Structural violence knows no geopolitical borders. The complex interweaving of law, policy and stigma that buttress imposed social structures and the harm it does to individuals can be forced on a population from within or abroad. The former colonies of the developing world were a playground for imperial powers during the age of exploration. Sub-Saharan African nations are complex communities characterized by Western media as corrupt and war-torn. They are the victims of this interweaving, defined by anthropologists as structural violence. Many of these battles were physical and within their own borders, as seen in the trials and tribulations of Agu — the child soldier in Netflix’s Beasts of No Nations. But war is not the only playing field …show more content…
for structural violence. Yesterday, the lead character from the film titled Yesterday, is a harrowing example of what living with AIDS in a developing nation without proper medical infrastructure looks like. Paul Farmer, author and anthropologist, identifies structural violence as a form of oppression that prevents a group of people from meeting their basic needs (Farmer). Some of these battles take place on an actual battlefield. Farmer’s area of study for his journal article is Haiti. In the article, Farmer writes this about the island nation after its establishment as the world’s first black republic: “After the 1803 Battle of Veriteres, in which Napoleon’s troops were defeated… Haiti was declared an independent nation. But it's infrastructure lay in ruins. Some estimate that more than half of the island’s population perished in the war,” (Farmer). Certainly, this has an impact on the nation. But how does this impact individuals directly? Agu is a victim of political structural violence. He is a young boy living with his family in an unnamed African nation. As war comes to his village, his mother and younger sibling are able to leave. The National Reform Council storms Agu’s village killing all the men left behind, including Agu’s father and brother. The political conflict between the NRC and rebels with the nation displaces Agu from his home. He begins to wander in the bush, eating leaves in an attempt to survive. He comes across a warlord that employs child soldiers. As the movie progresses, Agu turns from innocent child to despondent killer. He narrates the story looking back at his past. The Agu in village is easy to differentiate from Agu in the field. When at home, he tried to sell the outer TV compartment -- the part that holds the screen -- to soldiers protecting his village. He joked. He was carefree. This is a totally different Agu from the viewpoint he has following the death of Two I-C. Agu states that the only way to not fight is to die. “If this war is ever ending, I cannot be going back to child things,” he said. It is also suggested that Agu is sexually assaulted by the Commandant (Beasts of No Nations). This is a form of structural violence, but it appears the primary perpetrator is Dada Goodblood.
who is using soldiers, as well as children, as pawns in his chess game for political control. While Goodblood is not a major character, he allows for characters like the Commandant to exist and thrive (Beats of No Nations).
But the impact of structural violence goes beyond the direct physical violence and the mental hardships that follow.
While the men and women in Beasts of No Nations were displaced from their homes and killed, often times structural violence is subtler and played in the realm of politics and economics. But the consequences are just as serious, Farmer writes: “Structural violence, at the root of much terrorism and bombardment, is much more likely to wither bodies slowly, very often through infectious diseases,” (Farmer).
Farmer illustrates his point through the story of Anite, a woman who visited 14 clinics for her breast cancer without receiving proper treatment. This mirrors the story of Yesterday. The 2014 film Yesterday follows the trials of a young mother named Yesterday as she copes with her husband's illness as well as her
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own. Early in the movie, Yesterday, a young Zuly mother from South Africa, is plagued by harsh coughing and feelings of being weak and drained. She waits in long lines at the clinic and travels great distances to seek treatment. After collapsing on the doorstep of her home, Yesterday consults a traditional healer. Eventually, one of her friends pays for a taxi so Yesterday can reach the clinic early. There, Yesterday discovers that she has AIDS and she likely got it from her husband, John, a miner who works in Johannesburg (Yesterday). The members of her village ostracize her because they don't understand the disease. Now, Yesterday is forced to take care of her ill husband. She builds him a shack outside of town by hand and spends large amounts of time with him. Her daughter is left with her friend, the teacher. Yesterday is aware she will die soon, and life for Yesterday became exponentially more difficult. The stigma associated with HIV/AIDS motivated members of the community to force John (and Yesterday) into isolation. The lack of accessible medical infrastructure fails to treat and educate citizens, so John falls ill and dies. The cycle continues. This is a form of structural violence. But the primary perpetrators are again those in power beyond the village, Farmer demonstrates why AIDS can devastate a former colony and shines a brighter light on Yesterday’s backstory. While giving background on Haiti’s HIV/AIDS problem, Farmer provides an in-depth analysis of Haitian affairs ranging from the colonial period to present.
