Background After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, there was a significant need for basic services such as health, water, food, sanitation, school, protection and security in the largest camp in Port-au-Prince, Park Jean Marie Vincent (PJMV). PJMV IDP camp was located in the commune of Cité Soleil; a slum in Haiti labeled as a red zone and widely regarded as the most insecure place on earth. As a result, the camp residents were left to live on their own contradicting the humanitarian principle of humanity and impartiality. Strong solidarity developed amongst camp residents leading them to organize themselves in order to decrease structural violence. Zanmi Lasante (ZL), a healthcare and human rights organization that works with poorest and most vulnerable communities in Central Plateau, would cross the red zone to accompany the camp residents by providing training, materials, and resources to set up aid activities. Using a qualitative methodology, this study will describe the activities ZL completed and present the outcomes of those activities. This study will argue that the ZL accompaniment helped to decrease structural violence and chaos and allowed the camp residents to persevere. Methods This study is based on a personal story and experience of the researcher in PJMV IDP camp after the 2010 Haitian earthquake. We collected data from semi-structured interviews with 5 ZL staff, 7 camp leaders, and 5 camp residents. The researcher conducted a narrative analysis to recreate a collective memory from four viewpoints: 1) Zanmi Lasante staff; 2) camp leaders; 3) IDP camp residents and 4) the researcher. The researcher used processual methods of qualitative research to identify themes and exemplar narratives to compare and contrast these multiple viewpoints. Results The interviews offered multiple viewpoints on the activities in the camp both before and during the time ZL was active. Activities included creating and staffing a health clinic, training community health workers, establishing a nutrition center, ensuring HIV-AIDS care, and launching a response to the cholera outbreak. In addition, ZL conducted other kinds of activities that put health in the social context, including building a water purification system, establishing a tent village, creating a school program, launching an initiative to protect women from sexual violence, and advocating for food and sanitation. The researcher finds that those additional activities generated good outcomes such as health, security, job creation, capacity building, community engagement and participation, and community empowerment. ZL used a collaborative approach, integrating accompaniment into all activities by working with local residents, leaders and other organizations. This accompaniment decreased structural violence and helped camp residents to be more self-sufficient. The study also explores the challenges of accompaniment as responsibilities for these activities were shifted from ZL to the camp residents and local leaders. Conclusions The goal of this study is to describe the activities conducted by ZL in PJMV from January 2010 to January 2012 and how the approach of offering aid using the accompaniment model impacted the social context in the camp. The researcher recommends that humanitarian aid from within and beyond a disaster affected community be geared toward supporting and partnering with local communities and local organizations. In this way, humanitarian aid will strengthen local communities in a way that may be sustained once these organizations leave.

This qualitative phenomenological study was designed to gain an in-depth understanding of the lived experiences of Nigerian citizens on corruption and conflict. A review of the literature found a gap in the understanding of the lived experiences of participants on corruption and conflict in Nigeria, and this study was designed to fill that gap. Using a purposeful sampling method, the investigator targeted 20 Nigerian citizens who have experienced corruption and conflict. The phenomenological method provided the basis for a reflective structural analysis that exposes the meanings and essences of the lived experiences of the participants on corruption and conflict in Nigeria. Participant interviews showed that many Nigerians encounter bribery on a daily basis because of the following reasons: they were encouraged by a perceived culture of greed, a culture of impunity, a culture of impropriety and a culture of no accountability. All of the participants indicated the need to survive the harsh realities of living in Nigeria. The study revealed a broad variety of corruption and conflict situations in Nigeria. This dissertation adds value and richness to existing body of knowledge, which suggested to policy makers, advocates and civil society of the need to develop policies and strategies to stem corruption as part of a wider strategy for resolving the negative conflicts that currently characterize the socio-political and economic landscape of Nigeria. Overall, as part of the major contributions and objectives, this dissertation illuminated the psychological impacts of corruption and conflict in Nigeria. In other words, this research bridged the gap between the social structural understandings and impacts of corruption and the personal component.

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.

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.