Structural violence is a form of

violence Violence is the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy. Other definitions are also used, such as the World Health Organization's definition of violence as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened ...

wherein some

social structure In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally rela ...

or social institution may harm people by preventing them from meeting their

basic needs The basic needs approach is one of the major approaches to the measurement of absolute poverty in developing countries globally. It works to define the absolute minimum resources necessary for long-term physical well-being, usually in terms of ...

. The term was coined by Norwegian sociologist

Johan Galtung Johan Vincent Galtung (born 24 October 1930) is a Norwegian sociologist who is the principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies. He was the main founder of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in 1959 and served as its ...

, who introduced it in his 1969 article "Violence, Peace, and Peace Research". Some examples of structural violence as proposed by Galtung include institutionalized

racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...

sexism Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers prima ...

, and

classism Class discrimination, also known as classism, is prejudice or discrimination on the basis of social class. It includes individual attitudes, behaviors, systems of policies and practices that are set up to benefit the upper class at the expense ...

, among others. Structural violence and direct violence are said to be highly interdependent, including family violence,

gender violence Gender-related violence or gender-based violence includes any kind of violence directed against people due to their gender or gender identification. Types of gender-related violence include: * Violence against women (sometimes referred to simply as ...

, hate crimes,

racial violence Ethnic violence is a form of political violence which is expressly motivated by ethnic hatred and ethnic conflict. Forms of ethnic violence which can be argued to have the characteristics of terrorism may be known as ethnic terrorism or ethni ...

, police violence, state violence,

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

, and war. It is very closely linked to

social injustice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, Equal opportunity, opportunities, and Social privilege, privileges within a society. In Western Civilization, Western and Culture of Asia, Asian cultures, the concept of social ...

insofar as it affects people differently in various

Definitions

Galtung

According to

, rather than conveying a physical image, ''structural violence'' is an "avoidable impairment of fundamental human needs." Galtung contrasts structural violence with " classical violence:" violence that is "direct," characterized by rudimentary, impermanent "bodily destruction" committed by some actor. Galtung places this as the first category of violence. In this sense, the purest form of structural violence can be understood as violence that endures with no particular beginning, and that lacks an 'actor' to have committed it.Galtung, Johan. 1975.
The Specific Contribution of Peace Research to the Study of the Causes of Violence: Typologies
" UNESCO Interdisciplinary Expert Meeting on the Study of the Causes of Violence. Following this, by excluding the requirement of an identifiable actor from the classical definition of ''violence'', Galtung lists

poverty Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty can have diverse < ...

(i.e., the "deprival of basic human needs") as the second category of violence and "structurally conditioned poverty" as the first category of structural violence. Asking why violence necessarily needs to be done to the human body for it to be considered ''violence''—"why not also include violence done to the human mind, psyche or how one wants to express it"—Galtung proceeds to

repression Repression may refer to: * Memory inhibition, the ability to filter irrelevant memories from attempts to recall * Political repression, the oppression or persecution of an individual or group for political reasons * Psychological repression, the p ...

(i.e., the "deprival of

human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

") as the third category of violence, and "structurally conditioned repression" (or, "repressive intolerance") as the second type of structural violence. Lastly, Galtung notes that repression need not be violence associated with repressive regimes or declared on particular documents to be human-rights infractions, as "there are other types of damage done to the human mind not included in that particular tradition." From this sense, he categorizes

alienation Alienation may refer to: * Alienation (property law), the legal transfer of title of ownership to another party * ''Alienation'' (video game), a 2016 PlayStation 4 video game * "Alienation" (speech), an inaugural address by Jimmy Reid as Rector ...

(i.e., "deprival of higher needs") as the fourth type of violence, leading to the third kind of structural violence, "structurally conditioned alienation"—or, " repressive tolerance," in that it is repressive but also compatible with repression, a lower level of structural violence. Since structural violence is avoidable, he argues, structural violence is a high cause of premature death and unnecessary disability. Some examples of structural violence as proposed by Galtung include institutionalized

adultism Adultism is "the power adults have over children". More narrowly, adultism is defined as "prejudice and accompanying systematic discrimination against young people". On a more philosophical basis, the term has also been defined as "bias towards ad ...

ageism Ageism, also spelled agism, is discrimination against individuals or groups on the basis of their age. The term was coined in 1969 by Robert Neil Butler to describe discrimination against seniors, and patterned on sexism and racism. Butler de ...

elitism Elitism is the belief or notion that individuals who form an elite—a select group of people perceived as having an intrinsic quality, high intellect, wealth, power, notability, special skills, or experience—are more likely to be const ...

ethnocentrism Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead of ...

nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...

, speciesism,

, and

.Johan Galtung
/ref>
/ref> Structural violence and direct violence are said to be highly interdependent, including family violence,

, hate crimes,

, police violence, state violence,

, and war.

Others

In his book ''Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic'',

James Gilligan James Gilligan is an American psychiatrist and author, husband of Carol Gilligan and best known for his series of books entitled ''Violence'', where he draws on 25 years of work in the American prison system to describe the motivation and causes ...

defines ''structural violence'' as "the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively lower death rates experienced by those who are above them." Gilligan largely describes these " excess deaths" as "non-natural" and attributes them to the stress, shame, discrimination, and denigration that results from lower status. He draws on

Richard Sennett Richard Sennett (born 1 January 1943) is the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and former University Professor of the Humanities at New York University. He is currently a Senior Fellow of the Center on Capitalis ...

and Jonathan Cobb (i.e., ''The Hidden Injuries of Class'', 1973), who examine the "contest for dignity" in a context of dramatic inequality. In her

interdisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

textbook on violence,

Bandy X. Lee Bandy Xenobia Lee is an American psychiatrist whose scholarly work includes the writing of a comprehensive textbook on violence. She is