Structural violence
Structural violence is a form of violence wherein some social structure or social institution may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs or rights.
The term was coined by Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, who introduced it in his 1969 article "Violence, Peace, and Peace Research". Some examples of structural violence as proposed by Galtung include institutionalized racism, sexism, and classism, among others. Structural violence and direct violence are said to be highly interdependent, including family violence, gender violence, hate crimes, racial violence, police violence, state violence, terrorism, and war. It is very closely linked to social injustice insofar as it affects people differently in various social structures.
Definitions
Galtung
According to Johan Galtung, rather than conveying a physical image, structural violence is an "avoidable impairment of fundamental human needs."Galtung contrasts structural violence with "classical violence:" violence that is "direct," characterized by rudimentary, impermanent "bodily destruction" committed by some actor. Galtung places this as the first category of violence. In this sense, the purest form of structural violence can be understood as violence that endures with no particular beginning, and that lacks an 'actor' to have committed it.
Following this, by excluding the requirement of an identifiable actor from the classical definition of violence, Galtung lists poverty as the second category of violence and "structurally conditioned poverty" as the first category of structural violence.
Asking why violence necessarily needs to be done to the human body for it to be considered violence—"why not also include violence done to the human mind, psyche or how one wants to express it"—Galtung proceeds to repression as the third category of violence, and "structurally conditioned repression" as the second type of structural violence.
Lastly, Galtung notes that repression need not be violence associated with repressive regimes or declared on particular documents to be human-rights infractions, as "there are other types of damage done to the human mind not included in that particular tradition." From this sense, he categorizes alienation as the fourth type of violence, leading to the third kind of structural violence, "structurally conditioned alienation"—or, "repressive tolerance," in that it is repressive but also compatible with repression, a lower level of structural violence.
Since structural violence is avoidable, he argues, structural violence is a high cause of premature death and unnecessary disability.
Some examples of structural violence as proposed by Galtung include institutionalized adultism, ageism, classism, elitism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, racism, sexism, and speciesism. Structural violence and direct violence are said to be highly interdependent, including family violence, gender violence, hate crimes, racial violence, police violence, state violence, terrorism, and war.
Others
In his book Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic, James Gilligan 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 Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, who examine the "contest for dignity" in a context of dramatic inequality.In her interdisciplinary textbook on violence, Bandy X. Lee wrote "Structural violence refers to the avoidable limitations that society places on groups of people that constrain them from meeting their basic needs and achieving the quality of life that would otherwise be possible. These limitations, which can be political, economic, religious, cultural, or legal in nature, usually originate in institutions that exercise power over particular subjects." She goes on to say that " is therefore an illustration of a power system wherein social structures or institutions cause harm to people in a way that results in maldevelopment and other deprivations."
Rather than the term being called social injustice or oppression, there is an advocacy for it to be called violence because this phenomenon comes from, and can be corrected by, human decisions, rather than just natural causes.
The concept of structural violence was extended to the digital realm by Sibai, Luedicke and de Valck, who explained that structural violence can also take place in online communities. The possibility of structural violence might be questioned on the basis that it leaves those affected “with no alternatives”. After all, member can leave toxic online communities and social media more generally at any time. Yet, the authors demonstrate that, for many, the friendships, intimacy, and sense of family gained on social media are emotionally significant, making it incredibly difficult for users to leave. In particular they identify three prevalent forms of structural violence in online communities and on social media: hedonic darwinism, a relational contract that facilitates the exploitation of some members for the amusement of others, clan tyranny, where higher-status users abuse their superior influence to prevent other groups from gaining recognition, authority, and voice, and minarchy, a relational structure marked by ultraminimal intervention from governors.
Forms
Cultural violence
Cultural violence refers to aspects of a culture that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence, and may be exemplified by religion & ideology, language & art, and empirical science & formal science.Cultural violence makes both direct and structural violence look or feel 'right', or at least not wrong, according to Galtung. The study of cultural violence highlights the ways the act of direct violence and the fact of structural violence are legitimized and thus made acceptable in society. Galtung explains that one mechanism of cultural violence is to change the "moral color" of an act from "red/wrong" to "green/right," or at least to "yellow/acceptable."
