The Symposia
In We Want What's Ours: Learning from South Africa's Land Restitution Program (Oxford University Press, 2014), Professor Atuahene conducted 150 interviews with South Africans whom the colonial and apartheid authorities forcibly removed from their homes and lands as a result of racially discriminatory laws and policies. Using the South African case, the book develops two socio-legal concepts: dignity takings and dignity restoration.
Dignity Takings
There are some instances when property is taken from an individual or a group and the appropriate remedy is to give the thing (or something approximating its value) back. In other instances, property is taken as part of a larger strategy of dehumanization or infantilization. In these instances, compensating people for things taken is not enough because they lost more than their property. The takings was also an assault on their dignity. This dual harm is called a dignity taking.
Dignity Restoration
The appropriate remedy for a dignity taking is something more than mere reparations (i.e. compensation for things taken). Instead, dignity restoration, which addresses deprivations of both property and dignity, is required. Dignity restoration compensates individuals and communities for things taken through processes that affirm their humanity and embrace their agency.
In three different symposia, more than 30 scholars have taken the concepts of dignity takings and dignity restoration beyond the South African situation and applied them to case studies in diverse temporal and geographic contexts.
Dignity Takings and Dignity Restoration
Creating a New Theoretical Framework for Understanding Involuntary Property Loss and the Remedies Required
![Law & Social Inquiry - Journal of the American Bar Foundation](/src/images/south-africa/symposia/lsi.webp)
- Dignity Takings and Dignity Restoration: Creating a New Theoretical Framework for Understanding Involuntary Property Loss and the Remedies Required Bernadette Atuahene
- When More than Property Is Lost: The Dignity Losses and Restoration of the Tulsa Riot of 1921 Alfred L. Brophy
- Coverture and Dignity: A Comment Hendrik Hartog
- Exile, Choice, and Loyalism: Taking and Restoring Dignity in the American Revolution Daniel J. Hulsebosch
- Dignity Takings and Dispossession in Israel Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar
- Resisting Dignity Takings in China Eva Pils
- Dignity as (Self‐)Determination: Hopi Sovereignty in the Face of US Dispossessions Justin B. Richland
- Racially Restrictive Covenants—Were They Dignity Takings? Carol M. Rose
- Two Rounds of Postwar Restitution and Dignity Restoration in the Netherlands and France Wouter Veraat
Dignity Takings and Dignity Restoration
![Chicago Kent Law Review](/src/images/south-africa/symposia/cklr.webp)
- Symposium Preface, Editor’s Note Bernadette Atuahene
- Dignity Takings, Dignity Restoration: A Tort Law Perspective Valerie P. Hans
- Dignity Takings and Dehumanization: A Social Neuroscience Perspective Lasana T. Harris
- Dignity Takings in the Criminal Law of Seventeenth-Century England and the Massachusetts Bay Colony John Felipe Acevedo
- Dignity Restoration and the Chicago Police Torture Reparations Ordinance Andrew S. Baer
- Dignity Takings in Gangland’s Suburban Frontier Lua Kamál Yuille
- No Place to Call Home: The Iraqi Kurds under the Ba’ath, Saddam Hussein, and ISIS Craig Douglas Albert
- Access Denied—Using Procedure to Restrict Tort Litigation: The Israeli-Palestinian Experience Gilat J. Bachar
- Dignity Takings and Dignity Restoration: A Case Study of the Colombian Land Restitution Program Diana Esther Guzmán-Rodríguez
- Unconscionable: Tax Delinquency Sales as a Form of Dignity Taking Andrew W. Kahrl
- Dignity Takings and “Trailer Trash”: The Case of Mobile Home Park Mass Evictions Esther Sullivan
- Fucking With Dignity: Public Sex, Queer Intimate Kinship, and How the AIDS Epidemic Bathhouse Closures Constituted a Dignity Taking Stephen M. Engel, Timothy S. Lyle
- Sound Recordings and Dignity Takings: Reflections on the Racialization of Migrants in Contemporary Italy Gianpaolo Chiriacò
- Urban Renewal and Sacramento’s Lost Japantown Thomas W. Joo
- The State Giveth and Taketh Away: Race, Class, and Urban Hospital Closings Shaun Ossei-Owusu
- Beyond Trademark: The Washington Redskins Case and the Search for Dignity Victoria F. Phillips
- Creating the Urban Educational Desert through School Closures and Dignity Taking Matthew Patrick Shaw
- Dignity Takings in Communist Poland: Collectivization and Slave Soldiers Ewa Kozerska
- Dignity Contradictions: Reconstruction as Restoration Taja-Nia Y. Henderson
- Damaged Bodies, Damaged Lives: Immigrant Worker Injuries as Dignity Takings Rachel Nadas, Jayesh Rathod
- Dignity and Discrimination: Employment Civil Rights in the Workplace and in Courts Laura Beth Nielsen, Ellen C. Berrey, Robert L. Nelson
- Dignity Takings and Wage Theft César F. Rosado Marzán
Special Focus: Dignity Takings and Dignity Restorations
![African Human Rights Law Journal](/src/images/south-africa/symposia/ahrlj.webp)
- Editorial Penelope Andrews
- From reparations to dignity restoration: The story of the Popela community Bernadette Atuahene and Sanele Sibanda
- From disgust to dignity: Criminalisation of same-sex conduct as a dignity taking and the grassroots battle to achieve dignity restoration? Ari Shaw
- The shadow of legal pluralism in matrimonial property division outside the courts in Southern Nigeria Anthony C Diala