Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Influence of Differential Conceptions of Dignity on Transitional Justice Efforts

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Transitional justice has increasingly relied on the promise of dignity in post-conflict resolution efforts. But researchers are discovering that how dignity is pursued and achieved varies across different sociocultural contexts. Several existing studies have documented that many people inhabit conditions that preclude the possibility of a life with dignity. This project, which trains a student in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, asks what factors foreclose the pursuit of dignity, and by extension, drive those individuals away from peaceful resolution of past differences. Understanding the causal relation between the pursuit of dignity and the turn to extreme or militant alternatives to attain it is critical for developing policies that can curtail the rise of such phenomena. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology, the project would enhance scientific understanding by broadly disseminating its findings to organizations interested in issues of human rights and post-conflict reconciliation.Douaa Sheet, under the supervision of Dr. Vincent Crapanzano of the City University of New York, will explore how multiple moral frameworks influence human behavior in the context of transitional justice efforts. This research will be conducted in Tunisia, which is selected as a research site because it is currently witnessing a resurgence of protests across the country reiterating the 2011 Arab Spring demand for "dignity, freedom, and employment," making it a particularly apt time to conduct this study. The research will focus on the Truth and Dignity Commission (TDC), a mechanism of international human rights where a locally elected commission is mandated to investigate the human rights abuses of the fallen regime and recommend reparations for its victims. While the TDC is mandated to recommend forms of redress for these victims, many of them are boycotting the TDC and turning to alternative ways of recovering their dignity. The investigator will visit the sites of renewed protests to collect testimonies of the experiences of humiliation re-fueling the demand for dignity, the moral traditions and theological concepts that victims mobilize to explain their reasons for boycotting the TDC, and the appeal of alternatives such as suicide and militant Islam or what they call jihad an-nafs (the struggle of the self). Through the lens of the TDC and the heated controversies that have surrounded its work, the investigator will explore the multiple moral traditions informing the notion of dignity. The investigator will interview civil society stakeholders, human rights lawyers, jurists, international rights experts, and the victims involved in the process to identify what sources might contribute to frustration with the TDC, when and how its mechanism are experienced as a form of humiliation, and the extent to which the aspiration for a future with dignity might inform the way Ben Ali's victims are responding to the TDC and refiguring the strategies through which they deal with their past abuses. Findings from this research will provide insight into the reasons dignity is such a valued aspiration, the social and economic costs of not conforming to the dictates of this moral tradition, and the reasons non-radical persons are turning to radical alternatives to reassert their dignity.