Institutional violence
Institutional violence is a form of structural violence in which organizations employ attitudes, beliefs, practices, and policies to marginalize or exploit vulnerable groups. Rossiter and Rinaldi argue that the structural elements manifest as organizational traits that enable the reconstruction of one's sense of inhumane behavior, its deleterious effects, the responsibility for its impact, and the subject harmed, which leads to moral abdication and thus create an ethos of violence. One example of such traits highlighted by the authors is the social or physical distance between organizations and the broader society, which serves as a key mechanism in sustaining such violence.Cause and effects
In The Sources of Social Power, Michael Mann makes the argument that within state formation, "increased organizational power is a trade-off, whereby the individual obtains more security and food in exchange for his or her freedom."Siniša Malešević elaborates on Mann's argument: "Mann's point needs extending to cover all social organizations, not just the state. The early chiefdoms were not states, obviously; still, they were established on a similar basis—an inversely proportional relationship between security and resources, on the one hand, and liberty, on the other." This means that, although those who live in organized, centralized social systems are not likely subject to hunger or to die in an animal attack, they are likely to engage in organized violence, which could include war. These structures make for opportunities and advances that humans could not create for themselves, including the development of agriculture, technology, philosophy, science, and art; however, these structures take tolls elsewhere, making them both productive and detrimental. In early human history, hunter-gatherer groups used organizational power to acquire more resources and produce more food; yet, at the same time, this power was also used to dominate, kill, and enslave other groups in order to expand territory and supplies.
Although structural violence is said to be invisible, it has a number of influences that shape it. These include identifiable institutions, relationships, social phenomenon, and ideologies, including discriminatory laws, gender inequality, and racism. Moreover, this does not solely exist for those of lower classes, though the effects are much heavier on them, including higher rates of disease and death, unemployment, homelessness, lack of education, powerlessness, and shared fate of miseries. The whole social order is affected by social power; other, higher-class groups, however have much more indirect effects on them, with the acts generally being less violent.
Due to social and economic structures in place today—specifically divisions into rich and poor, powerful and weak, and superior and inferior—the excess premature death rate is between 10 and 20 million per year, which is over ten times the death rates from suicide, homicide, and warfare combined.
The work of Yale-based German philosopher Thomas Pogge is one major resource on the connection between structural violence and poverty, especially his book World Poverty and Human Rights.
Access to health care
Structural violence affects the availability of health care insofar as paying attention to broad social forces can determine who falls ill and who will be given access to care. It is therefore considered more likely for structural violence to occur in areas where biosocial methods are neglected in a country's health care system. Since situations of structural violence are viewed primarily as biological consequences, it neglects problems stimulated by people's environment, such as negative social behaviours or the prominence of inequality, therefore ineffectively addressing the issue.Medical anthropologist Paul Farmer argues that the major flaw in the dominant model of medical care in the US is that medical services are sold as a commodity, remaining only available to those who can afford them. As medical professionals are not trained to understand the social forces behind disease, nor are they trained to deal with or alter them, they consequently have to ignore the social determinants that alter access to care. As a result, medical interventions are significantly less effective in low-income areas. Similarly, many areas and even countries cannot afford to stop the harmful cycle of structural violence.
The lack of training has, for example, had a significant impact on diagnosis and treatment of AIDS in the United States. A 1994 study by Moore et al. found that black Americans had a significantly lesser chance of receiving treatment than white Americans. Findings from another study suggest that the increased rate of workplace injury among undocumented Latino immigrants in the United States can also be understood as an example of structural violence.
If biosocial understandings are forsaken when considering communicable diseases such as HIV, for example, prevention methods and treatment practices become inadequate and unsustainable for populations. Farmer therefore also states that structural forces account for most if not all epidemic diseases.
Structural violence also exists in the area of mental health, where systems ignore the lived experiences of patients when making decisions about services and funding without consulting with the ill, including those who are illiterate, cannot access computers, do not speak the dominant language, are homeless, are too unwell to fill out long formal surveys, or are in locked psychiatric and forensic wards. Structural violence is also apparent when consumers in developed countries die from preventable diseases 15–25 years earlier than those without a lived experience of mental health.