structural violence

is a form of violence requiring new modes of analysis because it involves no a discernible antagonist, but a ruthless racial ideology, an uncontrollable virus, or, more recently, a shell from a distant hillside exploding amid unsuspecting victims in a hospital or market square.

As Langer (1996:53) asserts, 'We need a special kind of portraiture [and a special language] to sketch the anguish of people who have no agency in their fate because their enemy is not a discernible antagonist, but a ruthless racial ideology, an uncontrollable virus, or, more recently, a shell from a distant hillside exploding amid unsuspecting victims in a hospital or market square.

is a host of offenses against human dignity, including extreme and relative poverty, social inequalities ranging from racism to gender inequality, and the more spectacular forms of violence that are uncontested human rights abuses. ..

As Farmer (2003:1) indicates, structural violence refers to 'a host of offenses against human dignity [including]: extreme and relative poverty, social inequalities ranging from racism to gender inequality, and the more spectacular forms of violence that are uncontested human rights abuses. . . '

is at one and the same time sinful and ostensibly nobody's fault.

Looking at 'enabling conditions of structures that are both 'sinful' and ostensibly 'nobody's fault' (Farmer 2004:307)

is best understood not by looking at powerful present day actors to explain misery, as doing so will make us fail to see how inequality is structured and legitimated over time.

Those who look only to powerful present-day actors to explain misery will fail to see how inequality is struturctured and legitimated over time. Which construction materials were used, and when, and why, and how' ( Farmer 2004: 309)

is structured and structuring. It constricts the agency of its victims.

Bourdieu used the term 'habitus' as a 'structured and structuring' principle. Structural violence is structured and stricturing. It constricts the agency of its victims. . . ' (Farmer 2004:315)

is the erasure, distortion and desocialization of history such that hegemonic accounts of what happened and why can emerge.

Erasing history is perhaps the most common explanatory sleight-of-hand relied upon by the architects of structural violence. Erasure or distortion of history is part of the process of desocialization necessary for the emergence of hegemonic accounts of what happened and why (Farmer 2004: 308)

is when, despite the absence of spectacular physical violence, violence's characteristic effect -its ability to obviate the need for interpretive labor is at work.

But this has very profound effects, because it means that the most characteristic effect of violence its ability to obviate the need for interpretive labor becomes most salient when the violence itself is least visible, in fact, where acts of spectacular physical violence are least likely to occur. These are situations of what I've referred to as structural violence, on the assumption that systematic inequalities backed up by the threat of force can be treated as forms of violence in themselves' (Graeber 'malinowski lecture' 2006:8).

structural violence, n.Definitions

structural violence