Acts of violence assume many forms: they may travel by
the arc of a guided missile or in the language of an economic policy, and they
may leave behind a smoldering village or a starved child. The all-pervasiveness
of violence makes it seem like an unavoidable, and ultimately incomprehensible,
aspect of the modern world. But, in this detailed and expansive book, Marc Pilisuk and Jen Rountree demonstrate
otherwise. Widespread violence, they argue, is in fact an expression of the
underlying social order, and whether it is carried out by military forces or by
patterns of investment, the aim is to strengthen that order for the benefit of
the powerful.
Structure of Violence marshals vast amounts of evidence to examine the
costs of direct violence, including military preparedness and the social
reverberations of war, alongside the costs of structural violence, expressed as
poverty and chronic illness. It also documents the relatively small number of
people and corporations responsible for facilitating the violent status quo,
whether by setting the range of permissible discussion or benefiting directly as
financiers and manufacturers. The result is a stunning indictment of our
violent world and a powerful critique of the ways through which violence is
reproduced on a daily basis, whether at the highest levels of the state or in
the deepest recesses of the mind.