Structural violence

Structural Violence
Prepared By:
Bikram Adhikari
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW_rTeawAi0
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Direct Violence
• Classic form of violence
• Involves the use of physical force
• Visible, intentional and direct
• Eruptive, Catastrophic events
• Attributable to a person or persons – there is a perpetrator
• An ‘assault or encroachment’ on the physical/bodily integrity of
another human being or his/her property
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Introduction
• Structural violence from a germinal article published by Johan
Galtung in the Journal of Peace Research in 1969.
• It is the situation in which there is a difference between the potential
and actual somatic and mental achievements of people.
• The violence is called as structural violence because
• It is impossible to identify a single actor who commits the violence
• Violence is impersonal, built into the structure of power
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Introduction
• Structural Violence Analogy to Earth-quake
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Introduction
• Structural Violence occurs in any situation in which some people are
unable to achieve their capacities or capabilities to their full potential,
and almost certainly if they are unable to do so to the same extent as
others
• Structural violence is a capacious term that encompasses not only the
exclusion from entitlements such as food and water, but also the
exclusion of certain groups from particular forms of recognition
(citizenship rights, equal rights before the law, rights to education,
representation, and so on)
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Introduction
Dr. Paul Farmer
“Structural violence is one way of describing social arrangements that
put individuals and populations in harm’s way… The arrangements are
structural because they are embedded in the political and economic
organization of our social world; they are violent because they cause
injury to people … neither culture nor pure individual will is at fault;
rather, historically given (and often economically driven) processes and
forces conspire to constrain individual agency. Structural violence is
visited upon all those whose social status denies them access to the
fruits of scientific and social progress.”
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Introduction
• Paul Kivel:
• “Over 20 years’ worth of studies show that people of color who arrive
at a hospital while having a heart attack are significantly less likely to
receive aspirin, beta-blocking drugs, clot-dissolving drugs, acute
cardiac catheterization, angioplasty, or bypass surgery. Race, class,
and gender clearly make a difference in how patients are diagnosed
and treated.”
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Characteristics of Structural Violence
• Depersonalised – no clear perpetrator
• Particular powerful interests are at work
• Violence manifests itself as unequal power and consequently as
unequal life chances (Galtung)
• On-going and pervasive – goes beyond independent events
• Invisible because
• Violence has been converted into structures of power that are normalized
and routinized, so it has become part of everyday life.
• Structural violence is problematic in and of itself, but it is also
dangerous because it frequently leads to direct violence.
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How structural Violence different from Direct
Violence?
Structural Violence
• Affected: Social groups
• Although there is a victim--
someone who is injured by the
inequities of social
arrangements—it is hard to
identify a perpetrator.
(a crime without a criminal)
• Absence of intention
• It is normalized
Direct Violence
• Affected: Individual
• Requires a perpetrator who
commits the violent act and a
victim who is injured by it
• Presence of Intention
• It is unacceptable
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Example
Property Tax Educational discrepancies
More Property Tax  More investment Education More opportunities
Less Property Tax  less investment Education Less opportunities
E
E
Educational Discrepancies
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Structural Violence in Haiti
• Cause:
• Impact of Post colonialism
• Political Instability
• Social Unrest
• Corruption
• Social Inequalities
• Impacts were
• Poverty
• Burden of disease  Malaria, AIDS
• Life expectancy less than the Global scenario
• High Mortality rates
• Poor Education status
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India’s drought: A natural
calamity or a man-made one?
• Largest number of dams in India, built to generate power, provide water for
millions of farmers and service the state industries.
• Water resources ‘mismanaged’.
• Water that was meant for farmers diverted into power plants and the highly
water intensive sugar cane industry
• 60 percent of the water meant for small farmers diverted to the power sector
between 2003 and 2011;
• Government policy no more than 5 percent of irrigated land can be used to grow
sugarcane, ignored in Pune where nearly 40 percent of the total irrigated land is
under cane cultivation.
• Thousands of villages had little drinking water or fodder for cattle; Poor farmers
migrated as environmental refugees; and some Committed suicide because they
had spent large amounts of money on costly seeds and chemicals, and couldn’t
face crop failure
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Examples
Examples of structural violence might include:
• 2.5 billion people who live on less than US$ 2 per day
• 30 year difference in life expectancy between those living in Africa
and those in rich nations
• 800 million people who have no access to essential health services.
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Origin of Structural violence
• Local Forces
• Global Forces
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Local forces
• Lack of Income and assets
• Human assets, such as the capacity for basic labour, skills and good health;
• Natural assets, such as land and cattle;
• Physical assets, including infrastructure like roads and water supplies and all
kinds of household goods;
• Financial assets, such as savings and access to credit;
• Social assets, such as networks, contacts and reciprocal obligations that can be
called on in time of need, and political influence over resources.
