Knowing Dignity: Performativity and Accounts

Beyond difficulties in identifying what we might believe dignity to be, there are further problems when considering what we might reasonably be able to know about dignity. Approaches relying upon an aristocratic paradigm may be quick to define dignity as a product of variables that can be clearly and objectively determined, such as rank, income and status. Indeed, many human rights frameworks aim to promote minimum standards of key indicators such as access to basic necessities and education as necessary (though not, perhaps, sufficient) conditions for dignity. Yet approaching a universal or transcendent concept of dignity presents difficulties, since the transcendent lies beyond experiential knowledge. Many of the commitments to a social ontology of dignity, pursued here as an alternative to the contemporary paradigm, could instead represent epistemological argument for research on a transcendent concept. Yet even when dignity is defined as inhabiting social relations, there are problems of perception relating to language and context.

The perception of dignity through language is problematized not only by the ambiguity of the term but also by the infrequency of its use in everyday action. Waldron (2007) identifies the term as a ‘thick’ signifier of evaluative judgments; however, matters of dignity and indignity are often raised in debate over other terms which may act as signifiers for the occurrence of dignity judgments. Hodson’s workplace ethnography project relies upon such signifiers in thick description for the identification of dignity-relevant activities in existing ethnographic accounts of organisations. A wide variety of descriptive utterances or evaluative terms may indicate everyday dignity judgments, for example: worthless, precious, ignored, fulfilling, meaningless, stressful, respectful. Such evaluative language provides a key to understanding perceptions of dignity or indignity, but the indeterminacy of such language as well as different usage among varying groups or subcultures may increase the challenge in doing so.

The search for reliable information on dignity in organisations is also undermined by the potential performative function of the term. Thus attempts to know dignity through questioning research participants may inadvertently invoke demands to account for or justify behaviours or values. Such demands issued from an external researcher may well introduce perceptions of conflicting value-systems, particularly when the researcher is not familiar with the natural language of the participants. Such barriers are not only a matter of the correct mother tongue, but also of jargon, idiom, and culture. These difficulties are well-established methodological problems in the research of ‘sensitive’ topics, yet are not widely discussed in research on dignity. Dignity here is not necessarily sensitive in terms of the vulnerability of research participants, but in social and cultural terms. Research such as Lamont (2000) has indicated different perspectives on dignity between groups of different nationalities as well as different social classes, and researchers may therefore have to carefully consider a reflexive position with respect to such differences.

Beyond the problems inherent in accessing knowledge of dignity through language, as a matter that inhabits the symbolic realm associated with status or bearing (conventionally part of the aristocratic paradigm), non-verbal elements of communication and context also play a dynamic role. Austin argues that performative utterrances were often most successful in highly ceremonial or ritual contexts such as naming or wedding ceremonies (McKinley 2010), but there are few tidy contexts for social research where the ceremonial or symbolic is either fixed or restrained. There are also particular organisational situations where the usual codes of conduct are legitimately upturned or reversed in particular ritual or ceremonial events as common as a company party or formal meal (see Rosen 1985, 1988).

The identification of dignity-relevant practices in speech or behaviour is thus fraught with interpretive difficulty. In addition, conflicting subjective views of what constitutes dignity or indignity among study participants may jeopardise the claim to a normative or universal component—presenting difficulties of validity. One approach to dignity advocated by Sayer (2007) is based on a view of dignity as intrinsic worth which is nonetheless manifest in subjective ‘morally reactive attitudes’ (ibid.) that respond to the denial of that worth. Sayer states that experiences such as “shame, stigma, humiliation, lack of recognition, or being mistrusted or taken for granted” (Sayer 2007:567) are indicative of a lack or a denial of dignity. Dignity is also understood as potentially evident in ‘social attitudes’, “like integrity, respect, pride, recognition, worth and standing or status” (ibid., also see Hicks 2011).

Epistemologically, this approach supports a view of dignity perceived in the doing of interaction, rather than at a distance. This would recommend an anthropological or ethnographic approach to dignity, focussing on the experiential understanding of context in order to more fully appreciate local symbolism and meaning. Although Sayer does not expand upon empirical approaches to dignity, these statements hint that dignity is experienced subjectively through a natural ‘sense’ (Pritchard 1972) that individuals are treated in accordance with such a property or not. This sense is understood as a social one, though Sayer (2011) advocates that such reactions may be emotional and embodied. In his analysis of Fuller’s work on dignity and rankism, Scheff (2010) supports the significance of emotional cues to such matters, presenting evidence that individual feelings of shame or justified pride may well be excellent indicators of dignity and social worth.

Social performances of emotion, deference and non-linguistic behaviour such as demeanour, though denigrated as superficial measures of dignity, may also be indicators of worth in appropriate contexts. Scheff’s (2005, 2006, 2010) work focuses on an in-depth analysis of Erving Goffman’s analysis of the micropolitics of interaction, and he argues that approaches such as the theatrical metaphor offer means of examining intersubjective relations. If we are to understand dignity through a socio-linguistic context that is beyond subjective experience, interpretive approaches of this kind offer another means of approaching this abstract concept in empirical ways.