Causes and Cures of Violence, Session 7

An Introductory Course in Violence Prevention

*The Zoom Link for today’s class is far below.

Today is the last class in the Causes section of our course; next week, we will move onto Consequences, before we begin a discussion on Cures.

When most people hear the word “violence,” their minds leap directly to the visible: a fist that flies in anger, a gun fired in a street corner, or a bomb exploding on a battlefield. Yet, the most consequential forms of violence in our world today are not visible, or even the kind that makes it into the daily news. They are hidden in the gears of our society, embedded in our economies, and woven into our landscapes, even as they determine the life or death of our collective future. These are what I call the “triumvirate” of collective dangers: structural violence, environmental violence, and nuclear violence. They represent three intertwined forms of harm that shape not only whether we altogether live or die, but the quality of life we give ourselves.

Let us begin with the most invisible and, paradoxically, the most lethal form of violence: structural violence. Structural violence refers to the harm people suffer because the systems around them—economic, political, legal, or cultural—make it impossible for them to meet their basic needs or to reach their potential.

The great Norwegian sociologist, Johan Galtung, described structural violence as the violence of avoidable harm rooted in the structures of society rather than in the actions of identifiable individuals (Galtung, 1969). A child dying from a preventable infection because her parents cannot afford medicine is not the victim of fate; she is a casualty of a system that distributes health resources inequitably (United Nations Children’s Fund, 2012). American medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer said: “The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world” (Farmer, 2010).

Structural violence is slow, insidious, and frequently normalized to the point of invisibility—but the numbers are staggering. Between ten and twenty million people die every year due to structural inequities, far exceeding the global deaths from homicide, suicide, and war combined (Høivik, 1977). American psychiatrist James Gilligan emphasized that structural violence kills as many people as would perish in a hypothetical thermonuclear exchange causing more than 200 million deaths, every fifteen years (Gilligan, 1999).

The resemblance to a slow-moving World War is chilling, but structural violence does not merely kill. It generates shame, humiliation, and feelings of inferiority among those forced into the bottom rungs of society, producing fertile ground for behavioral violence—from homicide and suicide to terrorism and global wars (Gilligan, 1996). When the social ladder becomes steep and rigid, the psychological stresses borne by those at the bottom manifest in destructive ways (Buttrick and Oishi, 2017). In this sense, structural violence is not only the deadliest form of violence; it is the most potent stimulant of all other forms of violence.

Once we recognize the profound scale and reach of structural violence, it is easy to see how it blends seamlessly into the second member of our triumvirate: environmental violence. If structural violence is rooted in unequal social arrangements, environmental violence is rooted in the unequal harm perpetuated against ecological systems. Of course, environmental violence eventually affects everyone, but the structural violence that divides people into “superior” and “inferior” also blinds those in power from seeing the suffering of those below.

Human choices—be they social, political, and economic—turn ecological degradation into a form of violence. Pollution, climate change, toxic waste dumping, deforestation, and unsafe water systems disproportionately harm poor communities, Indigenous peoples, and low-income nations. These are the predictable outcomes of systems that allow some groups to shift ecological costs onto others, and in places like the United States, even to use psychological violence to convince victims that the ecological devastation is not even happening.

The scale of environmental violence is vast. Air pollution alone kills 6.7 million people globally each year, with the heaviest burdens falling on the poorest communities (Landrigan et al., 2017). Climate change intensifies food insecurity, heat-related deaths, the spread of infectious diseases, and mass displacement—again, primarily for those who are least responsible for the problem (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2022). If structural violence determines who has access to clean water, safe housing, or nutritious food, environmental violence determines the quality of that water, housing, or food. The people of Flint, Michigan, and the Niger Delta have little in common culturally, but both have endured the same toxic consequences of distant institutions that prioritize profit over human life.

Environmental violence also magnifies structural violence. As the climate becomes more volatile, agricultural systems collapse, livelihoods evaporate, and millions are forced to migrate. Researchers have found that climate-related shocks significantly increase the risk of civil conflict (Mach et al., 2019). Environmental degradation and structural inequities reinforce each other so tightly that they become indistinguishable.

This brings us to the third—and most dramatic—form of violence in our triumvirate: nuclear violence. Nuclear violence is often imagined as an event: the detonation of a bomb, the obliteration of a city, or a nuclear winter that may make the living envy the dead. But the concept is actually broader. It includes entire systems of nuclear weapons production, uranium mining, weapons stockpiling, geopolitical brinkmanship, and the massive diversion of resources away from public welfare and toward military budgets.

Communities exposed to nuclear testing in the Pacific, the American Southwest, or Kazakhstan bear consequences that persist across generations, blending nuclear violence with environmental harm. Meanwhile, the global inequities that determine which nations possess nuclear weapons reflect deep structural hierarchies embedded in the international order.

What sets apart nuclear violence from the others of this triad is its capacity for instantaneous annihilation. Structural violence kills quietly and widely, while environmental violence kills slowly but certainly; nuclear violence could kill millions in minutes and starve billions over years. Recent modeling shows that even a “limited” nuclear war—say, between India and Pakistan—could plunge the world into a global cooling event severe enough to trigger widespread famine (Xia et al., 2022). Nuclear violence is the perpetual shadow under which all other forms of violence operate. It is the final expression of concentrated power, technological capacity, and political domination.

When we combine these three forms of violence—structural, environmental, and nuclear—we begin to see that they are not separate categories at all but interlinked patterns within a single global system. Structural violence determines who is most vulnerable to climate change, pollution, or nuclear fallout. Environmental violence intensifies structural inequities that erode livelihoods and health. Nuclear violence both reflects and reinforces structural inequalities, while threatening the ecological stability on which human life depends.

Each form of violence feeds the next. Inequality produces vulnerability; vulnerability deepens environmental harm; and environmental harm fuels instability. Instability in turn strengthens militarization; militarization diverts resources away from equity and environmental preservation, and the vicious circle repeats with amplified consequences.

Understanding this triumvirate of dangers has profound implications for how we pursue peace. If peace is defined only as an absence of war, we ignore the millions who die quietly every year from preventable causes rooted in inequality. If we only count visible conflict as threatening, we ignore the environmental degradation that is already destabilizing nations and communities. Galtung urged us to redefine peace as the presence of justice, equity, and social integration (Galtung, 1964). In that sense, addressing the triumvirate dangers requires not just stopping war, but transforming the social and ecological structures that give rise to war. A world divided by extreme inequality, destabilized by environmental collapse, and armed with thousands of nuclear weapons is incompatible with peace.

The interconnectedness of these dangers informs our solutions. Reducing inequality, investing in public health, and strengthening democratic participation are essential to reducing violence. Addressing climate change, restoring ecosystems, and ensuring clean air and water are fundamental to preserving peace. And global nuclear disarmament, arms control, and diplomacy are critical to perpetuating our survival. None of these can operate in isolation; they form a shared architecture of peace in the same way the three types of violence form a shared architecture of harm.

Ultimately, the triumvirate dangers remind us that violence is not merely an act, but a condition. It is a condition we have inherited through historical choices and that we can transform through collective action. For any one of them, the stakes of that change could not be higher.

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is inviting you to a session in a 13-class series: