California Series in Public Anthropology - 4: Pathologies of Power

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Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life—and death—in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with two decades of experience in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world’s poor is the most crucial human rights struggle of our times. Through passionate eyewitness accounts from Russian prisons and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, the book connects individual victims' experiences to a broader analysis of structural violence. Farmer challenges conventional human rights thinking, revealing the links between political and economic injustice and the suffering of the powerless. He demonstrates that the same social forces leading to epidemic diseases like HIV and tuberculosis also increase the risk of human rights violations. Racism and gender inequality in the U.S. are shown to manifest as disease and death. However, the book is not a mere catalog of abuse; Farmer's examples are tied to a guarded optimism that new medical and social technologies can evolve alongside a more informed sense of social justice. He warns that failing to address structural violence will result in merely managing social inequality. Farmer’s urgent call to view human rights through the lens of global public health and to prioritize quality and access for the world’s poor is critical in a world marked by stark contra