This volume explores contemporary social conflict focusing on a sort of violence that rarely
receives coverage in the evening news. This violence occurs when powerful institutions seek to
manipulate the thoughts of marginalized people-manufacturing their feelings and fostering a
sense of inferiority-for the purpose of disciplinary control. Many American institutions
strategically orchestrate this psychic violence through tactics of systemic humiliation. This
book reveals how certain counter-measures based in a commitment to human dignity and respect
for every person's inherent moral worth can combat this violence. Rothbart and other
contributors showcase various examples of this tug-of-war in the US including the politics of
race and class in the 2016 presidential campaign the dehumanizing treatment of people with
mental disabilities and destructive parenting styles that foster cycles of humiliation and
emotional pain.
