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冲突后解决努力中的尊严承诺。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是不同的。现有的几项研究证明，许多人的生活条件使他们无法过上有尊严的生活。这个项目对学生进行实证性、科学性的数据收集和分析方法的培训，询问是什么因素阻止了对尊严的追求，进而驱使这些个人远离和平解决过去的分歧。了解追求尊严与采取极端或好战的替代办法来实现尊严之间的因果关系，对于制定能够遏制这种现象抬头的政策至关重要。除了为人类学研究生的培训提供资金外，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。在纽约市立大学文森特·克拉潘扎诺博士的监督下，该项目将探讨多重道德框架如何影响过渡时期司法努力中的人类行为。这项研究将在突尼斯进行，突尼斯之所以被选为研究地点，是因为目前全国各地的抗议活动正在卷土重来，重申2011年阿拉伯之春对“尊严、自由和就业”的要求，这使得现在进行这项研究特别合适。这项研究将集中在真相和尊严委员会(TDC)，这是一个国际人权机制，一个由当地选举产生的委员会受命调查这个倒台政权侵犯人权的行为，并建议对其受害者进行赔偿。虽然贸发局有权为这些受害者建议各种形式的补救措施，但他们中的许多人正在抵制贸发局，转而寻求其他方法来恢复他们的尊严。调查人员将访问新一轮抗议活动的地点，以收集羞辱经历的证词，重新点燃对尊严的要求，受害者动员道德传统和神学概念来解释他们抵制贸易发展局的原因，以及自杀和好战的伊斯兰教或他们所称的圣战分子(自我斗争)等替代方案的吸引力。通过贸发局的镜头和围绕其工作的激烈争议，调查员将探索影响尊严概念的多重道德传统。调查员将约谈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过程的受害者，以确定哪些来源可能导致对贸发局的失望，其机制何时和如何被视为一种形式的羞辱，以及对有尊严的未来的渴望在多大程度上可能会影响本·阿里的受害者对贸发局的反应方式，并重新调整他们处理过去虐待行为的策略。这项研究的发现将深入了解为什么尊严是如此有价值的愿望，不符合这一道德传统的社会和经济代价，以及非激进的人转向激进的替代方案来重新确立他们的尊严的原因。

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.