This interpretative case study examines the ways in which socio-spatial exclusion is main-tained though urban planning designs in the informal settlement of Kibera in Kenya. It ap-plies the theoretical and analytical framework of T. Mitchell and A. Church, M. Frost, K. Sullivan to investigate how the urban design of the Kenyan Slum Upgrading Programme (KENSUP) contributes to the maintenance of socio-spatial hierarchies that allow for the ex-clusion of Kibera’s urban residents. This investigation is a reaction to the lacking considera-tion of implanted structural violence in place and urban development.The study found that persisting socio-spatial exclusion of residents in Kibera is in-deed sustained through KENSUP. The built environment functions as power medium that excludes some people based on their socio-spatial status in the city. The applied framework confirmed that the urban planning programme KENSUP maintains existing forms of eco-nomic, physical, and geographic exclusion, besides the exclusion from facilities through the built environment.The findings suggest that urban planning designs require a shift from the focus on the built environment towards the focus on human rights and inclusive participation in order to reduce the structural influence of socio-spatial city hierarchies.

This is a qualitative study that seeks to understand the intersections of food insecurity and chronic diseases in the lives of women living in Mattapan. This research takes place in Mattapan, a neighborhood in Boston. Mattapan is a very diverse and unique community which is home to a majority of people of color. Mattapan is often criticized and viewed as an undesirable place to live for those who live outside of its borders. These negative stereotypes and the presence of structural violence has generated a built site scarcity within the Mattapan community. This makes it incredibly difficult for Black women in Mattapan to be healthy because their environment actively prevents them from doing so. It is important to give women special consideration when looking at food insecurity because more increasingly they are becoming the sole and primary caregivers in their homes. They are responsible for the production and preparation of food within their families. Therefore, it is necessary and important to focus on this particular population and obstacles they endure navigating those obstacles. This research focuses on how past and present lived experiences of women of color in Mattapan inform how these women identify, understand, define, and interpret structural factors that contribute to food insecurity, and chronic diseases. Having access to fresh and affordable food is one of the most basic necessities of life. Yet, many communities of color across the country lack this basic access. Twenty percent of all African American household’s experience food insecurity compared 12.5 percent of the nation as a whole. In addition, African-American women are almost twice as likely to be overweight and obese compared to non-Hispanic White women. With such grave proportions of African-Americans suffering from chronic diseases, it is important to consider the ways in which obesity systematically occurs. Structural violence and the presence of structural barriers inhibit Black women from eating healthy. In predominately Black and immigrant communities like Mattapan, the environment is a major barrier that women must navigate every day in order to achieve healthiness.

The family law system effectuates case outcomes affecting the lives of parents, children, and society through court orders imposing important life decisions upon divorcing or unmarried parents, children, and post divorce families. While some cases are resolved in alternative dispute resolution forums, others enter the courtroom and judicial decisions cause unintended consequences for millions of adults and children each year. This research details a parent’s suboptimal family law system experience caused by judicial decision-making, highlighting the need to examine the causes of unintended systemic outcomes. The purpose of this research is to raise awareness and provide justification for systemic reform to prevent unintended consequences of court ordered outcomes caused by underlying structural violence. Conflicting objectives of litigants and problem solvers are investigated to determine the causes of systemic failures so recommendations for improved outcomes can be formulated. Theories of justice, civil rights, public policy, systems, structural violence, and nonviolence are integral components of this research. Applied theory in the context of the researcher’s experience highlights the need to address this social system issue while demonstrating the system intended to resolve disputes actually exacerbates conflict, resulting in more disputes. This research contributes to the literature because many litigants are unable to share their stories due to their oppressed condition within the system. This autoethnography documents the effects of a social system for conflict management gone awry and establishes a foundation to promote dialogue in support of a new way to manage disputes that is conducive to conflict resolution instead of conflict escalation.

Indigenous populations in the U.S. have been suffering from a youth suicide epidemic for decades. The epidemic and risk factors associated with it can be connected to the mistreatment of Native Americans throughout history which has caused their communities to suffer from numerous inequalities such as poverty, inadequate housing, loss of land, and destruction of culture. Using the concepts of biopolitics, post-colonialism, and structural violence, I argue that the social and political institutions forced upon Native American communities have led to increased alcohol and drug abuse, poverty, and disempowerment, all important factors that aid in the youth suicide epidemic. I also suggests that preventative programs not only focus on suicide but other risk factors involved such as alcohol and drug abuse.

