Because of our acculturation into the hierarchical systems we grow up in (consumerism, patriarchy, anthropocentricism, nationalism, racism, sexism, often religion and other socio-economic structures) we often take it as fake that we or others suffer or lack the ablity to improve their situation.  The following is on "structural violence":



Structural Violence Section Introduction
Draft 6/1/99

By Deborah Du Nann Winter and Dana Leighton

Copyright 1999 Deborah DuNann Winter and Dana Leighton

Direct violence is horrific, but its brutality usually gets our attention: we notice it, and often respond to it. Structural violence, however, is almost always invisible, embedded in ubiquitous social structures, normalized by stable institutions and regular experience. Structural violence occurs whenever people are disadvantaged by political, legal, economic or cultural traditions. Because they are longstanding, structural inequities usually seem ordinary, the way things are and always have been. The chapters in this section teach us about some important but invisible forms of structural violence, and alert us to the powerful cultural mechanisms that create and maintain them over generations.

Structured inequities produce suffering and death as often as direct violence does, though the damage is slower, more subtle, more common, and more difficult to repair. Globally, poverty is correlated with infant mortality, infectious disease, and shortened lifespans. Whenever people are denied access to societys resources, physical and psychological violence exists.

Johan Galtung originally framed the term structural violence to refer to any constraint on human potential due to economic and political structures (1969). Unequal access to resources, to political power, to education, to health care, or to legal standing, are forms of structural violence. When inner city children have inadequate schools while others do not, when gays and lesbians are fired for their sexual orientation, when laborers toil in inhumane conditions, when people of color endure environmental toxins in their neighborhoods, structural violence exists. Unfortunately, even those who are victims of structural violence often do not see the systematic ways in which their plight is choreographed by unequal and unfair distribution of societys resources.

Structural violence is problematic in and of itself, but it is also dangerous because it frequently leads to direct violence. Those who are chronically oppressed are often, for logical reasons, those who resort to direct violence. For example, cross-national studies of murder have shown a positive correlation between economic inequality and homicide rates across 40 nations (Hansmann & Quigley, 1982; Unnithan & Whitt, 1992). In the U.S., racial inequality in wealth is correlated with murder rates (Blau & Golden, 1986). Often elites must use direct violence to curb the unrest produced by structural violence. For example, during the 1980s, mean income disparity between whites and blacks in the same urban area predicted use of deadly force by police (Jacobs & O'Brien, 1998). Structural violence often requires police states to suppress resentments and social unrest. Huge income disparities in many Latin American countries are protected by correspondingly huge military operations, which in turn drain resources away from social programs and produce even more structural violence.

Organized armed conflict in various parts of the world is easily traced to structured inequalities. Northern Ireland, for example, has been marked by economic disparities between Northern Irish Catholics-- who have higher unemployment rates and less formal education--and Protestants (Cairns & Darby, 1998). In Sri Lanka, youth unemployment and underemployment exacerbates ethnic conflict (Rogers, Spencer & Uyangoda, 1998). In Rwanda, huge disparities between the Hutu and Tutsies eventually led to ethnic massacres.

While structural violence often leads to direct violence, the reverse is also true, as brutality often terrorizes bystanders, who then become unwilling or unable to confront social injustice. Increasingly, civilians pay enormous costs of war through death and devastation of neighborhoods and ecosystems. Ruling elites rarely suffer from armed conflict as much as civilian populations do, who endure decades of poverty and disease in war-torn societies.

When social inequities are noticed, attempts are made to rationalize and understand them. Unfortunately, one outcome of this process is to assume that victims must in some way deserve their plight. But certainly it is easy to see that young children do not deserve to be victims of structural violence. The chapters in this section help us see the often invisible effects of structural violence, and the two first chapters focus on its effects on children. In their chapter The War Close to Home: Children and Violence in the United States, Kathleen Kostelny and James Garbarino describe the chronic violence which children in Chicago and other urban areas of the United States endure, often paralleling that experienced by children who live in countries at war. The authors examine myriad environmental risk factors, including family violence, parental depression, media violence, and firearm accessibility, which produce violent environments for children. Children who endure these environments often become battle weary, numb, hopeless, and/or morally impaired. The authors describe how community and family support mechanisms must be built to mitigate these risks. For example, home visitation and early childhood education programs provide crucial community support.

