reconstituting the moral meaning of emigration as an act of betrayal of the Motherland. Using the affordances of social media, ordinary people not only express their outrage but also formulate how they see the proper moral commitments and appropriate feelings of patriotic citizens in wartime. Their moral rhetoric and affective expressions are anchored in the well-established Soviet tradition of public shaming and denunciation. They are also framed by the contemporary context of emotional and confrontational social media campaigns.

Progress Tracking and Responding to Online Public Shaming Events on Twitter

Progress Tracking and Responding to Online Public Shaming Events on Twitter

THE SPECTACLE OF HISTORICAL TRAUMA OF BLACK BODIES IN AMERICA: SUBJECTIVITY, ABJECTION, AND COMMODIFICATION OF THE WHITE/BLACK GAZE

In 1994, Elizabeth Alexander's”'Can you be Black and Look at This?’: Reading the Rodney King Video(s)” was published in The New Yorker magazine. Alexander focuses on the ways in which Black bodies have been the focal point of public pain, torture, and humiliation for centuries. These public lynchings, whippings, and other forms of physical abuse leading to maiming and death have been elements central to the entertainment for the racial status quo. Alexander's essay also focuses on the ways in which there has always been a “Black gaze” bearing witness to the decimation of other Black bodies--- the legacy of which leads to a continued cycle of both psychological and historic trauma that is (re)visited over and over again. Of course, with the prevalence of technology now a norm, such incidents of recorded violence are part of life in America. As the United States' greatest cancer, racism, continues to be a root cause of this violence, neither the killing of Blacks nor survivors' consciousness will be healed; and worse, the spectacle of racial violence will continue to perpetuate victims on various levels: 1) as victims directly tied to such violence and 2) as witnesses to said violence. My proposed essay focuses on the tragedy of Black bodies as spectacles of public pain---whether they are viewed as victims, as specimens of morbid curiosity, or as receptacles of displaced hate and disgust; and even as supposed rightly displays of justices incurred, simply because the body in question is Black (“They got what they deserved. They should have just pulled over.”). I will focus on various, very public historical and modern-day lynchings, from Emmett Till to George Floyd, and explore the cause and effects against Blacks in America. Ultimately, the essay poses the following questions: who is the monster, who are the victims? And at what cost will this continuum perpetuate the legacy of trauma of the American Black population?

The Impact of External Pressure on Companies’ Responses to Sanctions – an International Comparative Study

What explains the strategies firms adopt in response to economic sanctions? Our study argues that different types of external pressure, such as public shaming, the nature of companies’ business relationships, and national-level legal-regulatory environments affects how firms respond to the sanctions imposed against Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. We develop a suite of hypotheses about how external pressure affects firms’ compliance behaviors and whether firms adopt reactive and/or proactive strategic responses. We test our hypotheses by analyzing results from a survey of 610 medium-sized companies operating in Germany, Poland, and the United States. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we find that external pressure is associated with higher levels of compliance and overcompliance with sanctions but is also associated with undercompliant behavior. We also find that compliance with sanctions is associated with a high degree of proactive response, which suggests compliant firms may often seek out legal means of circumventing sanctions. We further observed variation in the effects of external pressure, compliance behavior, and strategic responses on US firms compared to those in European Union members Germany and Poland.

Containing misinformation: Modeling spatial games of fake news.

The spread of fake news on social media is a pressing issue. Here, we develop a mathematical model on social networks in which news sharing is modeled as a coordination game. We use this model to study the effect of adding designated individuals who sanction fake news sharers (representing, for example, correction of false claims or public shaming of those who share such claims). By simulating our model on synthetic square lattices and small-world networks, we demonstrate that social network structure allows fake news spreaders to form echo chambers and more than doubles fake news' resistance to distributed sanctioning efforts. We confirm our results are robust to a wide range of coordination and sanctioning payoff parameters as well as initial conditions. Using a Twitter network dataset, we show that sanctioners can help contain fake news when placed strategically. Furthermore, we analytically determine the conditions required for peer sanctioning to be effective, including prevalence and enforcement levels. Our findings have implications for developing mitigation strategies to control misinformation and preserve the integrity of public discourse.

Dissection, media portrayals, and reaction: Black bodies and medical education in nineteenth-century newspapers.

