The hidden violence of structural violence
By DICK DORWORTH
Express Staff Writer
"Not only do most people accept
violence if it is perpetuated by legitimate authority, they also regard
violence against certain kinds of people as inherently legitimate, no
matter who commits it." Edgar
Z. Friedenberg
"It is better to be violent, if
there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence
to cover impotence." Mohandas K. Gandhi
On the highways of America -- even in
sparsely populated Blaine County -- police use racial profiling to
determine which automobiles to pull over and search for drugs.
Few American males in the company of other
males go a day without a disparaging sexist joke, story, comment or
expletive entering their conversation, even among the unusually well
educated population of the Wood River Valley.
We (humans) consider a
"sustainable" relationship with nature one in which there will
always be enough resources for every human being, a perspective which
respects nature only in terms of what nature can offer mankind, not on its
own terms or in consideration of nature’s own needs.
Between 1951 and 1963 the U. S. government
detonated 126 above ground atomic bombs into the atmosphere above the
southern Nevada Atomic Test Site. Every one of the pink clouds that
drifted with the winds (mostly into southern Utah, but actually over most
of America) from the blast sites contained levels of radiation comparable
to the amount released after the 1986 accidental explosion of the Soviet
nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. That’s 126 times Chernobyl, and not one of
them an accident.
African American women are twice as likely
to die from breast cancer as European American women because of inferior
medical care.
The normal workings of America’s economic
institutions ensure that poor people have significantly increased risks
for cancer, heart disease, AIDS, depression, environmental threats and
premature death.
Our use of the automobile involves the
acceptance of 50,000 deaths a year on the roads of America.
We live in a patriarchal society, which has
institutionalized the dominance of men over women.
In our society aging is viewed as a
"problem" whose solution is largely solved through
institutionalizing the problem in isolation wards for the old, though they
have picturesque names to mask their true function.
The preceding are examples of what is known
as "structural violence," a mostly hidden, mostly unacknowledged
form of violence having to do with the everyday, normal functioning of
institutions and policies of society. "Cultural violence" is
closely related and is sometimes indistinguishable and equally hidden. It
includes racism, sexism, homophobia and the devaluation of particular
groups and cultures of people. "Direct violence" is any
deliberate attempt to inflict injury to a person’s physical or
psychological integrity through brutality, homicide, imprisonment, forced
labor, or, it could be argued, any unsafe or poorly paid labor done by
people without other options.
These three categories and the concept of
structural violence have been developed mostly by Johan Galtung, a pioneer
in the field of peace studies. Galtung, the author of many books, is the
founder of the International Peace Research Institute and is currently
Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Hawaii. He claims that the
opposite of peace is not war but, rather, violence. He proposes a much
wider than generally accepted understanding of violence as that which
violates basic needs, rights and the individual’s intrinsic dignity as,
for instance, enumerated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights of 1948.
Structural/cultural violence, whether it be
a police policy of racial profiling, a federal government practice of
irradiating its citizens in the name of national defense while lying about
the consequences, destroying the environment in the service of business
interests, or any attitude or action that disenfranchises a particular
group of people is violence. It may be subtle and hidden to those
benefiting from it, but it is neither to those affected.
According to Galtung, the opposite of peace
is violence. And violence always nurtures more violence. Even the greatest
of 20th century peacemaker, Mohandas K. Gandhi, recognized that
it is better to be violent than powerless, and structural and cultural
violence makes people powerless. Peace is the opposite of violence, and
the first step towards peace is the dismantling of the structures and
cultures of violence, whether they be national, local or individual.
Everyone holds or at least knows a piece of those structures that he or
she can remove.
