Violence in Small Places and Imaginative Empathy

MDP 500 FOUNDATIONS OF DEVELOPMENT:
THEORIES AND HISTORY
Open-Form Writing Assignment:
Violence in Small Places and Imaginative Empathy
This week we will shift from working directly with images to using words to craft an image. In this case, we would like you to draw inspiration from this weeks readings, particularly A Small Place, as well as the concept of structural violence, to create a piece of writing that tells a story about structural violence as it is experienced by individuals. Often, and particularly in scholarly settings, we talk about things like structural violence as they relate to a social group, demographic, gender, etc. But these concepts are always and at all times experienced by individuals and in the context of their daily lives and interactions. This exercise is intended for you to think about the ways that the experiences of structural violence play out in daily life.
This assignment is open-form, and we welcome creative interpretations. Some suggestions might be: a poem, a diary entry, a postcard (or series of postcards), a biographical sketch, a dialogue/piece of a script. You may way to play around with perspectives, taking up the position of someone experiencing or perpetrating structural violence, or both. It might be interesting to think about how two different perspectives might experience the same image (like a postcard or advertisement) or situation (an encounter in a supermarket or any other space of interaction). If you are having trouble deciding on a format, feel free to reach out to your professor to help with brainstorming.
I am not setting a word limit to respect the open-form nature of the assignment. However, I would like you to write a few sentences explaining the form of your piece and the perspective you are taking. Please submit to assignments as well as post in discussion board by Monday, October 5, 2020 at noon.
Additional resources to use:
On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below Author(s): Paul Farmer
Source: Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, Vol. 3, No. 1, Race and the Global Politics of Health Inequity (Autumn, 2009), pp. 11-28 Published by: Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25595022 .
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