Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- List of abbreviations
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- one Introduction
- two Defining social harm
- three Capitalist formations and the production of harm
- four Harm reduction regimes and the production of physical harm
- five Harm reduction regimes and the production of autonomy and relational harms
- six Harm reduction regimes, neoliberalism and the production of harm
- References
- Index
one - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 March 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- List of abbreviations
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- one Introduction
- two Defining social harm
- three Capitalist formations and the production of harm
- four Harm reduction regimes and the production of physical harm
- five Harm reduction regimes and the production of autonomy and relational harms
- six Harm reduction regimes, neoliberalism and the production of harm
- References
- Index
Summary
When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another, such injury that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call this deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death … when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live … forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, to remain in such conditions, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual … which seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. (Engels, 1845/1987, p 127)
So many of the sentiments conveyed through Engels’ analysis in The condition of the working class in England (1845/1987) resonate with the themes of this book. For me, the analysis presented by Engels is one of the original, if not the original, social harm analysis. Engels not only described in forensic detail the harms visited on the proletariat in the Great Towns as they underwent immense social and economic transformation during the Industrial Revolution, but crucially he understood these harms as entirely preventable, a product of social relations that could be organised very differently to meet the needs of the many and not just the few. Engels correctly identified the disease, squalor and deprivation endured at this point in time, not to be ‘natural’, but an ‘inevitable consequence’ of the laissez-faire mode of capitalism that dominated 19th-century England. While critical scholars have sporadically engaged with such issues over time – particularly through the notions of structural violence and social injury – this form of analysis over the last 30 years has arguably been marginalised within the social sciences, giving way in many instances to individualised accounts of harm.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Harmful SocietiesUnderstanding Social Harm, pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2015