Class Group: General Freshers

Course Code: HUM1021

Ethics and Values

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 VIOLENCE
• Violence is an endemic problem in the world and captures one’s attention like few other
human events. People on a daily basis are exposed to the incidents of violence, which
victimize millions of people each year with varied degrees of intensities.
• Violence can come from many sources and can be inter-personal like domestic violence;
intercommunity or communal violence; violence in armed conflicts; legitimate use of
force by the state and structural violence.
• Violence can be defined from many perspectives such as from an injury perspective,
criminal justice perspective, domestic violence perspective, medical perspective, and
sociological perspective, among others.
• People started challenging the crime related of violence definition when they understood
violence not only as the harmful use of force against persons but also as social
structures which legitimize the oppression of human beings.

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• The definition of violence as an act or force exerted to impart physical harm or injury on
other person becomes inadequate on at least three accounts.
1) The standard definition of violence exclusively refers to physical harm or injury
and neglects the psychological abuses or attacks.
2) It lists only human beings as the potential victims of violence, whereas animals or
inanimate objects can also be the targets of violence.
3) The definition undermines the operation of violence in indirect ways by assuming
that there is a direct link joining the perpetrator and the victim of violence.

• So over the years there have been made changes made is the definitions of violence
leading to the emergence of diverse perspectives, models and theories.
• For the purpose of our study, we shall look at violence from two perspectives – direct
and indirect or structural.

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 Take a while and think about it.

If a nation legitimizes violence against a community harmed due to their religious, cultural
and ethnic background, then such form of violence falls into which category? Is it direct
violence or structural violence?

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 TYPOLOGY OF VIOLENCE
1) Direct violence
2) Indirect or structural violence

Some forms of violence are instantly recognisable but there are others, which are
unrecognisable, latent and hidden. In the year 1969, it was Johan Galtung, who is
also a Gandhian philosopher, articulated the notion of structural violence.

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Direct Violence
• It is the only type of violence that is acknowledged as real violence. At
interpersonal level, direct violence is the act or force, which one or more people
use to impart or inflict physical harms or injuries on other people including nature.
• These acts insult the basic needs of others. These acts may take the form of war,
torture, fighting, arms violence, physical abuse and emotional abuse etc.
• Physical violence, sexual violence, emotional and psychological violence are
some of the examples of direct violence.
• The various mechanisms of direct violence are killing, injury, siege, sanctions,
poverty, de-socialisation, resocialisation, underclass, repression, imprisonment,
expulsion, deportation etc. Many forms of direct violence are the result of
structure-based inequalities aggravated by ethnic tensions, environmental
degradation, and economic desperation.

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Structural Violence
• Structural violence is a permanent state of violence, which is deeply rooted in the
social, political and economic structures that make up a society. It is often accepted
as norms in society. Primarily, structural violence is the result of hierarchical
relations within and between societies where people at the top (‘top dogs’ or elite)
enjoy a privileged position and oppress, exploit and dominate those who are at the
bottom (‘underdogs’).
• Galtung in his work describes the mechanisms, and the forms of structural violence
as:
a. exploitation (based on unjust economic and social relations),
b. penetration (process of transferring ideology, leads to segmentation),
c. segmentation (limited view of reality),
d. marginalization and fragmentation (division between people, create a polarized
society).
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Difference between direct and structural violence
• Direct violence represents intentional harming whereas structural violence is
manifested mostly in the form of social inequalities. Structural violence kills
people slowly as it is manifested in the form of social inequalities. It can be both
physical as well as psychological. The harm is caused by the sociopolitical factors
existing in a society which deprive them to realize their potential and fulfil their
basic needs.
• In direct violence, the consequences of the act can be traced back to concrete
persons as actors. In structural violence, the consequences of the acts cannot be
traced back to concrete persons or are no longer meaningful because there may
not be any person who directly harms another person in the structure.
• Direct violence tends to be more visible and easily perceived. Not just that,
negative peace is characterized by the absence of direct violence and positive
peace is characterized by the absence of structural violence.

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Dimensions of violence
1. Cultural Violence:
Culture is our way of living. It represents the values and ideas, which reflect the
context within which people live and work. Cultural violence is a symbolic violence
that is expressed in countless forms like in religion, ideology, language, art, science,
media, education, etc. and serves to legitimize direct and structural violence and to
inhibit or suppress the response of the victims.
It even offers justifications for humans, unlike other species, to destroy each other
and to be rewarded for doing so.
For example, throughout the world, cultural practices have systematically
discriminated against women where they are denied the right to vote, suffer from
domestic abuse, and are excluded from employment opportunities.

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2. Economic Violence:
This is rooted in the structure of the production relationships and its consequences
for workers and consumers. Persistence of unjust economic power structures create
conditions due to which certain social groups possess more capital than other groups
and the materially rich groups utilize their privileged status to exploit other groups.
Poverty, unfair hiring procedures, insufficient health care, joblessness and wage
dumping are some of the forms in which they are practiced in a society.
There is no doubt that globalisation has resulted in market growth but it has also
widened the manifestations of economic violence through increased income
disparity around the world.

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3. Political Violence:
This consists of those types of collective action that involve great physical force and
cause damage to an adversary or violence for political gain. It encompasses
naxalism, guerrilla warfare, national liberation movements and sometimes even
strikes and demonstrations that turn violent. They also include violent acts motivated
by a desire, conscious or unconscious, to obtain or maintain political power.
4. Social Violence:
This is an important consequence of the abuse of political and economic powers. The
manifestations of social violence cover a large spectrum of possibilities that go from
the disproportionate increase in robberies and crime, mob rule, revolt and guerrilla
warfare that may turn into revolutions and civil wars. Another important factor is
rooted in the rapid technological changes that accelerate social changes. An example
of social violence is the caste system which forces people to accept discrimination
and deprivation from birth.

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 Take a while and think about it.

Which amongst the following is an example of direct violence? You have 4 options.
1. Riots
2. Poverty
3. Gender inequality and sexism
4. Racism
Poverty is one of the worst or deadliest forms of structural violence. As a social condition, poverty is
prevalent all over the world in different forms. Poverty is extreme, structural, systemic and sustained
economic deprivation, which in the first instance typically produces powerlessness. As Amartya Sen has
shown, such structural denials of basic freedom result in agency constrained to the extent that individuals
are unable to meet their basic needs.
Systematic structures of society have caused the emergence of an endemic global sexism that is termed
patriarchy, which in turn legitimizes the patterns of violence, discrimination and exclusion towards women.
Sexism can be considered as a system of belief targeting women and causing attitudes that holds women
inferior. Such structural inequalities make them vulnerable to exploitation and violence.
Racism is based on the perceived negative and positive traits towards their origins, and based on these
imagined and constructed traits, certain cultures appear to be inferior, deviant, and some group is able to
reinforce its sense of superiority and maintain its normative power.
So, now you know, option 1 (Riots) is right answer which depicts direct violence.
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