Notes on The Cultural Violence of Non-violence
This paper, "The Cultural Violence of Non-violence" by Jason A. Springs, argues that when we talk about non-violent actions, we should also consider three types of violence: direct, cultural, and structural.
Main Idea: By understanding these different forms of violence, people who use non-violence can better analyze their actions, avoid accidentally causing harm, and create more effective strategies.
Risk: Sometimes, non-violent actions can unintentionally support violence hidden in society's systems (structural violence) or in its beliefs and ideas (cultural violence). It's important to always check if non-violence is doing this.
Plan: First, the paper will explain direct, structural, and cultural violence in detail. Then, it will use two examples to show how this deeper understanding changes how we typically think about non-violence.
Keywords: Cultural violence; non-violence; structural and cultural violence.
Background: The ideas of structural and cultural violence came from peace studies. They help us understand hidden, often non-physical, violence that isn't always intentional or deadly. The goal is to move beyond just stopping direct violence (called "negative peace") to addressing its root causes and achieving true justice (called "positive peace").
Deeper Understanding of Violence (Page 2)
Peace Studies View: True peace isn't just stopping obvious violence, but also working for ongoing social justice.
Definition of Violence: Violence happens when people can't reach their full physical and mental potential.
Simply put: If someone could achieve more but isn't, then violence is likely at play.
This leads to the idea of structural violence, which refers to hidden, often impersonal ways a social system harms people without anyone directly intending to do so. This harm comes from the way society is set up.
Structural Violence Explained (Galtung): This refers to harm caused by the established, often unseen, patterns and routines within a social system. People can cause significant harm through their regular duties and how society is organized, rather than through direct violent acts.
Example: Instead of one person hitting their spouse (direct violence), it's like a million spouses being kept uneducated by societal norms (structural violence). Another example is how life expectancy can differ greatly between social classes due to systemic issues.
Galtung's Update (1990): Structural violence is also linked to depriving people of basic human needs, which he categorizes as:
Survival needs: Without these, people die.
Well-being needs: Lacking these leads to sadness and sickness.
Freedom needs: Being denied these makes people feel disconnected.
Identity needs: Denying these results in being put down and shamed.
How Structural Violence Leads to Direct Violence: Structural violence often results in four common types of direct violence:
People who are oppressed might use direct violence to fight back.
Those who benefit from the system might use direct violence to keep their advantages.
Oppressed groups might fight each other over limited resources.
Structural violence can create divisions and encourage blaming of certain groups.
Violence Affecting the "Soul": Structural violence can harm people's mental and spiritual health. Galtung describes how victims can internalize their oppression:
Penetration: The dominant group's views become part of how the oppressed see themselves.
Segmentation: The oppressed are given only limited information about what's happening.
Marginalization: The oppressed are kept on the outside of society.
Fragmentation: The oppressed are kept from uniting with each other.
This approach isn't only about physical harm but also about non-physical damage and how social norms and structures keep a harmful cycle going.
Debates: The idea of structural violence has faced criticism for being too broad, but it's widely used to understand issues like poverty, gender inequality, and racism. Springs notes that many scholars expand on these ideas.
Why a Multi-Focal Approach?: To show how different types of violence are connected and reinforce each other. It helps identify situations where reducing one type of violence might actually make another type worse.
Benefit: This approach helps reveal the hidden, often "normal" ways structural violence works, which are easily overlooked when only direct violence is considered.
Structural Violence Continued (Page 3)
Structural violence harms more than just the body; it damages self-worth, mental health, and the ability to act in society. It works through social norms, institutions, and daily routines.
The four ways structural violence appears (penetration, segmentation, marginalization, fragmentation) are explained in more detail.
Criticism: Some argue that defining violence so broadly makes it hard to manage. However, Springs points out its widespread use in understanding many social issues.
Connections: The main goal is to show how different forms of violence interact and strengthen each other. This helps identify cases where trying to reduce one type of violence might accidentally support another.
"Unmasking" Violence: A key goal is to expose how violence actually works, so it's not seen as just "the way things are," but as something that can be changed.
Practical Use: These different views of violence allow for better analysis of social problems and more effective strategies for policy and activism.
Non-violence and Structural Violence (Page 4)
Non-violent action is often defined as avoiding direct physical harm. However, even non-violent actions can be involved in structural violence if they don't tackle its root causes or if they accidentally strengthen those causes.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Birmingham: Springs re-examines King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." King criticised white clergy who saw police restraint against civil rights protestors as non-violent and good, urging protestors to stop and work within the existing unfair system.
