Structural Violence George Kent1

1-/? 23, <*1,* studies focused exclusively on direct violence, particularly warfare. One of Johan Galtung’s many gifts to peace studies is the concept of indirect or structural violence, enabling Eus to make meaningful comparisons between direct and indirect violence, and also enabling us to study the linkages between them. "is essay ex- plores the idea of structural violence and illustrates it through re#ection on the conditions of children worldwide. Structural violence can be placed into a broad conceptual framework as follows. In a con#ict situation, a party is an individual, entity, organisation, or agency of some sort that has, or can be understood as having, a distinct set of preferences relating to the possible outcomes of a situation. Some parties may be silent. If parties cannot speak for themselves, they may have advocates or surrogates who claim to know the parties’ preferences and speak on their behalf. For example, a mother might speak on behalf of her infant. Preferences are indications of the choices a party would make among the possible outcomes of a situation. Each party cares about the possible ar- rangement of things (such as the location of a border between nations, or what there is to be for lunch), and would rather have some arrangements over others. Generally each party could say which of the possible outcomes of a situation he/she/it would choose to be the case, which would be second most desirable, which third, and so on. Parties generally have some capacities, which are resources or powers they can use to ensure that their preferences are ful#lled. Con$ict is an incompatibility of preferences in a situation with several di"erent possible outcomes.

1. I have known Johan since 1968 when we shared a platform at a conference in Buda-

Copyright © 2011. Pambazuka Press. All rights reserved. rights All Press. Pambazuka 2011. © Copyright pest. Since then we have worked together at the University of Hawai’i and in Transcend, and I have o$ered a course through Transcend Peace University. I have also had the privilege of working with his children, Irene and Fredrik. All of them have enriched my ways of viewing the world.

Jones, John Y.. Experiments with Peace : Celebrating Peace on Johan Galtung's 80th Birthday, edited by Jorgen 131 Johansen, Pambazuka Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=767812. Created from uhm on 2018-04-16 19:49:43. Violence may be de!ned as doing harm to others in the pursuit of one’s own preferences. Peace is simply the absence of violence. While peace in the absolute may not be achievable, peace can be viewed as a meaningful objective: working towards peace means working for the reduction of violence. Negative peace is the absence of physical violence. Positive peace is the absence of all kinds of violence, physical, economic, political, and cultural. Peace is the absence of violence, not the absence of con#ict. Well- managed con#ict can be socially constructive. Security means freedom from fear of violence. Di$erent people in dif- ferent segments of society have di$erent insecurities. National security policies are often driven by the insecurities of national leaders, which are likely to be very di$erent from the insecurities that concern the middle class or the poor. "us, the basic architecture of con#icts is made up of a few basic ele- ments: in a situation there are di$erent parties with certain capacities to pursue their preferences with regard to a variety of issues, and their preferences are incompatible. Violence, harming others in the pursuit of one’s own interests, may take di$erent forms and can be categorised in di$erent ways. For example, acts of violence may be distinguished according to the types of perpetrators and victims (for example, child abuse, racism, international violence). People can hurt others by using many di$erent kinds of capacities (powers, forces, instruments). Broadly, violence refers to insults to basic human interests in survival, sustenance and wellbeing, freedom, and a sense of meaning. "us we have four basic kinds of violence: (1) "ere is the direct physical violence that injures and kills people, as in wars, torture and certain kinds of crimes. Physical violence involves direct injury to the human body. (2) "ere is economic violence of the sort that leads to deprivation, malnutrition and disease. Economic violence is based on the use of material incentives, usually money, but sometimes other sorts of goods such as food. Economic violence is sometimes described as exploitation. (3) "ere is the political violence that violates by repression, depriving people of their freedom and their human rights in general. In contrast Copyright © 2011. Pambazuka Press. All rights reserved. rights All Press. Pambazuka 2011. © Copyright to economic violence, political violence is based on deprivation of non- material goods. (4) "ere is the cultural violence of alienation that reduces the mean-

