Public Lecture
Third Max Weber Lecture | The Politics of Humiliation: Historical Trajectories

By Professor Ute Frevert (Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin)

Monday, 25 November 2019, 18:30
6:30 PM Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi

Comments: Professor Rajeev Bhargava, CSDS Delhi (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi)
Chair: Professor Christina von Hodenberg, Director, GHI London (German Historical Institute London)
 
The talk will be about the power of public shaming and humiliation in the modern world. Such strategies were either meant to punish and reintegrate a person who had violated social norms, or to debase and stigmatize those whom others wanted to exclude from groups or society at large. The talk follows the development of such practices since the late eighteenth century in legal, education and foreign policies, mainly with regard to Europe, China, and India. It focuses on the concept of human dignity and why this has become paramount.
 
About the speaker

Ute Frevert is Professor of Modern History (FU Berlin) and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. Among her English-language publications are Men of Honour: A Social and Cultural History of the Duel (1995); A Nation in Barracks: Modern Germany, Military Conscription and Civil Society (2004); Emotions in History - Lost and Found (2011); Emotional lexicons (2014), Learning how to Feel (2014); ed., Moral Economies (2019). The book The Politics of Humiliation: A Modern History will be published by OUP in 2020.
 
Max Weber Lecture Series
The Max Weber Lecture Series, which began in autumn 2018, consists of a set of two lectures per year that are related both to the specific research focus of the Max Weber Stiftung's India Branch Office (IBO) as well as the IBO's overall interest in concepts and methodologies of historical research. Distinguished international scholars, mainly from Germany, are invited to India to share their expertise with project partners and other researchers in India. The lectures are organised in collaboration with other Indian universities and also with other German cultural and academic organisations present in India and take place twice a year, in spring and autumn respectively.
 
To attend the lecture, please email your registration to info@mwsindia.org by Monday, 18 November 2019.