Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of lifeand deathin extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience working in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world’s poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence. Farmer challenges conventional thinking within human rights circles and exposes the relationships between political and economic injustice, on one hand, and the suffering and illness of the powerless, on the other. Farmer shows that the same social forces that give rise to epidemic diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis also sculpt risk for human rights violations. He illustrates the ways that racism and gender inequality in the United States are embodied as disease and death. Yet this book is far from a hopeless inventory of abuse. Farmer’s disturbing examples are linked to a guarded optimism that new medical and social technologies will develop in tandem with a more informed sense of social justice. Otherwise, he concludes, we will be guilty of managing social inequality rather than addressing structural violence. Farmer’s urgent plea to think about human rights in the context of global public health and to consider critical issues of quality and access for the world’s poor should be of fundamental concern to a world characterized by the bizarre proximity of surfeit and suffering.

Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor

Politics & Social Sciences

Paul Farmer

Social Sciences

University of California Press

Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of illness, of life—and death—in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience studying diseases in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world’s poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. A thoughtful memoir with passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence. Farmer challenges conventional thinking within human rights circles and exposes the relationships between political and economic injustice, on one hand, and the suffering and illness of the powerless, on the other. Farmer shows that the same social forces that give rise to epidemic diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis also sculpt risk for human rights violations. He illustrates the ways that racism and gender inequality in the United States are mirrored in pathology, plague, disease and death. Yet this doctor’s autobiography is far from a hopeless inventory of human suffering. Farmer’s disturbing examples are linked to a guarded optimism that new medical and social technologies will develop in tandem with a more informed sense of social justice. Otherwise, he concludes, we will be guilty of managing social inequality rather than addressing structural violence. Farmer’s urgent plea to think about human rights in the context of global public health and to consider critical issues of quality and access for the world’s poor should be of fundamental concern to pathologists, medical students, and humanitarians in a world characterized by the bizarre proximity of surfeit and suffering.

Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (California Series in Public Anthropology) (Volume 4)

Reference

Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues

Pathologies of Power

Do Not Ask Me was a critical selection of key works exhibited in a one person exhibition in 2006 at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art. This monograph expands the scope of the exhibition to present a complex, original aesthetic and an extraordinary range of issues that intersect human experience, including intellectual and scientific investigation, dreams, wars, and political and social concerns.

Do Not Ask Me: Mel Chin

Marcia Brennan

Mel Chin

James Harithas

James Metcalf

Arts & Photography

Ineri Publishing, Station Museum of Contemporary Art

Dealing with the Tough Stuff: Practical Solutions for School Administrators

John Gabriel

Jossey-Bass

To Repair the World

Anthropology

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio

Haiti After the Earthquake

Path Out of Poverty

Jennie W. Block

Steve Reifenberg

PublicAffairs

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Books by Paul Farmer