Refugee Resettlement Agencies in the United States make headlines because of the people they help, but what about the immigrant support providers doing the work? In Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts there are organizations that open their doors to newly arrived people needing assistance. The purpose of this case study was to explore the experience of working as a resettlement provider for immigrants in Massachusetts between 2016 and 2021. I argue that Donald Trump’s policy decisions were a form of structural violence against and experienced by the resettlement organizations contracted to the federal government to assist refugees. Preliminary literature reviews showed research on refugees was saturated. A few articles discussed psychological impacts on providers in a clinical setting or presented quantitative analyses of immigration statistics. My research is a novel ethnographic case study of the resettlement organizations. This study was conducted over three years during the COVID-19 pandemic. I examined the effect of changes to the body-politic, the social-body, and the body-self levels of experience. By using a holistic model of health, I connect these experiences to the physical, social, and psychological dimensions of wellbeing. Throughout the fourth chapter, I argue that Trump’s pernicious executive policy decisions were intentional acts of violent against resettlement organizations across the United States. The anti-immigrant rhetoric in the media and policies, combined with increased xenophobia withdrew vital physical and social resources for providers. This created a shift in the hegemonic forces in the United States that impacted organization and refugees alike. Chapter Five argues that Massachusetts resettlement organizations were impacted through implicit effects at the state and community levels. As the pressure of their work increased and their community relationship became more complicated, their precarity was compounded by COVID-19. This is illustrated through the starvation of the social-body and subsequent re-feeding they experienced. Finally, Chapter Six argues that individual resettlement providers experienced a state of precarious wellbeing. They had to develop creative coping mechanisms to work through the precarity after being flooded with new arrivals. The providers embodied this precarity on a personal level, though not passively. They pushed back against the Trump Administration’s violence through interagency legal action, solid community partnerships, and individual coping mechanisms.

This interdisciplinary study combines epidemiological data with anthropological theory to investigate the relationship between HIV transmission rates and systemic homophobia. Previous research has illustrated the link between high levels of structural violence and structural stigma to increased risk of diseases such as the link between African-Americans and heart disease. This study investigates the relationship between systemic homophobia and HIV transmission rates. Through operationalizing homophobia into seven distinct factors, I evaluated systemic homophobia in six countries, assigning a score 1-10 to each factor using secondary source aggregation. I compared composite scores, as well as scores in each operationalized factor to HIV transmission rates in those countries. The results of this study indicate a correlation between systemic homophobia and increased HIV transmission, particularly in respect to the factors Marriage Equality, LGBT Laws, Religiosity, LGBT Visibility, and Hate Crimes. Though various sociocultural factors play a role in HIV transmission, this study indicates that homophobia plays an integral role in HIV transmission. This project has pertinent applications in epidemiology, anthropology and public health illustrating the integral role of sociocultural and systemic factors that increase structural violence and risk for a disease.

Like many former colonised countries, Haiti has been plagued by insecurity and conflicts caused by internal and external influences as well as natural disasters. In 1804, after a protracted conflict between slaves and French colonialists, Haiti became the first black country to gain its independence through a revolution. Today, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, ranking 153rd on the Human Development Index and a significant number of humanitarian organisations are present on the island aspiring at improving the standard of living of the population. The following study examines how the relationships of power emerging through the relationship between humanitarian and local leaders affect their perceptions of each other and identified the emotions emerging from these perceptions. The perceptions identified are the coloniality of power, corruption and distrust, the occurrence of conspiracy theories and the obstacles encountered in the implementation of a relief-development continuum model envisioned by general humanitarian policies. These perceptions create tensions between the humanitarian and local leaders, contributing to fuelling negative emotions such as regret, sadness, sense of failure, disappointment and anger. Negative emotions in this study affect the collaboration between humanitarians and local leaders, diminishing the positive influences and impact of humanitarian action on the well-being of the Haitian population. One of the components to increase these positive influences of humanitarian action is to lessen the asymmetricality of power between humanitarian and local leaders through the adoption of a Cultural Competence model by humanitarians.