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Local Forces
• Vulnerability
• Vulnerability means that a person is susceptible to being affected by sudden
change. Vulnerability can be triggered by outside events (such as economic
crisis, floods, war or famine), or by personal crises (for example, sickness or
becoming old and no longer able to work).
• Powerlessness
• common among the poor. Because they have little bargaining power they
have little or no ability to negotiate good wages; they must accept being
evicted from their property by landowners because they do not have access
to justice; and they must accept the demands of moneylenders for exorbitant
interest payments, because they have no choice but to borrow and other
forms of credit are unavailable.
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Local Forces
• Powerlessness
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Local Forces
• Gender Dimension
• Women’s access to assets is often far more restricted than men’s
• Women’s inability to be heard fairly in justice systems where male values
predominate contributes to their social powerlessness
• Women of the marginalized communities are affected by structural
violence in various dimensions, including oppression, exclusion,
exploitation, marginalization, collective humiliation, stigmatization,
repression, inequities, and lack of opportunities due to having a different
identity.
• They are not able to realize their potential due to the invisible form of
structural violence that not only destroys the present state of security but
also threatens the future.
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Genocide in RAWANDA from structural to
direct violence
7 April to mid-July 1994
• Peter Uvin (1998) identifies a number of mechanisms by which the
local forces of structural violence lead to direct violence:
• Increases in inequality
• Income share of richest decile increased from 22% in 1982 to 52% in 1994.
• Disempowered by the state
• Strict restrictions on population movement – especially between rural and urban areas
• Aid projects increased inequality
• ended up concentrating resources in the hands of the wealthy.
• Impunity and corruption
• people lose faith in the system, become cynical, and are easily tempted to break the law
themselves
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Global Forces
Colonial Rules:
• Colonization, which occurred in waves from the 16th century onwards
– starting in Latin America, proceeding to Asia and finally to Africa in
the 19th century – was partly driven by the economic needs of
European countries that were industrializing over the same period.
• Colonial rule left an indelible mark on many of the world’s poorest
countries, and can be described as an apex of structural violence
Globalization:
• Globalization’s effects on poverty, inequality and disease – the core
components of structural violence
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Mechanism
• Corruption
• Corruption discriminates against all those who do not have the
monetary resources to obtain goods and services that are supposed
to be provided free or at subsidized prices but that in fact command a
market price. It becomes a form of structural violence by placing a
value on goods that should be available free from the state and
thereby denying some of the poorest people the means to sustain
life.
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GlobalizationIncrease
in Global Economy,
Relaxed trade
regulations and
communication
networks
Income Disparity
Rises
multinational
conglomerates that
derive huge profits
from exploiting
underpaid laborers
Horrific structural
violence to workers
who toil under brutal
conditions
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Reducing structural violence path to building lasting peace
• Reclaiming neighborhoods,
• Demanding social justice and living wages
• Providing prenatal care,
• Alleviating sexism,
• Organizing globally while celebrating local cultures, and
• finding non-
• militaristic avenues to express our deepest spiritual motives, will be
our most surefooted
• .
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Reducing structural violence
• National Level
• Factors frequently act together to produce vicious circles of
deprivation.
• Policies that try to break in at any point in these
circles to alleviate particular elements of deprivation
• Stewart (2005) suggests that three types of policies can be used to
alleviate horizontal inequalities. These include policies that:
• Change processes that are discriminatory
• Direct assistance towards groups that have been discriminated against
• Introduce targets and quotas to correct inequalities
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Reducing structural violence
• International Level
• A fairer international system
• AID
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References
• Uvin P (1998) Aiding violence: the development enterprise in
Rwanda. West Hartford, Connecticut, Kumarian Press.
• http://blogs.reuters.com/the-human-impact/2013/05/02/indias-
drought-a-natural-calamity-or-a-man-made-one/
• https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2014/05/corporatising-
agriculture/
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References
• Farmer P. An Anthropology of Structural Violence. Current Anthropology.
2004 Jun;45(3):305–25.
• Kelly BD. Structural violence and schizophrenia. Social Science & Medicine.
2005 Aug;61(3):721–30.
• Basnyat I. Structural Violence in Health Care: Lived Experience of Street-
Based Female Commercial Sex Workers in Kathmandu. Qualitative Health
Research. 2017 Jan;27(2):191–203.
• Ferreira MASV. Transnational Organized Crime and Structural Violence in
Brazil. In: Atieno C, Robinson C, editors. Post-conflict Security, Peace and
Development [Internet]. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2019
[cited 2019 Jan 12]. p. 37–54. Available from:
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-030-01740-8_3
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Structural violence

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