He chronicled why the island nation was hit so hard. Economic dependence on France, the forced embargos, the forced repayment to slaveholders, then Haiti’s economic dependence on America that made the nation’s own structures so weak (Farmer). Farmer writes that HIV came to Haiti from the United States in the sex tourism trade and spread rapidly. The people in Haiti are killed not by the HIV, but tuberculosis often kills those infected. Treating nonhuman hosts would get rid of the disease, but aid refusals or the inability to properly treat due to constraints-- all examples of structural violence -- leave men and women in Haiti to die (Farmer). These elements can also be found in Sub-Saharan African nations.
Regardless of the victim, Structural violence is historically given and economically (or politically) driven (Farmer). Structural violence can manifest itself in state-sponsored terrorism or through a failure to provide proper medical infrastructure for ailing residents. Those at the top of the system impose the structure and allow lower-ranking tyrants or misinformation the opportunity to operate within this space. Yesterday and Agu are victims of structural
violence.
During the author’s life in New York and Oberlin College, he understood that people who have not experienced being in a war do not understand what the chaos of a war does to a human being. And once the western media started sensationalizing the violence in Sierra Leone without any human context, people started relating Sierra Leone to civil war, madness and amputations only as that was all that was spoken about. So he wrote this book out o...
Paul Farmer was a kind, devoted doctor who sacrificed his life to help those in need in Haiti. His work involved curing sick people from tuberculosis (TB), making sure the disease did not spread, and making the towns in Haiti a better, cleaner place to live in. There were and still are many social injustices that Haiti is still struggling with today. For example, they have TB outbreaks because there’s no healthcare in the country for the poor. This has increased the outbreak of TB and many other diseases. Also, their poor living conditions aren’t sanitary thus increasing the probability for diseases to spread. There are many more social injustices in Haiti.
There was a war in Sierra Leone, Africa, from 1991 to 2002 where a rebel army stormed through African villages amputating and raping citizens left and right (“Sierra Leone Profile”). Adebunmi Savage, a former citizen of Sierra Leone, describes the reality of this civil war:
The content of Paul Farmer’s AIDS & ACCUSATION: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, was very boring to begin with. Quite literally, I was sleeping while reading the beginning of it. However, it did pick up towards the middle as it caught my interest; I found that the book was particularly funny. Before reading this book, I had no clue what I was in for other than the title and who would’ve guessed; the title says it all. It was actually about what the title said. The United States blames Haiti for the AIDS and vice versa. Although, Haiti didn’t start with that; the Haitians believed in sorcery and voodoo. The idea of anyone that has someone with ill intent or maliciousness towards them can cause them to become sick with diarrhea, was a chortle. Farmer goes deep into the book as he gives descriptions of three people who came across AIDS. However, these Haitians all believed that it was sorcery or some malign magic of someone who had despised them. The curiousness of one the cases was Manno, one of the Haitians that Farmer had interviewed, who was said to be kind, “Manno never hurt anyone; on the contrary, one thing he was known for was his ready smile. So why would someone wish to harm him?”(Farmer, 76)
Nothing good ever comes out of violence.Two wrongs never make it right, but cause harm. Contemporary society has not responded enough legacies of historical globalization. This essay will cover the following arguments such as residential schools, slavery and the Sierra Leone civil war.
...be seen as an entity that promotes vile results. However, it is imperative to understand that globalization is multilayered and difficult to fully understand. In the case of child soldiers, globalization has played a pertinent role in unifying international organizations in hopes of finding a solution to this “phenomenon”. On the other hand, although certain international organizations such as United Nations have had a prominent role in advocating against child soldiery, for the following reasons, its attempts are insufficient: it lacks the ability to enforce sanctions established within the international community and it does not do enough to recognize the political, social and economic inequalities that are prevalent in most of these fragile states. Therefore, child soldiery, cannot be eradicated until these issues are dealt with on a collective global scale.
