Beyond Stigmatization: Reintegrative Shaming and the Persistence of the Transatlantic Security Community

Shaming is a social process of expressing difference and disapproval, with the intention or effect of invoking suffering in the person being shamed. Shaming, unlike purely deterrent punishment, involves a moral component of consciousness-raising, labeling, and persuasion to convince others to change their behavior. Shaming operates at two levels to effect social control. First, it dissuades states from non-compliance or inappropriate behavior because social approval of significant others, such as the ‘community of civilized nations’, is something they do not like to lose. Second, and more importantly, shaming reaffirms particular state identities by constructing categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’. In some cases, such as US foreign policy toward Iran, shaming is divisive and stigmatizing emphasizing social distance whereas in other cases, such as the rows among NATO allies over Libya, shaming has the opposite effect of producing greater interconnectedness and mutual understanding. There appear, then, to be very different ways of shaming in IR. I argue that shaming can be both reintegrative and disintegrative and much turns on this distinction. Being preoccupied with the latter form, the general understanding in IR has failed to distinguish the social distancing effects of shaming that is stigmatizing and outcasting from the community-building effects of shaming that is reintegrative. The distinction between reintegrative and disintegrate shaming as alternative ways of expressing difference will be empirically illustrated using NATO’s military intervention against Libya in 2011.