Talk:Structural abuse

Thanks

I want to thank the authors of this page to date for their thorough, clear, concise, and neutral treatment of this subject. Specifically avoiding the popular waves of racism and sexism often inherent in this discussion. Keep up the good work. 75.119.247.25 (talk) 10:39, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Start

Hi!

We need more material on this. Please add relevant stuff. Links and references appreciated. Also, how does one place the content box on the page?

Supriya 01:05, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

If you want help with the article I'm not sure why you removed the tags from it. Those are designed to draw people in to work on it. If there are no tags and doesn't fall under a particular WikiProject it is very unlikely anyone will see it and make improvements to it. BradV 01:11, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, BradV. Sorry. I didn't realize that. Can you place the tags back? I'm a bit of a novice on wiki, yet :-) I'll try to do that myself, anyway. --Supriya 14:06, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

And hey, the tag says that the article 'does not cite references'. We have references now. I just want it to display the message for needing help on it. Because references are there, so no point keeping that tag on it. We just keep needing more material. That's all. --Supriya 14:08, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

it isn't clear which reference you are basing your claims on. Your claims that "Instances of structural abuse can be found in the events of the Gujarat riots that took place in India in 2002, in the US invasion of Iraq" appears to be eminently political, and do not appear to be attributed to any of the sources given. Likewise, the claim about "deep-set patriarchal values" etc. isn't referenced to any source. The list given is completely unreferenced. So "Children being beaten to death in schools" is an instance of structural abuse. What sort of example is that? How about "children being hung, drawn, quartered, and impaled in the schoolyard for public deterrance by their teachers" as an example? You can't just make up examples, you need to say where you got them from. dab (𒁳) 11:29, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

dab, you are right about the missing reference links. However, these are not "made-up examples". These are things which have actually happened - 'children being beaten to death in schools' for one, that is. --Supriya 14:08, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The problem with that is that still falls under original research. If you say "Children beaten in schools is an example of structural abuse", you need to find a reference that says that children beaten in schools is an example of structural abuse. If you say that the Gujarat riots are an example of that sort of structural abuse, you need to find a source that says exactly that. A source that says that they happened, but does not mention the term "structural abuse", is not sufficient for this article's purposes. I'm not explaining it as well as WP:OR and WP:NPOV can. BradV 14:31, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Right BradV, I am working on the article. There are references that need to be linked. These sources are there, I just need to find the time to add the links to the article. Each and every point in the article will have a citation to it. Authority, however is a word that does not require a citation because the term is being used as part of the definition of structural abuse. It implies - according to the philosophy - if one reads the term properly - multiple kinds of authority. Structural abuse has not still been talked about much, and there isn't much literature on it. Besides I don't think the definition / explanation of the very topic that the article is written on requires any citation. --Supriya 14:08, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Merge

Couldn't the page be merged to structural violence? Also, I've basically gutted the page as largely unsourced and WP:OR/WP:SYNTH. The references did not mention structural abuse, they mentioned (as an example) emotional abuse; they're perhaps inappropriate for that page but they're not not here. Even on other abuse-related pages, considering emotional abuse (and sexual, physical, etc) are eminently mainstream academic, if not medical topics, the reliability of sources should be much more than just a web-page. Journal articles, academic textbooks, position statements of major governing bodies, these are the kinds of sources that would be required. Given structural abuse seems to be a fringe topic, with minimal google hits, the bar is somewhat lower. But that low a level of hits suggests that the page should be merged or put in as a section in another page. Google scholar turns up some apparently relevant hits, these should be the sources on which the page is built. WLU (talk) 16:39, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

No, I don't think the two can be merged. I'll explain why - structural abuse is diiferent from structural ''violence''; these are two different terms if you look at the google results of these two topics. Structural abuse is used for a more micro level abuse (emotional, psychological); structural violence for a more macro one (economical, political). There are a lot of things that structural violence does not include. Emotional abuse, psychological abuse - these things fall under gender violence also. They fall under numerous topics, and structural abuse is one of them. In that case, one should not talk about emotional abuse on the gender violence page also? Secondly, the page is not unsourced. It had a lot of sources; there was literature listed. I do not think it is a good idea to merge the two pages. I am reverting your edits, WLU, you should have spoken about this here before doing that. --Supriya 11:39, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Further, the similarity and difference between structural abuse and structural violence is this: structural abuse looks at what an individual has suffered under an authority; structural violence also looks at what an individual has suffered under an authority. However the difference between the two is that structural abuse is about any kind of abuse (also meaning misuse in a larger sense) of power; structural violence is about direct violence. Sometimes abuse doesn't mean "violence" - to abuse your power is different from merely violating some rules under which you function. Hence, structural abuse looks at a holistic misuse of power in a social set up and not just incidents of violence that have occurred here and there. Therefore, structural abuse is able to take even micro-factors like psychological and emotional abuse into account; structural violence looks at only the effects of violence on the basis of more political and macro events that have occurred. If you look at the google results, you'll find that. Also, have added more sources and links. Please have a look at them. Supriya 12:04, 25 June 2008 (UTC)