In David Brooks’ op-ed “The Undying Tragedy,” he discusses four main hypotheses regarding poverty and aid in Haiti. His ideas about poverty, as viewed through the modernization, dependency/world-systems, and post-structural theoretical perspectives lead to three different conclusions. Specifically, as viewed through a modernization lens, the “truths” Brooks puts forth seem fairly in accordance with the perspective, with some minor addendums needed. The dependency and world systems theories again agree with some of Brook’s hypotheses, but would disagree with some of the assumptions he makes in regards to culture and paternalism. Finally, the post-structural theory would find the most problems with Brooks’ claims, likely disagreeing with his assumptions about the effects of culture on poverty and his view of the development process.
Structural violence is differentiated from direct violence both in terms of etiology and nature. D...
Several of the problems that Haiti faces today have their genesis in the country’s colonial history. The country was like a toy being fought over by spoiled children. The first of these children arrived in the early sixteenth century in the form of Spanish settlers in search of gold. They enslaved the native Taino population and, poisoned by avarice, nearly eradicated the indigenous work force. Thousands of African slaves were brought in to take their place. Eventually, the Spanish left the island to grab their share of newly discovered treasure in other lands. Tiring of their toy, the Spanish
Kiernan, Ben. Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. Yale University Press, 2007. (Accessed March 7, 2014).
Paul Farmer writes more about structural violence and disease. He says that in fact, disease is the embodiment of structural violence. The infectious diseases written about in his book, such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, are primarily caused by structural violence, and that this has been ignored by doctors and anthropologists. It is a popular American ideal to value choice as freedom, and to police the rest of the world but not help its suffering. Americans believe that we spend too much on foreign aid, and that we should focus our efforts on domestic problems, even in regard to health outcomes. However, although we place value on our borders, disease has no regard to borders, and disease can spread among our poor just as easily as it does among the poor in other nations.
A. Adu Boahen's African Perspectives on Colonialism neatly classifies African responses to European colonialism during both phases of invasion and occupation during the 19th century with precise labels according to their nature or time period. However, the reactions can also be loosely grouped into two diametric characterizations: peaceful and violent. Although creating this dichotomy seems a gross generalization and oversimplification of the colonial African experience, it more importantly allows for a different perspective- one that exposes the overwhelming success of the typically peaceful or pacifist reaction in contrast to the little gain and large losses of the violent response.
The acts of violence that were performed by rebels in Africa were horrific. Adults and children were murdered, mutilated, tortured, and raped. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone performed despicable acts of cutting off a people's body parts with machetes to instill fear in the community. If you were working in the diamond mines and not performing up to the standards of the rebels you would lose a body part as punishment. Rebels would continue to do this from one village to another in order “to take control of the mines in the area” (Hoyt). It is estimated that in Sierra Leone that over 20,000 people suffered mutilation. The acts that the rebels performed to these innocent victims was clearly a violation to their human rights. The RUF collected 125 million a year to fund their war on the government and the people of Sierra Leone.
Child soldier is a worldwide issue, but it became most critical in the Africa. Child soldiers are any children under the age of 18 who are recruited by some rebel groups and used as fighters, cooks, messengers, human shields and suicide bombers, some of them even under the aged 10 when they are forced to serve. Physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, children typically make obedient soldiers. Most of them are abducted or recruited by force, and often compelled to follow orders under threat of death. As society breaks down during conflict, leaving children no access to school, driving them from their homes, or separating them from family members, many children feel that rebel groups become their best chance for survival. Others seek escape from poverty or join military forces to avenge family members who have been killed by the war. Sometimes they even forced to commit atrocities against their own family (britjob p 4 ). The horrible and tragic fate of many unfortunate children is set on path of war murders and suffering, more nations should help to prevent these tragedies and to help stop the suffering of these poor, unfortunate an innocent children.
War is a universal phenomenon, it is a violent tool people use to accomplish their interests. It is not autonomous, rather policy always determines its character. Normally it starts when diplomacy fails to reach a peaceful end. War is not an end rather than a mean to reach the end, however, it does not end, and it only rests in preparation for better conditions. It is a simple and dynamic act with difficult and unstable factors which make it unpredictable and complex. It is a resistant environment where the simplest act is difficult to perform. In this paper, I will argue why war is a universal phenomenon and what are the implications of my argument to strategists.