Throughout the nineteenth century, medical schools in both the Northern and Southern regions of the United States required a regular supply of bodies for medical study and experimentation. Physicians and medical students targeted the bodies of African Americans, both freedmen and the enslaved, to meet this demand. Simultaneously, the nation's booming newspaper market became a stage on which debates about the cruelty of slavery and the social consequences of pursuing medical knowledge played out in articles about the dissection of Black bodies. Such stories increased fears about dissection and mistrust towards the medical profession among African American communities, which manifested in riots against physicians, vandalism against medical schools, and corrective responses from African American newspaper editors and journalists. Through an extensive examination of nineteenth-century U.S. newspapers, this article identifies themes evident in the coverage of dissection during this period. Southern newspapers crafted stories of dissection that served the dual purpose of entertaining White readers and humiliating African Americans. This public humiliation fostered what became a popular genre of derogatory and vile humor that reinforced negative and inaccurate racialized stereotypes as well as racist science. Ultimately, such newspaper coverage provoked reactions within Black communities and among antislavery advocates that showcase how people often excluded from practicing medicine themselves viewed issues like medical education. Newspaper rhetoric around these themes amplified tensions between religious and scientific perspectives, reflected differences and similarities between the northern and southern areas of the United States, and fortified racist views in both cultural and scientific contexts.

The lightning sheet: control and public shaming in the Albanian communist regime

The article addresses the phenomenon of fletërrufe, literally lightning sheet, which became epidemic in Albania since 1967. Animated by denunciation, mainly concerning work and socialist morality, the lightning sheet cultivated public humili- ation. Exploring mostly unpublished records and press articles, the research seeks to answer the following questions: What are the origins, the functions, the contents, and the consequences of fletërrufe? How does it turns into a device of public shaming, control, and conformism?

Perspective and sexual politics in Mémoire de fille

It is striking how often the first-person memories in Annie Ernaux's 2016 work of life-writing Mémoire de fille are rendered from a third-person perspective. Visual depictions of the author’s younger self are shown to us as if the older Ernaux who is narrating the story were present at the scene, seeing her former self from the outside. The events recounted include sexual exploitation and public shaming for falling foul of the era's sexual double standards, and, in the aftermath of this, an identity crisis and an eating disorder. How does Ernaux’s complex interplay of empathy and distance with regard to her younger self affect the social and political themes in the work, and the ethical stance of the text towards them? And how is the reader implicated by the perspective through which Ernaux has us view her teenage self of 1958?

Moral Implication of Big Brother Naija (BBN) on Nigeria Youths

The phenomenon of Big Brother Nigeria (BBN) has garnered significant attention due to its moral implications on Nigerian youth. This paper delves into the ethical ramifications of BBN on the younger generation of Nigeria, exploring how the show’s content influences their behavior, values, and perceptions and other factors that are responsible for moral decline among Nigerian Youths. The rise of reality television programs, such as BBN, has perpetuated a culture of voyeurism and sensationalism, which raises concerns regarding the impact on the moral fabric of Nigerian society. BBN exhibits a wide range of behaviors, including deceit, manipulation, and public humiliation, which can normalize and desensitize the youth to these negative actions. One of the primary moral implications of BBN on Nigerian youth is the erosion of traditional values and ethics. This study adopts historical, descriptive and sociological approaches. It was revealed that the show often emphasizes materialism, instant gratification, and superficiality, promoting a value system that prioritizes fame, wealth, and self-interest. On the positive side, BBN also exposes the Nigerian youth to diverse cultures, backgrounds, and perspectives. It offers a platform for social issues to be discussed, raising awareness and encouraging critical thinking. It concludes that, its content and presentation have the potential to shape the behavior, values, and perceptions of the younger generation. The study recommends that the citizens and government should rise to take serious measure against the activities of Big Brother Naija or better still to set laws that will check and regulate their activities.