Jones, John Y..132 Experiments with Peace : Celebrating Peace on Johan Galtung's 80th Birthday, edited by Jorgen Johansen, Pambazuka Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=767812. Created from uhm on 2018-04-16 19:49:43. ing, value and quality of life. Cultural violence refers to manipulation of the meaning framework within which individuals and communities live. For example, a society’s consensus view that certain categories of people are inherently less worthy and thus deserve less pay and other amenities would be a manifestation of cultural violence. Cultural violence is often manifested in the form of systematic discrimination against particular categories of people. Using these four categories we can speak of work towards secure peace, economic peace, political peace and cultural peace. Violence is physical, economic, political, and cultural with reference to the means used, rather than to the perpetrator’s ends or objectives. "us warfare is described as physical because it is based on in#icting physical injury to the human body. Although its means are physical, warfare can be used to pursue economic, political and cultural ends. Physical violence is direct violence while economic, political and cultural violence are forms of structural or indirect violence. Structural violence is harm imposed by some people on others indirectly, through the social system, as they pursue their own preferences. For example, if many rich people be- gin moving into a community, they may drive up housing costs, harming some of the people who already live there. "e harms may or may not be in#icted deliberately, and may occur without the clear awareness of the parties involved. A guerrilla in El Salvador explained the concept to an American volunteer physician this way:

You gringos are always worried about violence done with ma- chine guns and machetes. But there is another kind of violence that you must be aware of, too. I used to work on the hacienda… My job was to take care of the dueño’s dogs. I gave them meat and bowls of milk, food that I couldn’t give my own family. When the dogs were sick, I took them to the veterinarian in Suchitot or San Salvador. When my children were sick, the dueño gave me his sympathy, but not medicine as they died. To watch your children die of sickness and hunger while you can do nothing is violence to the spirit. We have su$ered that silently for too many years. Why aren’t you gringos concerned Copyright © 2011. Pambazuka Press. All rights reserved. rights All Press. Pambazuka 2011. © Copyright about that kind of violence (Clements 1984: 259-260)?

"e violence here is not simply that in the relationship between the

Jones, John Y.. Experiments with Peace : Celebrating Peace on Johan Galtung's 80th Birthday, edited by Jorgen 133 Johansen, Pambazuka Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=767812. Created from uhm on 2018-04-16 19:49:43. speaker and his dueño. It is also in the larger social context in which the speaker has so few alternatives that he must submit to whatever treatment the dueño o$ers. Structural violence may be accomplished by political repression, through which people with power gain bene!ts for themselves at the expense of others who have less political power. Political repression and the resulting structural violence distinguish negative peace from positive peace. Martin Luther King, Jr. was clear about the di$erence:

“Sir,” I said, “you have never had real peace in Montgomery. You have had a sort of negative peace in which the Negro too often accepted his state of subordination. But that is not true peace. True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice. "e tension we see in Montgomery today is the necessary tension that comes when the oppressed rise up and start to move forward toward a permanent, positive peace.” I went on to speculate that this was what Jesus meant when he said: “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Certain- ly Jesus did not mean that he came to bring a physical sword. He seems to have been saying in substance: “I have not come to bring this old negative peace with its deadening passivity. I have come to lash out against such a peace. Whenever I come, a con#ict is precipitated between the old and the new. When- ever I come, a division sets in between justice and injustice. I have come to bring a positive peace which is the presence of justice, love, yea, even the Kingdom of God.” "e racial peace, which had existed in Montgomery, was not a Christian peace. It was a pagan peace and it had been bought at too great a price (King 1958: 40).

One of Galtung’s most compelling applications of the concept was in his landmark 1971 publication, “A Structural "eory of Imperialism”. As explained in his abstract: Imperialism is de!ned as a special type of dominance of one collec- tivity, usually a nation, over another. Basic is how the center in the im- perialist nation establishes a bridgehead in the center of the dominated Copyright © 2011. Pambazuka Press. All rights reserved. rights All Press. Pambazuka 2011. © Copyright nation by tying the two centers together by means of harmony of interest (Galtung 1971; also see Galtung 1980). "us, leaders of the poorer nations !nd it is in their interest to make

