American Shame: Stigma and the Body Politic

Essays examining the role of shame as an American cultural practice and how public shaming enforces conformity and group coherence.

On any given day in America's news cycle, stories and images of disgraced politicians and celebrities solicit our moral indignation, their misdeeds fueling a lucrative economy of shame and scandal. Shame is one of the most coercive, painful, and intriguing of human emotions. Only in recent years has interest in shame extended beyond a focus on the subjective ex...