How to improve tax compliance by wealthy individuals? Evidence from Uganda

AbstractMotivationAppropriately taxing the richest is a priority for African governments, which need tax revenues to invest and pay for public services. In Uganda, the revenue authority launched a unit in 2015 to monitor the tax affairs of high‐net‐worth individuals (HNWIs) and very important persons (VIPs), 393 individuals in all. The unit combined persuasion, assistance, and enforcement.PurposeTo establish the extent to which the unit was able to improve tax compliance by the rich.Methods and approachIn collaboration with the Uganda Revenue Authority, this study builds on taxpayer‐level data on tax filing and payment. The analysis employs a standard difference‐in‐difference framework, exploiting the timing of the launch of the unit (September 2015). It also makes use of the existence of the target group of 393 wealthy individuals and a group of another 1,731 potentially wealthy individuals who have been identified but never included in the unit's operations owing to limited resources. We match the groups using a propensity score algorithm.FindingsThe unit has been only partially successful. While the unit increased the probability of filing a return, especially by VIPs, taxpayers declared less on different measures, with no impacts on tax liability. On tax payments, only a small and significant positive impact was found, again due to complex offsetting responses across tax categories. This study also measures the spillover effect on companies controlled by the richest—again documenting complex compensating reactions and no meaningful impacts on tax take. Lastly, while deterrence is more effective for HNWIs, taxpayer assistance and public shaming are more relevant for VIPs.Policy implicationsThis case shows that the rich can be identified and their tax monitored. It also shows the limits of what can be achieved. The Uganda unit lacked staff; it needed twice as many people to monitor the tax of wealthy persons adequately. Moreover, it was hamstrung by the difficulties of sharing data between different departments of the Tax Authority, among government agencies, and between government and key agents such as banks. Ultimately, the unit did not have the staff and data to challenge the tax avoidance schemes deployed by wealthy people and the companies they own.

A qualitative assessment of the impact of a community-embedded intervention on beneficiaries' attitudes and beliefs about adolescent sexual reproductive health in Ebonyi State, Southeast, Nigeria

BackgroundAdolescents and their communities in Ebonyi State, Nigeria have poor attitudes and beliefs towards adolescent sexual and reproductive health (SRH). This paper reports on the effects of a community-embedded intervention that focused on creating positive changes in the attitudes and beliefs of adolescents and community members to enhance adolescents’ access to SRH information and services. MethodsThis study adopted the Qualitative Impact Assessment approach to evaluate the changes in attitudes and beliefs about the SRH of adolescents from the perspectives of the beneficiaries of a community-embedded intervention namely, adolescents, parents, school teachers, and community leaders. The intervention was implemented in six local government areas in Ebonyi State, southeast Nigeria and the evaluation was undertaken four months after the implementation of the interventions commenced. Eighteen (18) interviews were conducted with 82 intervention beneficiaries including: (i) six in-depth interviews with school teachers; (ii) two sex-disaggregated FGDs with parents; (iii) two sex-disaggregated FGDs with community leaders; and (iv) eight sex-disaggregated FGDs with in school and out of school adolescents. A thematic analysis of data was performed with the aid of NVivo software, version 12.ResultsThe community-embedded intervention led to changes in individual attitudes and beliefs, as well as changes in community norms and values concerning adolescent SRH. Adolescents reported that following the community-embedded SRH intervention, they have become more comfortable discussing openly SRH issues with their peers, and they could more easily approach their parents and initiate SRH discussions. The parents of adolescents reported that following the intervention, they have become more willing to discuss sensitive SRH issues with adolescents, and frequently make out time to do so. It was also reported that parents no longer use euphemisms to describe sexual body parts, and community leaders now believe that it is all right to discuss SRH with adolescents. Hence, initiating or having SRH discussions with adolescents is no longer misconceived as encouraging sex, and menstruation in unmarried adolescents is no longer viewed as a sign of promiscuity. Respondents also highlighted changes in community norms of, (i) gendered parental communication of SRH matters, as both mothers and fathers have started discussing SRH issues with their adolescent boys and girls; and (ii) public shaming and discipline of pregnant teenage girls are on the decline.ConclusionThe community-based intervention had a positive impact on individual attitudes and beliefs, as well as community and societal values and norms about adolescent SRH. Interventions that take into account community norms and values regarding adolescent SRH should be prioritized to enable the achievement of the SRH-related target of SDG 3.

Online public denunciation as recursive social practice

Abstract Incidents of online public shaming commonly start when a record of conduct that is perceived as transgressive by either one of the parties to that interaction or a third party observer is posted, in the form of a narrative description, photograph, audio/video-recording, screenshot, and so on to an online platform, followed by viral amplification of that online public denunciation post through sharing by others within and across platforms. Building on an analysis of 26 incidents of online public denunciations of public incivilities it is argued, in this paper, that public denunciations essentially involve inviting networked audiences to denounce entextualized moments of conduct, which are recontextualized as not only morally transgressive, but as also warranting public condemnation. It is proposed that the procedure by which online public denunciations are accomplished is thus recursive, as it not only involves the ascription of action to prior conduct of the target in question that construes that prior conduct as transgressive, but the embedding of the ascription of that complainable action within a public denunciation that invites condemnation of that ascribed action. However, since social media platforms allow for the re-entextualization and subsequent recontextualization of prior posts through which public condemnation has been invited, online public denunciations are themselves inevitably open to recursive recontextualization. It is concluded that online public denunciation is thus an inherently recursive form of social practice.