Structural and Infrastructural Violence
“Structural violence”, which Paul Farmer has defined as “violence exerted systemically – that is, indirectly – by everyone who belongs to a certain social order” (Farmer 2004: 307). Structural violence is the organized process of regulating and restricting opportunities of a certain group through policy. This type of violence is unique in the sense that while there is a clear violation of another, there is usually no recognizable agent, and therefore it is difficult to assign blame. Thus, structural violence can be distinguished from direct violence, which is much more immediate because it inflicts suffering directly onto bodies which often remain visibly scarred. In structural violence there is a lack in
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Although the man passing through the space was American, he was identified as a possible Palestinian and therefore treated as one. Although structural violence can have unseen inadvertent effects, physical violence among the marginalized group needs to be accounted as an effect that defines the experience of being in the non-citizen class. The reason the soldier targeted and assaulted the man was because of social actors that allowed and encouraged him to do so.
Helga Tawil-Souri uses an ethnographic account of a Palestinian who frequently needs to pass through the Qalandia checkpoint, “Nothing is transparent…it is never clear who will (pass) and who will not.. The reasons (for prohibiting Palestinians from passing) are so numerous, and the use made of them changes so much, that uncertainty becomes the ultimate system of control within the framework of the certainty of the occupation.. Not only is the arbitrariness deliberate, the inefficiency of the system is built in too (Tawil-Souri 2011:12). Uncertainty is a common experience in the space shared by Palestinians immobilized in these