The term structural violence was a term coined by Johan Galtung to articulate the hidden side of violence in our midst that is built into the structure of society itself and therefore is more difficult to pinpoint and eradicate. It causes much suffering and can lead to conflict, war, and genocide. While direct, physical violence gets much more attention, the injustice that is built into almost all social systems can cause equal or greater harm.

As Gandhi said, “It little matters to me whether you shoot a man or starve him to death by inches.”

Structural violence is part of the system. Moreover, it is much easier for those who have set up and/or benefit from unjust structures to ignore what they have done unless more or less forced to do so – a kind of awakening that is often the job of nonviolent resistors. Poverty, for instance, is a manifestation of a violent class system, and bell hooks describes the intersection of the hegemonic institutional, and violent structures of race, class and gender in society as the ‘white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.’ This interlocking oppressive structure is what we want to transcend and move beyond in a nonviolent manner.

The old ironic saying that “the law is impartial: both rich and poor are forbidden from sleeping under the bridge” is an implicit recognition of structural violence and the power of controlling systems in a society to both create and ignore it. Structural violence is effectively countered in most cases by Constructive Program.