Dignity and Health

4. Dignity Promotion: The Ordinary Language of Respect

119 Chapter 4 Dignity Promotion The Ordinary Language of Respect Human dignity draws its moral force not from a particular and well-defined philosophical conception but from the intuitive appeal of the ordinary language of respect for the human person and her inherent worth. —Gerhold K. Becker (2001) You could be forgiven for feeling bleak right now. There are so many ways to violate dignity, so many systems in place that perpetuate violation. Most of our conversations about dignity, in scholarship and in our daily lives, focus on how dignity may be threatened or lost. Explicit attention to dignity promotion is more of a novelty, but it is important to recognize that dignity does not just claim victims of violation: it also has agents of promotion. We had to draw out the people we interviewed to get them to reflect on dignity promotion. Once so prompted, however , we found many (although not all) of the men and women we spoke with had something to tell us about the ways in which the expressive performance of respect can foster a mutual valuing of self and other and may help to establish the conditions necessary for “a dignified life.” The exploration of dignity promotion I begin in this chapter is meant to restore the constructive power of agency to dignity, to remind us of the varieties of purposeful individual and collective action and interaction that can achieve both human and social dignity. By emphasiz- 120 Dignity and Health ing the ways in which dignity may be cultivated, I hope this exploration will begin to suggest a way forward toward a more dignified world. A woman in her sixties, living in subsidized housing with her grandchildren and receiving income support from the province, told me she had prepared for our interview by looking up the word “dignity” in the dictionary and reflecting on its changing meanings and uses in her own life: It sums up honor, choice. . . . I thought about it over the week and I can recall back to when I [was] five or six. . . . I certainly felt the implications of what it was . . . I was brought up in an upper-middleclass family. It was a different era then and it was just after the war and so I can remember my dad’s army boots and trying to walk in them and, you know, the fact of being proud, you know, for my country. . . . I remember being told that it was manners which were dignified. . . . Then I got into my teens, it changed. . . . You always have some sort of hardship going through school, you know, you don’t fit in the group or, you know, kids making fun of you and I always felt it would be dignified to hold up my head in honor, you know . . . to realize that I was a human being. . . . I always felt proudness in myself. . . . As I got older and I had my children, it was a different story. Dignity was, you know, providing for my family, keeping them clean, you know, having pride within one’s self and how you’re raising a family. . . . Even the simple things like making a meal, you know, I would try to do it with dignity. This is my role, my honor, to provide for my family and to do that. . . . It’s an important word to me. It’s raised me. It’s been, it’s been so much a part of me. It’s gotten me through hardships, through depression, through shame, through—I’ve been put down because of one situation or another and, you know, to hold onto my dignity has really, has kept me going. “Dignity is, is not a passive process,” one man told me. “It has to be earned. It has to be asserted. And it has to be communicated.” Another person said, “It doesn’t just happen. You don’t just give dignity. You don’t just get your dignity. You hold onto it. . . . You have to continue to Dignity Promotion 121 feed it.” Just as there are social processes of dignity violation, so too may dignity be promoted by action and interaction. Dignity is promoted when actors’ encounters are characterized by courtesy. One woman described the social process of courtesy as a set of “unwritten rules” that when followed demonstrate an attitude of “always being conscious of the next person’s feelings.” Courtesy is important to dignity...