British Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Globalization, Agency, and Structural Violence

Our world gets smaller every day. The effects of globalization are now felt on every continent and in every country. Many of these effects are predictable: creolization of cultures, greater availability of information and technology, and increased transnational economic trade. Others effects are not so predictable, or at best they are unintended. What are the total effects of an economic development project in Port-au-Prince, the ramifications of US economic policy towards Brazil, or the total distributed utility of a nation's decision to cut education programs in an attempt to attract creditor nations?

These programs and initiatives have consequences that seem far removed from the accounting of GDP. They marginalize poor individuals, driving them to even deeper economic deprivation and limiting their ability to make choices, their agency. This phenomenon is structural violence. Different from interpersonal violence, which stems from disputes between individuals, the machinations of structural violence pervade every level of society- they are the systemic, "modal" circumstances that directly or indirectly force violence upon those least able to recuperate- the poor (Farmer 40).

An analysis of structural violence, according to anthropologist and doctor Paul Farmer, involves a summation of three factors: geographical breadth, historical depth, and the intersection of "various social axes" (43). Geographical breadth deals with the interconnectedness of privileged people at one end of the world with people less privileged on the other. Historical depth examines the political and economic facts that form narratives of the afflicted parties and their forebears (42). Finally, structural violence is closely tied to the intersection of gender, race, and oppression- three social axes that look at the cultural aspects of systemic brutality (46).