Research in Canada and Turkey suggests that LGBTQ asylum seekers are particularly vulnerable among an already marginalized group, the refugee community, where different forms of structural violence manifest itself in particular ways towards gay refugees.Given that few studies exist in the Swedish context, the aim is to gain a preliminaryunderstanding of LGBTQ refugee’s experiences of structural violence in Sweden, legally,socially and economically.The material is based on interviews of four male gay refugees from different countries all living in Malmö.Using a thematic analysis by categorizing the material into patterns of meaning, two mainthemes have been identified: structural violence in the asylum system and structural violence in social life. The intersectionality theory will be applied in order to understand how oppression expresses itself in particular ways towards these individuals, because of their intersecting identity as gay and as refugee.The results indicate that LGBTQ refugees experience structural violence through economic marginalization and the re-telling of traumatic experiences in the asylum process. However, structural violence expressed via social marginalization they cannot be sufficiently understood through the intersectionality theory, urging future studies to further explore and expand the topic and scope of the thesis.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-79). / The following study is an ethnographic exploration into young people’s entangled experiences of health and illness in relation to both HIV/AIDS and traditional forms of healing. The research employed a creative, didactic methodology based around a series of workshops conducted with two non-governmental organisations based in Grahamstown’s peri-urban townships: The first, Siyapumelela, maintains a focus on youth and HIV/AIDS; the second, Sakhuluntu, is a cultural group aimed at keeping young people off the streets. The argument begins by challenging the dichotomous relationship that is maintained between Modern Scientific Medicine and traditional forms of healing and calls for a dual standard system in which both epistemologies can be free to operate according to their own medical standards. The study explores young people’s therapeutic environments and tracks, in particular, how young people talk about and represent HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS is discussed as a concept metaphor; a domain term that orients a person towards areas of shared exchange and meaning. It is clear that most young people have a well-informed biomedical understanding of HIV/AIDS, yet metaphorically, they see it as a dangerous and destructive force; an uncertain threat in the world. The research poses the question as to why young people continue to put themselves at risk of contracting HIV by exploring the social environments which many young people are subject to – environments that are often characterised by extreme social structural violence. The argument examines the nature of social structural violence as it plays itself out in the everyday lives of the participants and identifies the kinds of challenges that many of them face on a day-to-day basis. Due to fragmented avenues of support and conditions of domestic fluidity, many young people from structurally violent communities are left with feelings of vulnerability and insecurity. Alongside experiences of social and structural insecurity, young people also harbour a sense of spiritual insecurity that stems from the dissolution of the ancestral cult as a result of the historical, yet persisting, fragmentation and reorganisation of the African family unit. The research discusses a form of spirit possession known as Amakhosi that young people engage in in order to (re)gain a sense of security and protection from forces beyond their control.

There is no one clear concept of peace in peace education. A large part of peace education recognizes and discusses different forms of violence and how they affect peace. Peace education is a broad field and finds connections to critical peace education, feminism, sustainability, the United Nations, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Using transnational feminist theory and a transnational feminist critical discourse analysis, this thesis problematizes the peace discourse that is created in peace educational material from World’s Largest Lesson. In order to problematize the overall peace discourse, this thesis critically explores the knowledge that is produced through discussions of different forms of violence. The peace education materials were selected based on their relevance to peace education occurring in relation to education for the Sustainable Development Goals.  The materials were also selected based on their aim to produce knowledge specifically related to concepts of peace and violence. The thesis finds that overall, the knowledge produced in the materials deemphasizes the interconnectedness of different forms of violence and, therefore, creates a peace discourse that is decontextualized, dehistoricized, depoliticized, privileges individuals, and maintains the status quo. The thesis also discusses pedagogical implications in relation to Mohanty’s (2003) discussion of different pedagogical strategies. It is argued that the peace discourse in World’s Largest Lesson contributes to a peace as tourist pedagogical model. The thesis also offers insights into a peace as solidarity pedagogical model before calling for change