Structural Violence

Today I want to rant a bit about structural violence. The concept is fairly well characterized, though not easy to define. I first encountered it when reading Paul Farmer's "The Pathologies of Power," a powerful entry in a series of books that draw the connection between poverty and disease. The term refers to inequalities within society that prevent people's basic needs from being met. An example within the US would be access to fresh food in the inner city versus in the suburbs. Anyone who has been walking in the inner city can attest to the fact that grocery stores per se are relatively rare. The differences are not due to any person's evil intent, but more due to the fact that corporations are beholden to their shareholders and thus are always looking at the bottom line. Thus, with less access to fresh food, people in the inner city have less access to good nutrition. Rates of obesity and diabetes rise because the only type of food available is cheap packaged food. Thus economics lead to health care disparities.

Every day in Senegal I see an example of structural violence. The most common example is road quality. In and around Dakar, the quality of roads is fairly good. Perhaps not as good as the best American highway, but nearly as good. But when you get further and further from Dakar, the quality of roads rapidly deteriorates. The road between Kaolack and Tambacounda, which is one of the most heavily traveled roads in West Africa, is 300 km of misery. On my last trip on it, we probably spent more time driving on the side of the road than on the road itself because of all of the potholes. There has to be a way to build roads properly so that they can withstand the rainy season here, which while wet, is nowhere near as bad as in other parts of the world. Even the road that goes by my village, which is a national highway, has rapidly deteriorated from since I was installed in my community. In May, a drive from Kaolack would take me about 35 minutes; now it is more than an hour. This disparity in road quality hinders the development of peripheral Senegal, limiting trade and access to healthcare, among other things. It is not the product of any person's insidious desire to exclude the periphery, but more the relative indifference towards the periphery.

And that is how structural violence is perpetrated and perpetuated, through indifference. We in the US are guiltier than many when it comes to indifference towards the rest of the world. But in this age of complex interdependence, the fate of one country can impact every other. The emergence of a failed state in Somalia leads to the emergence of piracy in the Gulf of Aden, an important trade route between Asia and Europe. We cannot afford to be indifferent. The first step to solving a problem is acknowledging that there is a problem. I wish that people were more aware of what was happening around them. If nothing else, living here has made me more aware of things that matter.

I apologize for ranting, but this is something that I've wanted to say on my blog for a while and was only prevented from doing so by my relative scarce access to internet. In the near future, I will be getting more regular access to the net. So hopefully my blog entries will become more common.

Be safe.