Also known as: Structural violence
Last updated: April 23, 2026
Farmer's Haiti work makes the concept concrete. The point is not abstraction but explanation: colonial slavery, indemnity, occupation, Duvalierist extraction, offshore assembly, and medical exclusion create the conditions in which some populations are made radically more vulnerable than others.
Farmer uses Aristide's story to analyze the structural violence of the 1991 coup, exile, and repression, and the conditions under which Haiti's poor lived during and after his governments.
violence — the conditions that make gang governance competitive with the formal state
violence — the long structures of inequality that Lahens insists on against the tendency to reduce Haitian suffering to discrete disasters
The coup and its aftermath embodied structural violence against Haiti's popular classes
The epidemic's severity reflected structural violence built into Haiti's aid and governance architecture
The earthquake's scale of destruction reflected structural violence built into Haiti's political economy
The destruction of the peasant savings system without adequate replacement is a form of structural violence against rural Haiti
Dependent Ethnicity
Haiti United States
Haitian Diaspora
Structural Violence
Structural Violence
Structural Violence
Occupation Financial Afterlife
Structural Violence
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"Structural Violence." Rasin.ai, 2026. https://rasin.ai/connections/concepts/structural-violence. Accessed 2026-05-05.