Disease and Disparities: The Structural Violence in the Time of Our Covidized Lives

• Main Author: Agcaoili, Aurelio S.
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: COVID-19; democratic deficit disease; disparities; flawed democracy; pandemic; social structures; structural violence
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/budhi/vol24/iss1/4; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/budhi/article/1479/viewcontent/Budhi_2024.1_204_20Article_20__20Agcaoili.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

The paper argues that when a country’s social structures— political, economic, and cultural—are arranged such that the arrangement results in a dichotomy between the class of the privileged and the class of the less privileged, any act of addressing a pandemic such as the COVID-19 will always end up in another pandemic: the pandemic of government neglect and ineptitude. There is only one way out in ensuring that this double pandemic can be addressed: a return to the foundations of a good life for all—a democracy that secures that the good of collective life is for all.