Structural Violence Issue - Essay Example

Prof’s Structural Violence as the Cause of Most of Life’s Suffering: Why the Capitalist Nation Fails Poverty is, without a doubt, the single greatest issue facing the world today. Most of international and domestic problems can be associated with it, and what is worse, it is largely a curable ill. The world’s GDP per capita, in terms of purchasing power parity, is $11,000, which, though certainly below poverty levels in some places, is enough for a perfectly livable life in most other places (“World GDP”). A little bit of wealth distribution could go a long way, and the international production of basic living necessities is certainly enough to satisfy the world population. Furthermore, poverty causes a massive amount of other social ills – it is associated with everything from poor health throughout life to the increased use of drugs, poor family connections, and so on. Yet, with all this, there remains very little willingness to confront poverty on an international or domestic level. Many people also fail to grasp the idea that poverty is a form of violence, and a form of violence that probably causes more damage than the entire sum of other violence combined, especially considering that poverty is an inherent cause of violence. Violence has several characteristics: firstly, it is not an act of a god but is perpetrated by one person against another. Secondly, it results in significant physical or mental harm to its victims. Thirdly, it is caused by either neglect or active attempt (for instance, a drunk driver is still violent, as is a murderer). Poverty fits all of these categories of violence in clearly definable ways, and is thus a wide-scale form of structural violence, which is a root cause of behavior violence, and stems fundamentally from capitalistic ideals and structure that keep portions of society oppressed. The first category of what makes violence is probably the hardest for people to understand in terms of relating it to poverty and structural violence. Though people understand that poverty is horrible, they do not see it as something that one person is doing against another. They simply see it as a lack – someone was not lucky or skillful enough to make it on their own, and though this is regrettable, it does not seem that one person is doing something against another. However, it is a misunderstanding of the way social control functions. There are many people who have a vested interest in keeping people impoverished, especially on the international level. Producers of goods, for instance, would like their goods to be produced as cheaply as possible. They would use slave labor if possible, but as this is impossible, they resort to paying as little as possible and then moving production away if an area ever becomes prosperous enough to demand higher wages. Governments often have an interest in keeping these companies in place, because they pay taxes which keep the governments propped up and able to support themselves. This pattern plays itself out over and over again throughout the world, even in the developed countries. Laws have been set up to target specific portions of the population and keep them from succeeding. Mandatory minimums for crack cocaine, which is used by poorer people, are substantially lesser than that for powder cocaine, and this is simply to exert social control on the lower classes. The rich are also disproportionately more powerful, and they have a vested interest in keeping the wealth concentrated in their hands, which gives them reasons to continue to enact systems that keep the impoverished poor. Secondly, violence is a form of harm. Poverty obviously fills this definition, but just for the sake of proof it might be worthwhile to spell out some specific examples. People who suffer from poverty are more likely than others to not have access to medical care – this means that they suffer physical harm. Likewise, they suffer significant mental harm, with poor people having substantially higher rates of mental health issues, especially substance dependence (“Poverty and Health”). The lifespan of the poor is much lower than of the rich for several reasons. People who are poor are much more likely to end up in prisons than rich people, even though they conduct smaller amounts of crime, which puts them at greater risk of secondary harm in prisons (“Poverty and Health”). Interestingly, though white collar crime such as tax evasion costs much more money than petty crime like substance use or petty theft, yet the latter have much higher penalties (“Poverty and Health”). In developing countries, poverty frequently leads to death when people are unable to properly feed, clothe, or shelter themselves; even in North America, people occasionally die of hunger and often die of exposure. Clearly, poverty causes significant physical and mental harm, and thus meets the second criterion of violence. Poverty also meets the third criterion of violence: it is caused by either neglect or active force. Poverty is so widespread phenomenon that it is caused by both forces. As mentioned before, there are powers that have a vested interest in keeping poverty in existence, but this is not the only way people are involved. People also negligently spread poverty by, for instance, not spending a little bit of extra money on tea or coffee to pay waiters a living wage, or not spending a little more to get shoes made by laborers who earn fair pay. They also negligently propound it by not combating it – as in any case of any other travesty that is society wide, one is inherently connected to poverty merely through living and failing to fight it. Poverty, therefore, easily fits the three criteria of violence, and though it is understandable that people fail to grasp the violent nature of poverty, this does not mean they should be excused from their role in combating it. In his book Violence, Gilligan offers a stirring definition of structural violence – that is, violence that exists due to the structure of society rather than due to a more direct person against person type of violence (such as murder, theft, or rape). Gilligan’s definition’s complexity is belied by its simple phrasing: structural violence is “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” (138). This does not explicitly state how this violence is enacted, which is largely through social structures that are designed, as mentioned before, to keep the poor in their poverty and the wealthy in their wealth. Gilligan does make it clear, however, that structural violence has an intrinsic link to the other major form of violence, behavioral violence, which is associated with the actions of violence one normally thinks of – crime, for instance. Structural violence puts people who are in vulnerable positions into even more vulnerable positions, and thus leads to them committing acts of violence they otherwise would not have. Some, for instance, use violence as a means of coping with a lack of masculinity that being poor puts on them, while others simply hurt themselves or others through the use of drugs (Gilligan 18, 39). Why, then, does this structural violence persist? The root lies in the fundamental ideology guiding the world today, capitalism. Capitalism is an incredibly viable system: it is good at reproducing itself and staying alive. Furthermore, it does seem to have some very real benefits – it seems to do a very efficient job and ensuring that goods get to where they are needed and are sold at the appropriate cost. The problems with capitalism and the way it causes poverty are twofold. Firstly, as mentioned before, it leads to ruthless cost cutting, which includes paying people very little, and structuring societies so they cannot receive more. Secondly, it provides an ideology that it is good to get whatever you can for yourself, that greed is fundamentally good, and that people who do not have enough money suffer because of lack of ingenuity, work ethic, or some other internal fault. Redistributing wealth in a broad fashion is anathema to capitalism, yet a broadly redistributive society is the only way to counter the power that inherently seizes control in capitalist societies to propagate itself. Capitalist taxpayers balk at their money going to someone else, which makes sense – they worked hard to earn it. Yet it also makes sense to provide a safety net, given the ebbs and flows inherent in a capitalist economy. Capitalism as an ideology and practice is one of the fundamental reasons that poverty still exists. There is no doubt that poverty, as Gandhi said, is the greatest form of violence that exists in the world today. Yet no one is doing anything about it on a large scale. The reasons for this, though manifold, rest on two fundamental principles: a failure to recognize poverty as violence and an ideology that requires poverty. This essay clearly shows that poverty is a form of violence and that capitalism is one of its root causes. Works Cited “Poverty and Health”. WHO. World Health Organization. n.d. Web. 31 May 2012. http://www.who.int/hdp/poverty/en/. Gilligan, James. Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print. “World GDP”. World Factbook. CIA. 2004. Web. 31 May 2012. . Read More