Structural Violence in Traditional LD

What is Structural Violence?

In traditional Lincoln-Douglas debate, a common value criterion that you may encounter is some version of minimizing structural violence, often run alongside values like morality or justice.

Structural violence is the result of social structures and institutions which harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs. To minimize structural violence means to recognize and prioritize the needs of the least advantaged and the most oppressed members of society. 

In most traditional cases, minimizing structural violence still functions as a consequentialist framework, it just specifies consequences on the least advantaged as the most important to consider. 

However, it’s important to note that structural violence can also be run in a non-consequentialist way. For example, for the January/February topic (Resolved: The possession of nuclear weapons is immoral), an argument claiming that nuclear weapons are immoral because nuclear testing caused terrible impacts for native communities could fall under a framework of minimizing structural violence. Even if testing is not happening right now, possessing a weapon that was developed in a way that perpetuated native genocide is structurally violent and there exists a deontological rule against doing so. 

Still, in most truly traditional rounds, structural violence still relies on consequences, i.e. you have to prove that you are tangibly mitigating impacts on the least advantaged and minimizing violent power structures. 

When to Run Structural Violence

Minimizing structural violence is very versatile in its applicability and can be argued in a variety of scenarios. However, it typically fits best on topics that most directly have to do with injustice and have sufficient impacts on the least advantaged. 

For example, it would probably be a good idea to run minimizing structural violence on the affirmative case for the topic, “The United States ought to guarantee the right to housing.” Not only is homelessness itself a disadvantaging factor, but structurally violent systems have also caused racial minorities to be disproportionately homeless. Thus, minimizing structural violence would be a highly effective standard in this scenario. 

Additionally, it may be good to run structural violence when consequentialism is a common standard on the other side of the resolution and large-scale consequences are skewed to that side. In this case, running structural violence allows you to take out big-stick consequences with framing, rather than trying to outweigh them consequentially.

This is also true for the resolution about the right to housing. Common neg arguments were high-magnitude impacts like market disruptions and immigration crises. Minimizing structural violence is a good way to offset arguments like these by establishing that other impacts are subordinate to impacts on the least advantaged. 

How to Run Structural Violence

If you’re looking to argue structural violence, the best place to start is Winter & Leighton 99. In pretty much all cases where structural violence is run effectively, some version of the following card will likely be brought up: 

This explains the key reasons why structural violence is bad and why we have a moral obligation to reject it.

This card also works very well to rhetorically link minimizing structural violence to both morality and justice, as it indicts both moral exclusion and the inability to recognize the injustices that the oppressed face. So, regardless of which value you choose to run, this card will likely serve you well. 

If the oppressed bear the brunt of a resolution, i.e. the impacts disproportionately affect the least advantaged, then that would also be a good justification for a framework of minimizing structural violence. 

If you’re running justice as a value, a strong, quick, and rhetorically sound reason to use minimizing structural violence as the weighing mechanism is that the disadvantaged lack justice the most, so prioritizing them is key to achieving the value. 

If you’re going up against someone running pure consequentialism, then you’ll want to make the case that there’s no reason why aggregating every single consequence is ethical. You’ll want to clearly explain why structural violence is the most important consequence and why it ought to be weighed first before any other considerations. 

It might also be a good idea to make the argument that structural violence is the most lethal form of violence, which allows you to still outweigh consequentially if you can mitigate it. This can be shown through the following card: 

How to Respond to Structural Violence

There are several ways in which you can respond to minimizing structural violence. You can… 

• Turn it by cross applying some impact or multiple impacts and then explaining how those worsen structural violence. This can also be a good way to say that you win under both, regardless of which framework the judge buys. 

• Explain why your standard should be preferred. If it’s consequentialism, you could say that it’s more holistic to the topic and that structural violence is ultimately just one consequence, there’s no reason why we look to it above all others. If it’s something else, you could always say that your standard is a prerequisite to minimizing structural violence and explain why. 

• Say that your opponent does not solve for structural violence in a meaningful way. 

• Delink structural violence from their contentions. This can also be done as you go through their case, explaining how they don’t achieve their impacts and thus don’t minimize structural violence. 

While there are more ways than just this, these are some of the most common ways to respond to structural violence. These can be effective at negating, turning, delinking, or at the very least, neutralizing structural violence as a weighing mechanism.