Jones, John Y..134 Experiments with Peace : Celebrating Peace on Johan Galtung's 80th Birthday, edited by Jorgen Johansen, Pambazuka Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=767812. Created from uhm on 2018-04-16 19:49:43. alliances with foreigners in the richer nations at the expense of their own people. "ese leaders invite in the foreigners to exploit their land and their people, and are well compensated for playing this role. "ey thrive on the absence of transparency, democracy and human rights. "e foreigners’ promise to create more employment opportunities and good terms of employment for the workers in the poor country, but the prom- ises are regularly broken. Workers, being politically weak, !nd they have no capacity to change the situation. "is helps to explain phenomena such as the current global pattern of rich countries purchasing or leasing land in poor countries to ensure the food security of the rich countries while endangering the food security of the poor countries (Kent 2010: Ch.3). With direct violence there is a speci!c event, an identi!able victim and an identi!able perpetrator. In contrast, structural violence is not visible in speci!c events. Its e$ects are most clearly observable at the societal level, as systematic shortfalls in the quality of life of certain groups of people. In direct violence there is physical damage to the human body occurring in a distinct time-bound event, and individual victims and perpetrators can be identi!ed. In structural violence, however, people su$er harm indirectly, often through a slow and steady process, with no clearly identi!able perpetrators. Structural violence cannot be photographed. It is revealed only through its patterned e$ects. Most victims of homelessness or chronic malnutrition, for example, are victims of structural violence. People sometimes speak about the violence of nature, in storms and earthquakes, for example, or the violence of seemingly random events such as train crashes. Here, however, we are discussing human violence, whether direct or indirect. As viewed here, the common thread in all forms of human violence is the ful!lment of one party’s purposes at the expense of others. Violence entails the use of power. "e connection may be direct and immediate, as when a mugger punches a pedestrian for his wallet, or it may be structural, as when government leaders decide to pur- chase armaments rather than vaccines. Corruption is a form of structural violence because it is about private gain at public expense. De!ning violence broadly, as doing harm to others in the pursuit of one’s own preferences, creates space for drawing the distinction between direct and structural violence, for comparing them, and for exploring their Copyright © 2011. Pambazuka Press. All rights reserved. rights All Press. Pambazuka 2011. © Copyright interrelationships. At the conceptual level, there is no reason to suggest that one type of in#icting of harm is more important than another.

Jones, John Y.. Experiments with Peace : Celebrating Peace on Johan Galtung's 80th Birthday, edited by Jorgen 135 Johansen, Pambazuka Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=767812. Created from uhm on 2018-04-16 19:49:43. Child mortality Child mortality is counted as the number of deaths of live-born children under !ve years of age in any particular place. "e child mortality rate is the number of deaths of live-born children under !ve years of age for every thousand born alive.2 In 2008, worldwide, just under 8.8 million children born alive died before their !fth birthdays. "e global child mortality rate (deaths of children under !ve for every thousand born alive) has declined steadily, from about 265 in the late 1950s to about 24 in 2008. "ese deaths are not distributed randomly. In northern Europe and the United States children account for only 2–3 per cent of all deaths. In many less developed countries more than half the deaths are deaths of children. Roughly half the children who die each year are African, although they account for less than one third of the world’s births (UNI- CEF 2009, Table 1). For most children the immediate cause of death is a combination of malnutrition and ordinary diseases such as diarrhoea, malaria and measles. Given adequate resources, such diseases are easily managed. "e data for 2008 show that the child mortality rate for industrialised countries was six; the rate for developing countries was 72; and for the least developed countries it was 129. Of the estimated 8,772,000 children’s deaths that occurred in 2008, only 67,000 were in industrialised countries (UNICEF 2009: Table 1). "e discrepancies are huge. Even with the best of care the children’s mortality rate could never be reduced to zero. However, if worldwide priorities called for it, the worldwide average children’s mortality rate could certainly be reduced to, say, 10 per thousand live births. "is can be demonstrated by examining the data for a representative year. In 1991, for example, 21 countries had children’s mortality rates of 10 or less. If the children’s mortality rate had been 10 for all countries in 1991, children’s deaths would have numbered 1,410,000. "at can be taken as a conservative estimate of the minimum possible number of children’s deaths. Since the rates were much higher in most countries, the actual estimated number of children’s deaths for 1991 was 12,821,000. "e di$erence, 11,411,000, can be taken as a reasonable estimate of the number of unnecessary children’s deaths. "us, about 89

Copyright © 2011. Pambazuka Press. All rights reserved. rights All Press. Pambazuka 2011. © Copyright 2. Authoritative data on child mortality can be obtained at the website of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) at http://www.childinfo.org/mortality.html. "ere is a detailed data base with estimates from the Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation at http://www.childmortality.org/cmeMain.html.