King's Criticism: Even though the police seemed non-violent, the clergy's advice helped keep an unjust system of racial segregation in place. This showed a contradiction: non-violent methods were being used to defend a violent, unjust goal.
Gandhi's Principle: King referred to Gandhi, who believed that non-violent goals must be achieved through non-violent means. If you try to achieve a violent goal with non-violent actions, it corrupts the actions themselves. The Birmingham case shows how surface-level non-violence can hide deeper violence in the system.
Conclusion: Non-violent actions might reduce visible, direct violence, but they can unintentionally support structural violence if they don't challenge the unfair systems underneath.
Non-violence and Cultural Violence (Page 5)
Springs introduces cultural violence as the third important type of violence. It's found in symbolic things like religion, ideologies, language, art, and science, and it serves to justify or make direct and structural violence seem acceptable.
Galtung's Definition (1990): Cultural violence explains how direct and structural violence are made legitimate and normal in society. Language and cultural practices can hide serious injustices by making them appear natural or necessary. The idea of "sanitation of language" means cleaning up language to hide harsh realities.
Example: The transatlantic slave trade and slavery itself. Over time, extreme direct violence (slavery, genocide) might be talked about using softer words like "discrimination," which then hides the deeper structural and cultural issues.
Legal Example: The McClesky v. Kemp court case (1987) shows how the legal system sometimes focuses only on individual intent rather than the overall effects of actions, which can unknowingly support systemic racism.
Language as Cultural Violence: Comparing synonyms for "blackness" (e.g., blot, soot, grim, devil) with "whiteness" (purity, cleanliness, innocence) demonstrates how language can embed racial hierarchies and justify unequal power.
Humiliation: This psychological/cultural factor helps sustain and legitimise structural and direct violence, acting as a cultural glue that keeps violence stuck in society.
King's "Cultural Homicide": King used this term to describe how cultural violence erodes self-worth and makes people internalize demeaning identities.
Birmingham Revisit: The Birmingham clergy's calls for non-violence and order can be seen as cultural violence because they legitimized the unjust system, even if they seemed to reduce direct violence temporarily.
Main Point: Cultural violence makes violence seem "natural" or justified, allowing structural violence to continue even when direct violence is lessened.
Cultural Violence Deepened (Page 6)
The way symbolic language, everyday conversations, and institutional practices interact can make violence seem normal and acceptable. King's insights on language (e.g., words associated with blackness or whiteness) are a good example.
Humiliation and Internalized Subordination: Cultural violence can embed and normalize the oppression of groups through language, ideas, and social practices. This contributes to the "mind and spirit" injuries that come with structural violence.
Broader Context: Springs notes that cultural violence can operate even when civil rights are legally protected. It maintains subtle discriminatory perceptions, often under the guise of being "not racist" or "color-blind."
King's Example Again: The Birmingham clergy's authority increased the belief that non-violent policing was fair. This cultural validation helped preserve the existing unfair system and reduced accountability for the underlying injustice.
Key Takeaway: Cultural violence isn't just a background issue; it actively shapes how violence is seen, justified, or fought against. It can hide structural violence behind what looks like "non-violent" language and actions.
Real-World Example (Page 7)
Zoltan/Jean Zaru's Account (Palestinian Context): Zaru uses the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to show how cultural and structural violence, language, and power are intertwined in ongoing conflicts.
Language Manipulation: Zaru points out that powerful groups manipulate terms like "violence," "non-violence," "terrorism," and "security." They use these words to make their own actions seem right and others' actions seem wrong.
Stone-Throwing Example: When asked about students throwing stones, Zaru explains that focusing only on the stone-throwing misses the larger story of Israeli occupation and the daily structural violence Palestinians face.
Zaru's Point: The language used by powerful actors reflects their power. The most crucial thing is to be sensitive to the context and to reflect critically on how non-violence is applied.
Impact: Zaru's work shows how "cultural structural violence" (where culture justifies structural harm) and "religious structural violence" (where religion justifies harm) operate. It highlights how language can hide specific forms of violence.
Practical Lesson: Non-violence must be used with careful attention to cultural and structural aspects, not as a one-size-fits-all solution.
Zaru's Example Continued (Page 8)
Palestinian Stone-Throwing: This example further shows how cultural violence comes from pre-existing ideas in language about what counts as violence, non-violence, and legitimate resistance. It demonstrates how the way things are talked about shapes how violence is judged and what actions are considered valid resistance.
Main Point: Words like "violence," "terrorism," and "law and order" are not neutral; they reflect power imbalances and influence how actions are judged. This reinforces why structural and cultural violence lenses are vital in any peace effort.
