A major cause of socio-political violence is the social process of humiliation, whose main elements are closely related to central aspects of the cultural repertoire of complex societies. This paper presents the outlines of a theory of humiliation, showing that the capacity to humiliate and be humiliated are aspects of a dense web of “hot” filaments wired into the tissue of culture, giving it a potentially explosive character that is too little recognized. This paper probes this dense web and explores how it acquired its present character. I will argue that our conceptualization of humiliation has changed as our sense of human dignity has grown. Humiliation should be understood as not simply an extreme or marginal condition, but a central feature of the social order. Viewed within this broader context, the elements that constitute humiliation should be recognized as fundamental mechanisms in the formation of modern society. Such a recognition is central to understanding the relationship between humiliation a nd violations of human rights.
