I want to talk briefly about structural violence.

When we think about violence, it is often in the form of person A physically assaulting person B, and the results from that confrontation. In this case, without any other information, we have the perspective that person A is the aggressor and person B is the victim. This may be the case, but context is necessary to understand the situation more fully. For instance, person A may suffer from a mental illness; in this case, while still the aggressor, they may not be culpable for their actions, since it is out of their control. Using another example, person A may be desperately starving, and attempts to take something from person B by force. In this case, person A remains the aggressor, but only through dire circumstances.

Let’s present a third scenario. person A is an abused spouse (person B is the abuser), and person A uses violence to attempt to free themselves from their environment. Without context, it would be easy to assume that person A is the aggressor, but with new information we find that person B has used their own threat of violence to emotionally subdue person A from leaving. Are person A’s actions justified, or are they resolutely condemned regardless of the circumstances? What if person A was a slave, and person B the master? What acts are allowed to free oneself in hopes of liberation?

Let’s return to structural violence. In our present society, there are dominators and the dominated, people with power and people without. This society did not simply pop up overnight; instead, it gradually emerged over time, sedentary existence mixed with volatile and decisive moments of history. These moments were often violent and deadly, consuming the dominated in the process and mitigating them to subservient positions. As the dominators slowly consolidated their power, they created institutions in their image that sustained and protected the dominant order. Through violence, they created peace for the dominators, and to a lesser extent for the dominated, though this peace was often violated to remind the dominated of their position in society.

Structural violence is the manifestation of these original acts, and remain embedded where you and I live today. Ironically, while dominators will use violence when they deem it necessary (war, access to resources, and the preservation of power), the language of dominant society condemns violence as unacceptable. This is akin to the bully who physically intimidates you into giving him your lunch money, and then cries to the principal if you use the same tactics to alter the arrangement. Preservation of the existing social order only remains peaceful because the dominators instill a fear of inferential violence, a threat that if you attempt to cross boundaries or push limits, you will be imprisoned, maimed, or killed. In this case, if you derive benefits from the society of the dominators, you also perpetuate structural violence by lack of action. It’s not just politicians, or corporations, or police, or the military that maintains the conditions of oppression. It’s you.

The question that we must ask ourselves determines our culpability in this atrocity: Are you on the side of the dominators, or of the dominated?