Conclusion from Zaru: When evaluating non-violence, it's essential to be sensitive to the specific context and to constantly reflect on your own assumptions. Fixed or universal ideas of non-violence fail to understand how violence works in different power situations.
Applying the Multi-Focal Lens (Page 9)
Practical Impact: Springs argues that using lenses of structural and cultural violence forces activists and thinkers to rethink non-violence and come up with new strategies and tools.
Birmingham (1963) Re-examined: When police, under Bull Connor, used brutal force (fire hoses, dogs) against protestors, traditional views of non-violence might see this as making the protest less effective. But through the structural/cultural violence lens, these tactics actually exposed the moral illegitimacy of the system and gained sympathy for protestors globally.
Gene Sharp's Political Jiu-Jitsu: This idea suggests redirecting an opponent's force to weaken their position. The 1963 Birmingham case tests this: what happens when the opponent uses restraint? The clergy's cultural influence supported the police's restraint and portrayed protestors as trouble-makers, thus helping maintain the unfair status quo.
Analysis: Non-violent action can be effective when it redirects power ("political jiu-jitsu"), but it can also be misused by cultural violence to keep structural violence going.
Overall Point: The connection (or lack thereof) between means (how you act) and ends (what you want to achieve) is vital. Non-violence cannot be separated from the structural and cultural context it operates within.
Deeper Look at "Means and Ends" (Page 10)
The Birmingham clergy's actions are seen as cultural violence supporting a structurally unjust system. The police's apparent non-violent restraint protected a racist order.
Movement's Strategy: Civil rights leaders (SCLC and King) developed tactics to expose this hypocrisy and dismantle the cultural ideas that supported the status quo. This included challenging churches that were complicit in segregation.
"Cultural Jiu-Jitsu": Instead of just physically resisting the police, activists aimed to reveal and change the cultural violence that justified police actions. The goal was to turn cultural violence into a force for justice.
Birmingham Church Testing (Kneel-ins): This strategy involved peacefully attempting to worship in segregated white churches. It aimed to expose the hypocrisy of churches that preached reconciliation but maintained segregation. These actions used non-violent means to uncover and challenge cultural violence embedded in religious institutions.
Result: The kneel-ins highlighted contradictions, challenged ministers and congregations, and sometimes led to integration or openness within churches.
Broader Significance: These tactics show that for non-violent action to be truly transformative, it must address cultural violence in addition to direct and structural violence.
Church Testing Continued (Page 11)
During Easter week 1963 in Birmingham, civil rights activists confronted segregated churches by trying to worship with white members. They often faced rejection or hostility from white churchgoers. These actions aimed to expose hypocrisy and pressure religious leaders who supported police restraint and gradual reform rather than immediate change.
Outcomes: Some ministers eventually allowed or welcomed integrated worship, while others resisted. These events received widespread media attention, challenging the legitimacy of segregationist religious institutions and the cultural ideas that upheld them.
Strategic Logic: These actions can be viewed as a form of "cultural violence" because they reveal and challenge the moral legitimacy of the segregationist system, even though the activists themselves were non-violent. They show how non-violent action can be re-tooled to confront structural and cultural violence simultaneously.
Author's Summary: The Birmingham case proves that non-violent action must pay as much attention to cultural violence as it does to direct and structural violence if it truly wants to bring about fundamental change.
Conclusion (Page 12)
Summary of Argument: Including structural and cultural violence perspectives is vital for non-violent work. These perspectives challenge the idea that non-violence is always truly non-violent and show how non-violent strategies can accidentally maintain structural violence if not applied carefully.
Practical Use: These perspectives offer new strategies and tools for non-violent activists. The Birmingham example demonstrates how non-violent action can be reframed to tackle structural and cultural violence more effectively, and how seemingly "non-violent" actions can be used to expose and dismantle unfair social systems.
The paper stresses that non-violence must be used with critical thought and self-reflection, considering how cultural norms, language, religious institutions, and social structures contribute to violence in complex ways.
About the Author and Takeaway (Page 15)
Jason A. Springs: He is an Associate Professor specializing in religion, ethics, and peace studies. His research includes restorative justice, religious tolerance, and ethics in conflict.
Overall Takeaway: The article argues for a detailed look at violence – direct, structural, and cultural. It shows how applying these ideas to non-violence provides deeper ethical understanding and better strategies for peace. By looking at King's work in Birmingham and Zaru's experience in Palestine, Springs demonstrates that non-violence must be carefully evaluated and adjusted to address multiple forms of violence, so it doesn't accidentally support the very injustice it seeks to oppose.