Abstract
Amongst the underlying assumptions of the disability movement is that suffering of people with disability is caused by systematic discrimination. In this chapter a stronger term is proposed to illustrate and explain the sort of suffering afflicting systematically the inhabitants of polio-squats. It is suggested that rather than discrimination, it is structural violence that makes their life unbearable and that as victims of structural violence the polio-disabled partake in a larger community of destiny: that of the urban poor. Relating a single but emblematic story about an ordinary land dispute involving a polio community, this chapter shows that the source of violence can be found in the very state that claims to work hard on eliminating discrimination.
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- 1.
The local media broadly covered the incident. From related articles see: http://sierraleonenewshunters2011.blogspot.hu/2011_06_01_archive.html (accessed: 19 August 2013).
- 2.
As this book goes to press, global politics is concerned with sorting out ‘fake news’ from reliable accounts. This new hunt for truth seems to indicate that rumours are gaining political power everywhere. Like rumours, ‘fake news’ is not invented out of whole cloth, but takes on a certain reading of events that usually lacks empirical foundations.
- 3.
Since then the asphalt road has been extended until and beyond Emergency, shortening the travel time from 1 hour to 15 minutes.
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Szántó, D. (2020). Discrimination as Structural Violence. In: Politicising Polio. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6111-1_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6111-1_5
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