While Kostelny and Garbarino focus on community intervention techniques, Milton Schwebel and Daniel Christie extend this discussion by examining the economic and psychological structures which impair at-risk children. In their article Children and Structural Violence, the authors explicate how children living in poverty experience diminished intellectual development because parents are too overwhelmed to be able to provide crucial linguistic experiences. In the United States in particular, but throughout the world, children who are deprived of close bonds with adults and intellectual mediation which caretakers provide, are disadvantaged for the rest of their lives. Schwebel and Christies discussion concludes that economic structures must provide parents with living wage employment, good prenatal medical care, and high quality child care, if we are to see the next generation develop into the intelligent and caring citizens needed to create a peaceful world.

If children are often the invisible and innocent victims of societys structural violence, so are their mothers. Diane Mazurana and Susan McKays Women, Girls, and Structural Violence discusses the many ways in which global sexism systematically denies girls and women access to resources. From health care and food, to legal standing and political power, females get less than males in every country on the planet. Yet we often do not notice sex-based injustice because we are so accustomed to seeing males with more power, prestige, and status than women. Mazurana and McKay argue that patriarchy-based structural violence will not be redressed until women are able to play more active roles making decisions about how resources are distributed.

Patriarchal values also drive excessive militarism, as Deborah Winter, Marc Pilisuk, Sara Houck and Matthew Lee argue in their chapter, Understanding Militarism: Money, Masculinity, and the Search for the Mystical. The authors illuminate how socieites make soldiering a male rite of passage and proof of manhood, thereby showing the close link between militarism and masculinity. Militarization is also deeply rooted in spiritual motives, as men attempt to experience mystical sacrifice through war. Both masculinism and mysticism drive military expenditures beyond rational ends, and produce great structural violence to those (usually women and children) whose human needs for adequate food, health care, and education go unmet because arms are bought instead. In addition, market forces fuel arms production and distribution throughout the world; half the worlds countries spend more on arms than health and education combined.

The global economy that drives weapons production and excessive militarization produces structural violence on a planetary scale, especially in developing countries, as Marc Pilisuk argues in his chapter Globalism and Structural Violence. As global markets grow, income disparity increases around the world. Relaxed trade regulations and increased communication networks are creating powerful multinational conglomerates that derive huge profits off under-paid laborers in developing countries. The result is horrific structural violence to workers who toil under brutal conditions. Globalism also produces a mono-culture, in which people throughout the world learn that the good life consists of convenience products, western dress, and western values of individuality and consumerism. The seduction of western norms is disintegrating traditional societies which in the past provided meaning and care for its members. Pilisuk argues that non-governmental organizations at the local level must work to reclaim workers dignity and neighborhoods.

The invisibility of injustice to laborers in the global market economy parallels the invisibility of injustice to indigenous people, the focus of Brinton Lykes chapter, Human Rights Violations as Structural Violence. Here Lykes argues for the expansion of human rights beyond the traditionally conceived civic and political realms, to include social, cultural and indigenous rights, which guarantee people their traditional culture and relationship with their land. She explicates two case studies, in Guatemala and Argentina, in which indigenous people are healing and reclaiming their cultural identities. Lykes discussion helps us see the limitations of psychology as it is traditionally conceived, that is, the study of individuals and their responses to their environments. For Lykes, as well as an increasing number of post-modern psychologists, the collective meanings of human experience-- human meaning that is embedded in particular cultures, neighborhoods, and placescan no longer be ignored. The individual cannot be our only focus. Lykes call to examine and work with the collective meanings parallels the focus of this section on structural violence, in that both concepts force us to examine the political and economic institutions which psychologists typically ignore. In this respect, the thinking in both sections 2 (Structural Violence) and 4 (Peace Building) of this book go beyond traditional psychology, and force us to examine the sociological, economic, political, and spiritual dimensions of violence and peace.

Finally, to recognize the operation of structural violence forces us to ask questions about how and why we tolerate it, questions which often have painful answers for the privileged elite who unconsciously support it. A final question of this section is how and why we allow ourselves to be so oblivious to structural violence. Susan Opotow offers an intriguing set of answers, in her article Social Injustice. She argues that our normal perceptual/cognitive processes divide people into in-groups and out-groups. Those outside our group lie outside our scope of justice. Injustice that would be instantaneously confronted if it occurred to someone we love or know is barely noticed if it occurs to strangers or those who are invisible or irrelevant. We do not seem to be able to open our minds and our hearts to everyone, so we draw conceptual lines between those who are in and out of our moral circle. Those who fall outside are morally excluded, and become either invisible, or demeaned in some way so that we do not have to acknowledge the injustice they suffer. Moral exclusion is a human failing, but Opotow argues convincingly that it is an outcome of everyday social cognition. To reduce its nefarious effects, we must be vigilant in noticing and listening to oppressed, invisible, outsiders. Inclusionary thinking can be fostered by relationships, communication, and appreciation of diversity.

