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A review by jackwwang
Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer
4.0
It's a rare enough occasion when a book fundamentally changes your mind about something in a meaningful way. This 2001 book from Paul Farmer did just that, it has fundamentally pivoted the way I see neoliberal capitalism, inequality and poverty, and the suffering arising from these. Whatever complaints I might raise later in this review, the fact that it has made me see a part of the world in a new light is amongst the highest praise I can offer.
To me this was a book about so called "stupid deaths," and the systems, regimes, and causes underlying the conditions that allow them to happen. These are deaths caused by conditions readily treatable by modern medicines: infections, tuberculosis, AIDS, etc. These are deaths that almost exclusively plague the poor, and the structured way in which the poor are both more susceptible to contracting these conditions, and the systemic way that they are consistently precluded from receiving the care that would save their lives is what Farmer calls "structural violence," Stupid deaths and the idea of structural violence.
Farmer boldly implicates neoliberalism, by which he means:
The "ideology that advocates the dominance nance of a competition-driven market model. Within this doctrine, individuals viduals in a society are viewed, if viewed at all, as autonomous, rational producers and consumers whose decisions are motivated primarily by economic or material concerns."
I felt very called out by this argument. Farmer insists that I, indeed all of us (anyone reading this review is extremely likely to be a beneficiary of the neoliberal order) are complicit in simply benefitting from the neoliberal regime. Such an order is portrayed as one in which the beneficiaries reap the fruits because the poor necessarily must suffer. It's an indictment that, reviewing the history of the last few centuries, I find difficulty mustering up s compelling argument against.
Farmer's voice is seething with anger. Given how he views the world and the amount of suffering he has witnessed, I don't blame him. In fact the fact that this book has turned me around in a lot of ways is likely due in large part due to the conveyed sense of indignation and urgency.
Farmer goes through examples of structural violence and the firsthand accounts of its victims in Haiti, Chiapas, and TB in Russian prisons. He makes a compelling argument that the best first step to acknowledge and addressing these problems is to listen to the voices of the victims. All too often we dismiss and silence these voices in favor of academic thoughts from the west, or our own half baked paternalistic ideas of what's best for others. If there's one clear takeaway from this work, it must be that we must stop silencing the voice of the poor.
Lastly however, there is a gap between describing the wrong and prescribing a right. In this sense I was left wanting by the end. Farmer strongly spoke for "social justice" without clearly explaining what that entails and how it will right the wrongs he has described. He does not quite own up to the fact that he has not offered a blueprint for fighting structural violence systemically. I do not mean to trivialize his calling attention to silenced voices and systemic injustices all too often muted, but he seems to give the impression that the path to addressing these issues is clear and doesn't quite acknowledge that it'll be a very hairy problem to disentangle. Maybe I'm just frustrated that the answers are not clear now that I've started acknowledging the problems.
For all human beings capable of empathy, this is strongly urged reading.
To me this was a book about so called "stupid deaths," and the systems, regimes, and causes underlying the conditions that allow them to happen. These are deaths caused by conditions readily treatable by modern medicines: infections, tuberculosis, AIDS, etc. These are deaths that almost exclusively plague the poor, and the structured way in which the poor are both more susceptible to contracting these conditions, and the systemic way that they are consistently precluded from receiving the care that would save their lives is what Farmer calls "structural violence," Stupid deaths and the idea of structural violence.
Farmer boldly implicates neoliberalism, by which he means:
The "ideology that advocates the dominance nance of a competition-driven market model. Within this doctrine, individuals viduals in a society are viewed, if viewed at all, as autonomous, rational producers and consumers whose decisions are motivated primarily by economic or material concerns."
I felt very called out by this argument. Farmer insists that I, indeed all of us (anyone reading this review is extremely likely to be a beneficiary of the neoliberal order) are complicit in simply benefitting from the neoliberal regime. Such an order is portrayed as one in which the beneficiaries reap the fruits because the poor necessarily must suffer. It's an indictment that, reviewing the history of the last few centuries, I find difficulty mustering up s compelling argument against.
Farmer's voice is seething with anger. Given how he views the world and the amount of suffering he has witnessed, I don't blame him. In fact the fact that this book has turned me around in a lot of ways is likely due in large part due to the conveyed sense of indignation and urgency.
Farmer goes through examples of structural violence and the firsthand accounts of its victims in Haiti, Chiapas, and TB in Russian prisons. He makes a compelling argument that the best first step to acknowledge and addressing these problems is to listen to the voices of the victims. All too often we dismiss and silence these voices in favor of academic thoughts from the west, or our own half baked paternalistic ideas of what's best for others. If there's one clear takeaway from this work, it must be that we must stop silencing the voice of the poor.
Lastly however, there is a gap between describing the wrong and prescribing a right. In this sense I was left wanting by the end. Farmer strongly spoke for "social justice" without clearly explaining what that entails and how it will right the wrongs he has described. He does not quite own up to the fact that he has not offered a blueprint for fighting structural violence systemically. I do not mean to trivialize his calling attention to silenced voices and systemic injustices all too often muted, but he seems to give the impression that the path to addressing these issues is clear and doesn't quite acknowledge that it'll be a very hairy problem to disentangle. Maybe I'm just frustrated that the answers are not clear now that I've started acknowledging the problems.
For all human beings capable of empathy, this is strongly urged reading.