- Structural violence
Structural violence, a term which was first used in the 1960s and which has commonly been ascribed to
Johan Galtung , denotes a form of violence which corresponds with the systematic ways in which a givensocial structure orsocial institution kills people slowly by preventing them from meeting their basic needs. Institutionalizedelitism ,ethnocentrism ,classism ,racism ,sexism , adultism,nationalism ,heterosexism andageism are just some examples of structural violence. Life spans are reduced when people are socially dominated, politically oppressed, or economically exploited. Structural violence and direct violence are highly interdependent. Structural violence inevitably produces conflict and often direct violence including family violence, racial violence, hate crimes, terrorism, genocide, and war.In 1984,
Petra Kelly wrote (in her first book, "Fighting for Hope"):: A third of the 2,000 million people in the
developing countries arestarving or suffering frommalnutrition . Twenty-five per cent of their children die before their fifth birthday […] Less than 10 per cent of the 15 million children who died this year had beenvaccinated against the six most common and dangerouschildren's diseases . Vaccinating every child costs £3 per child. But not doing so costs us five million lives a year. These are classic examples of "structural violence".The violence in structural violence is attributed to the specific organizations of society that injure or harm individuals or masses of individuals.
In explaining his point of view on how structural violence affects the health of subaltern or marginalized people, a
medical anthropologist ,Paul Farmer , writes, "Their sickness is a result of structural violence: 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." [1] This perspective has been continually discussed by Farmer, as well as byPhilippe Bourgois , andNancy Scheper-Hughes .In his book "Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic," James Gilligan (former director of Massachusetts prison mental health services and presently a faculty member at Harvard Medical School) defines structural violence as: "the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively lower death rates experienced by those who are above them." Gilligan largely describes these "excess deaths" as "non-natural" and attributes them to the stress, shame, discrimination and denigration that results from lower status. He draws on Sennett and Cobb who examine the "contest for dignity" in a context of dramatic inequality.
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Anarchism and violence External links
* [http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC04/Gilman1.htm Robert Gilman: "Structural violence. Can we find genuine peace in a world with inequitable distribution of wealth among nations?"] (1983)
* [http://projects.essex.ac.uk/ehrr/archive/pdf/Volume%20IV/pdf%20vol%204.2/ho.pdf Kathleen Ho: "Structural Violence as a Human Rights Violation"] - Essex Human Rights Review Vol. 4 No. 2, September 2007 (ISSN 1756-1957)References
* Johan Galtung, "Violence, Peace, and Peace Research," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 6, No. 3. (1969), pp. 167-191. Available online from JSTOR at http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3433%281969%296%3A3%3C167%3AVPAPR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P.
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