Structural Violence

In “On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below,” Paul Farmer addresses the issues of power, violence and selective health care, within a class driven society. By examining these subjects from an anthropological perspective, Farmer is able to clearly demonstrate how class, economics, sexism, racism, and culture impact marginalized members of a civilization. Farmer’s book tells the story of a military man who was infected with AIDS, and the woman he transmitted the disease to through a sexual relationship. The woman died from AIDS, and the man was brutally tortured to death by fellow members of the military. Due to the prejudices in society, both the soldier and the woman did not receive the medical care they needed. Furthermore, the male soldier failed to receive

the legal protection guaranteed to all citizens. Well one can assume that this discrimination was based on sexism and racism, as Farmer points out, it is more largely attributable to our class driven socio economic structure.
During Farmer’s experiences of traveling to various cities he observed that medical patients were treated inequitably based on their socioeconomic class.

This means that people were arbitrarily not receiving the medicine and care they needed. Farmer felt that was unconscionable and an affront to one’s basic rights. Moreover, he also felt that an individual’s “civil rights cannot really be defended if (their) social and economic rights are not” protected, too (Farmer 9). In other words, we cannot fully exercise our rights as citizens if we do not have social and economic equality. For instance, if some wealthy individuals receive heath care that is superior, while less influential patients receive inferior treatment, that is unjust and corrupt. Farmer strives to discover a way to progress towards more attainable social and economic rights so that public health care can be more widely available and effective. The author also raises the point that race and sex are large factors in why medicine is not distributed and produced the way it should be. Obviously, these factors need to be addressed when devising a public health care system that will give fair and uniform treatment to all its

patients.
I found Farmer’s article very interesting and I think he addresses the idea of intersectionality well, but could have gone even deeper. I wish he had talked about how race and gender have a connection with social economic class. Moreover, I also wanted to learn more about how the non dominate cultures are discriminated against by the field of medicine. Furthermore, well I absolutely agree that there is a prejudice against people of lower social economic classes, I wanted more of an explanation of why this occurs. Is it because the rich do not care about the poor? Is it because there are large social constraints working in favor of the rich? Also, what makes some individuals become wealthy, while others do not? In addition, as Farmer’s book demonstrates, sex, gender, sexuality, class and race are all interconnected and one can not separate these categories when analyzing inequalities in societies. Consequently, I believe that only by effectively addressing this intersectionality, one can understand and rectify the injustices of our health care system and social structure.