Jones, John Y..136 Experiments with Peace : Celebrating Peace on Johan Galtung's 80th Birthday, edited by Jorgen Johansen, Pambazuka Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=767812. Created from uhm on 2018-04-16 19:49:43. per cent of the total number of deaths of children under !ve were unnecessary. "is could be taken as a measure of structural violence. We know the immediate causes of the massive deaths of children in clinical terms, but we also need an understanding in social terms. Why are the world’s children devastated by so much malnutrition and disease? Describing the conditions of children around the world is not nearly as di%cult as deciding how we should understand it.

Priorities, not poverty Most deaths of small children are due to some form of abuse or neglect, whether by the immediate family or by the society at large. Even congenital birth defects are largely preventable with improved prenatal care. Even accidents are to a large degree preventable (Stanton 1990). If enough resources and attention were given to small children, most would thrive. Many do not do well because their families are desperately poor. But focusing on the children and their families alone blinds us to the ways in which their conditions re#ect the policies and actions of their societies. What is the role of government policy? Many countries spend very little on children. Poverty is their explanation. But contrary to common assumptions, poor countries, like poor people, do have money. Poor countries are not uniformly poor; most have a middle class and a wealthy elite. "ey all manage to muster su%cient food and medical services for the wealthy. Soldiers don’t go hungry. Even poor countries !nd money for monuments and armaments. Poor countries are constrained in what they can do but, viewed globally, surely the limited allocation of resources to serving the interests of poor children is due more to the ways in which available funds are used than to the absolute shortage of funds. Speci!c deaths may be beyond the control of the immediate family or community, but patterns of mortality can be in#uenced by public policy. "e failure to introduce e$ective policies and programmes for reducing children’s mortality (immunisation, for example) should sensibly lead to charges of abuse or neglect by government. "e sorry condition of children worldwide arises not because of bad things that have been done directly to them, but because of the many

Copyright © 2011. Pambazuka Press. All rights reserved. rights All Press. Pambazuka 2011. © Copyright good things that have not been done for them. In the aggregate, much more harm results from child neglect than from direct child abuse. "e failures of governments in relation to children are partly due to bad

Jones, John Y.. Experiments with Peace : Celebrating Peace on Johan Galtung's 80th Birthday, edited by Jorgen 137 Johansen, Pambazuka Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=767812. Created from uhm on 2018-04-16 19:49:43. policies and programmes, but more often to absent and inadequate programmes resulting from the treatment of children’s programmes as low- priority items in national budgets. Children could be fed adequately in almost every country in the world, even the poorest among them, if that were regarded as high priority in government circles. Massive children’s mortality is not necessary and inevitable. Globally, little is spent on en- suring children’s survival. "at the problem is priorities rather than poverty is nowhere clearer than in the richest country in the world. "e child mortality rate in the United States is low (eight in 2008), but 42 other countries have even lower rates (UNICEF 2009: Table 1). Almost 20 per cent of the children in the United States live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level (NCCP 2010). "is is not because the United States is a poor country. Government o%cials say that they don’t want children to go hungry or die – and they don’t. "e problem is that they place so many other concerns at a higher priority. Where there are serious problems of hunger or homelessness or children’s mortality, decision-makers claim that they cannot deal with the problem because they don’t have the resources. Often the truth is that they will not respond to the problem. Children’s wellbeing could be sharply improved if that objective was of high priority to governments. Cannot is an attempt to evade responsibility. "e cannot defence should not be accepted as an excuse, where low priority – will not – is the truthful explanation. Children, especially poor children, are not attended to because they do not have the power to demand attention from public and private agencies. For some children the situation is worse than being ignored. "e powerful often !nd ways to use children to serve their own interests, whether those interests are economic or sexual or military. Whether it is a matter of neglect or direct abuse, it is the interests of others that are served; the interests of children are ignored. Small children cannot make their own claims for recognition of their rights; they require surrogates to speak on their behalf. A number of organisations, private and public, national and international, have emerged to take up the advocacy of children. International agencies such as the United Nations Children’s Fund, Defense for Children International, Copyright © 2011. Pambazuka Press. All rights reserved. rights All Press. Pambazuka 2011. © Copyright and Save the Children do a great deal, and within countries there are organisations such as the Children’s Defense Fund in the United States

