{
  "id": "restore-dignity.status",
  "term": "restore dignity",
  "sense": "status",
  "pos": "verb",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 21,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "To return a collective self to the status its narrative says is its own, after reading that status as set lower by another.",
  "folk_gloss": "to give back a people's sense of worth and respect",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "status.social",
      "narrative.self-story",
      "collective-self.shared",
      "set.fix",
      "return.movement",
      "says.speech",
      "time.dimension",
      "read.information",
      "low.spatial"
    ],
    "interaction": "The narrative fixes where the group belongs in others' models; a reading that another moved it lower becomes a promise to return it, which can organise a group around a status rather than a wall.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "a goal defined by a story of the past",
      "repair aimed at others' models rather than one's own walls"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "Many anti-colonial independence movements described their aims as restoring the dignity of peoples ruled from abroad.",
      "domain": "history"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "sense-of-grievance.collective",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "grievance keeps the reading; restoring dignity is the promised act"
    },
    {
      "id": "bruised-ego.hurt",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "a bruised ego reports the lowered read; restoring dignity sets out to raise it"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "restore dignity",
    "restore our dignity",
    "restored dignity",
    "restoring dignity"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-29",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-restore-dignity.status"
}