Like Opotow, all the authors in this section point out that structural violence is not inevitable if we become aware of its operation, and build systematic ways to mitigate its effects. Learning about structural violence may be discouraging, overwhelming, or maddening, but these papers encourage us to step beyond guilt and anger, and begin to think about how to reduce structural violence. All the authors in this section note that the same structures (such as global communication and normal social cognition) which feed structural violence, can also be used to empower citizens to reduce it. In the long run, reducing structural violence by reclaiming neighborhoods, demanding social justice and living wages, providing prenatal care, alleviating sexism, and celebrating local cultures, will be our most surefooted path to building lasting peace.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
References:

Blau, P.M. & Golden, R.M. (1986). Metropolitan structure and criminal violence. Sociological Quarterly, 27(1), 15-26.

Cairns, E. & Darby, J., (1998). The conflict in Northern Ireland: Causes, consequences, and controls. American Psychologist, 53(7), 754-760.

Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace and peace research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167-191.

Hansmann, H.B. & Quigley, J.M. (1982). Population heterogeneity and the sociogenesis of homicide. Social Forces, 61(2), 206-204.

Jacobs, D & O'Brien, R.M. (1998). The determinants of deadly force: A structural analysis of police violence. American Journal of Sociology, 103(4), 837-862.

Rogers, J.D., Spencer, J., & Uyangoda, J. (1998). Sri Lanka: Political violence and ethnic conflict. American Psychologist, 53(7), 771-777.

Unnithan, N.P. & Whitt, H.P. (1992). Inequality, economic development and lethal violence: A cross-national analysis of suicide and homocide. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 33(3-4), 182-196.

(from http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~dleighton/svintro.html)



From WikiPedia on Structural Violence:

Structural violence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Structural violence, a term which was first used in the 1970s and which has commonly been ascribed to Johan Galtung, denotes a form of violence which corresponds with the systematic ways in which a given social structure or social institution prevents individuals from achieving their full potential. Institutionalized elitism, ethnocentricism, classism, racism, sexism, nationalism, heterosexism and ageism are just some examples of this.

In 1984, Petra Kelly wrote (in her first book, Fighting for Hope):

A third of the 2,000 million people in the developing countries are starving or suffering from malnutrition. 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 been vaccinated against the six most common and dangerous children'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 multiple things, including disempowerment, oppressive passive social policy, and active marginalizing policy. Generally it is believed to come from a lack of access to power to protect oneself from the detrimental effects of the economic, social, and political order.

In explaining how structural violence affects the health of subaltern or marginalized people 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]

References
1 Farmer, Paul (2001). Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, Page 79, Berkeley: University of California Press.


External link
Robert Gilman: "Structural violence. Can we find genuine peace in a world with inequitable distribution of wealth among nations?" (1983) 

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence)

From WikiPedia on Subaltern:

Subaltern (post-colonialism)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The term subaltern is used in postcolonial theory to refer to marginalized groups and the lower classes; this sense of the word was coined by Antonio Gramsci. In current philosophical and critical usage, the term specifically describes a person rendered without agency by her or his social status, a sense that owes its influence to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's 1988 essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?"

In his 1996 essay "Unsatisfied: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism" Homi Bhabha emphasizes the importance of social power relations in his working definition of 'subaltern' groups as

oppressed, minority groups whose presence was crucial to the self-definition of the majority group: subaltern social groups were also in a position to subvert the authority of those who had hegemonic power.


External links
Subaltern.org: An organization for underrepresented artists. http://www.subaltern.org/
The website defines "Subaltern" in the following manner: "Originally a term for subordinates in military hierarchies, the term subaltern is elaborated in the work of Antonio Gramsci to refer to groups who are outside the established structures of political representation. In 'Can the Subaltern Speak?' Gayatri Spivak suggests that the subaltern is denied access to both mimetic and political forms of representation." 

Subaltern studies bibliography 
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/ssauth.htm

Information on purchase of commissions in Georgian times. 
http://members.shaw.ca/jobev/military.html

Bio and major publications for Spivak. 
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Spivak.html

The following is the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights":

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948
 



On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the full text of which appears in the following pages. Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories."
PREAMBLE
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, 

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people, 

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law, 

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations, 

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, 

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms, 

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction. 

Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11.
(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14.
(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15.
(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.
(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

(found at http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html)