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

过渡时期司法越来越依赖于在冲突后解决努力中对尊严的承诺。但研究人员发现，在不同的社会文化背景下，追求和实现尊严的方式各不相同。现有的几项研究表明，许多人的生活条件使他们无法过上有尊严的生活。该项目对学生进行经验、科学数据收集和分析方法方面的培训，询问是什么因素阻碍了对尊严的追求，进而推动这些人远离和平解决过去的分歧。了解对尊严的追求与为实现尊严而转向极端或激进的选择之间的因果关系，对于制定能够遏制这种现象出现的政策至关重要。除了为人类学研究生的培训提供经费外，该项目还将通过向对人权和冲突后和解问题感兴趣的组织广泛传播其研究结果来增进科学理解。在纽约城市大学Vincent Crapanzano博士的指导下，Douaa Sheet将探索多重道德框架如何在过渡时期司法努力的背景下影响人类行为。本研究将在突尼斯进行，之所以选择突尼斯作为研究地点，是因为该国目前正经历着全国各地抗议活动的复苏，这些抗议活动重申了2011年阿拉伯之春对“尊严、自由和就业”的要求，使其成为开展本研究的特别合适时机。研究将集中在真相与尊严委员会（TDC）上，这是一个国际人权机制，由地方选举产生的委员会负责调查倒台政权侵犯人权的行为，并建议对受害者进行赔偿。虽然贸发会的任务是为这些受害者提出补救的建议，但他们中的许多人正在抵制贸发会，并转向恢复尊严的其他方式。调查人员将走访再次发生抗议活动的地点，收集屈辱经历的证词，这些经历重新激起了对尊严的需求，受害者动员起来解释他们抵制TDC的原因的道德传统和神学概念，以及其他选择的吸引力，如自杀和激进的伊斯兰教或他们所谓的圣战an-nafs（自我斗争）。通过TDC的镜头和围绕其工作的激烈争议，研究者将探索影响尊严概念的多重道德传统。调查员将采访民间社会利益攸关方、人权律师、法学家、国际人权专家和参与这一进程的受害者，以确定哪些来源可能导致对贸易争端解决方案的失望，何时以及如何将其机制视为一种羞辱。对有尊严的未来的渴望可能会在多大程度上告诉本·阿里的受害者如何回应TDC，并重新制定他们处理过去虐待的策略。这项研究的结果将有助于深入了解尊严是一种如此有价值的愿望的原因，不遵守这种道德传统的社会和经济成本，以及非激进人士转向激进替代方案以重申其尊严的原因。

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.