Jones, John Y..138 Experiments with Peace : Celebrating Peace on Johan Galtung's 80th Birthday, edited by Jorgen Johansen, Pambazuka Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=767812. Created from uhm on 2018-04-16 19:49:43. that are very e$ective. But much remains to be done. Millions upon millions of children still die unnecessarily each year. "e most lethal war in all of human history was World War II. "ere were about 15 million battle deaths (Small 1982: 91). If we add in civilian deaths and mass murder, the number of deaths in and around World War II totalled around 51,358,000 (Wright 1965: 1542). Annualised for the six-year period, the rate comes to about 8.6 million deaths a year – when children’s deaths probably were running at over 25 million per year. "is most intense war in history resulted in a lower death rate over a very limited period than results from children’s mortality year in and year out. Although the global child mortality rate is slowly declining, it is still far higher than the number of war dead in any given year. If we were to create a memorial like the one in Washington, DC, for the roughly 58,000 Americans who died in the Viet Nam war, the memorial for the children who died worldwide in 2008 would have to be about 150 times as long. To keep up, a new memorial of about the same length would have to be built every year. One study estimated that about US$5 billion would be needed annu- ally to save 6 million children’s lives (Bryce 2005). "is is about 0.007 per cent of the global product of about US$70 trillion (CIA 2010). It would be di%cult to argue that the world cannot a$ord to save these children. No child is born into a poor world. If we are to !nd remedies for structural violence, we have to learn to see it. "ere are systematic patterns of disadvantage to particular categories of people that are neither natural nor necessary, and signify ongoing massive injustice.

References Bryce, Jennifer, Robert E. Black, Ne$ Walker, Zul!qar A. Bhutta, Joy E. Lawn and Richard W. Steketee, 2005, “Can the World A$ord to Save the Lives of 6 Million Children Each Year?”, !e Lancet, Vol. 365, pp. 2193-2200. CIA (US Central Intelligence Agency), 2010, !e World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/li- brary/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html. Clements, Charles, 1984, Witness to War, New York: Bantam. Galtung, Johan, 1971, “A Structural "eory of Imperialism”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 81-117. Galtung, Johan, 1980, “‘A Structural "eory of Imperialism’ – Ten Years Later”, Millennium:

Journal of International Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 181-196. Copyright © 2011. Pambazuka Press. All rights reserved. rights All Press. Pambazuka 2011. © Copyright Kent, George, 2010, Ending Hunger Worldwide, Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers. King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1958, Stride Toward Freedom, New York: Harper & Row.

Jones, John Y.. Experiments with Peace : Celebrating Peace on Johan Galtung's 80th Birthday, edited by Jorgen 139 Johansen, Pambazuka Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=767812. Created from uhm on 2018-04-16 19:49:43. NCCP (National Center for Children in Poverty), 2010, NCCP website: http://www.nccp. org/topics/childpoverty.html. Small, Melvin J. and J. David Singer, 1982, Resort to Arms: International and Civil War, 1816-1980, Beverly Hills, California: Sage. Stanton, Marietta, 1990, Our Children Are Dying, Bu$alo, New York: Prometheus Books. UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), 2006, !e State of the World’s Children: Ex- cluded and Invisible, New York: UNICEF, http://www.unicef.org/sowc06/index.php. UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), 2009, !e State of the World’s Children: Special Edition. Table 1, New York: UNICEF, http://www.unicef.org/rightsite/sowc/pdfs/statistics/ SOWC_Spec_Ed_CRC_TABLE%201.%20BASIC%20INDICATORS_EN_111309. pdf.

Jones, John Y..140 Experiments with Peace : Celebrating Peace on Johan Galtung's 80th Birthday, edited by Jorgen Johansen, Pambazuka Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=767812. Created from uhm on 2018-04-16 19:49:43.