Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor

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Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor

4.26 of 5 stars 4.26 · rating details · 1,850 ratings · 150 reviews

Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life--and death--in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience working in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our tim...more

Paperback, 438 pages

Published November 22nd 2004 by University of California Press (first published 2003)

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Feb 23, 2008 Maura rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: made-a-huge-impression-on-me, non-fiction, health, human-rights

This book is every human rights activist's dream come true, because Farmer documents his efforts to provide quality health services in poor communities around the world, and he shows how the struggle for adequate health care is unavoidably connected to the struggle for other human rights.

Through various case studies, Farmer demonstrates that, contrary to the claims of most governments and international agencies, public health crises in poor communities can in fact be avoided. Most governments a...more This book is every human rights activist's dream come true, because Farmer documents his efforts to provide quality health services in poor communities around the world, and he shows how the struggle for adequate health care is unavoidably connected to the struggle for other human rights.

Through various case studies, Farmer demonstrates that, contrary to the claims of most governments and international agencies, public health crises in poor communities can in fact be avoided. Most governments and international agencies primarily concern themselves with the cost effectiveness of addressing health crises in poverty-stricken areas; Farmer demonstrates how small things-—like providing patients with a small stipend to buy more nutritious food, giving out mosquito nets, or providing transportation to health clinics-—can prevent disease and increase patients’ chances of recovery. He shows that rather than treating a disease or an individual patient, investments must made in the whole community. Much of his discussion focused on foreign countries, but I was glad to see that he also addressed the U.S.’s denial of adequate health care to the poor. Throughout the book, he stresses that structural violence is the root cause of premature deaths among the poor, and therefore structural violence must be addressed if human rights are to be protected. I appreciated his observation that the human rights movement is also partially to blame for public health crises, because it has largely failed to adequately fight for the recognition of health care as a human right.

Since I don't have a medical background, I found his case study on multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis particularly informative, because he explains how governments and well-meaning international aid organizations can actually make things worse by only partially funding efforts to control TB. Treatment of TB requires intensive and expensive drug therapy, but if patients get the wrong type of drugs, or receive them at the wrong time or in insufficient quantities, their symptoms worsen and the virus becomes even more resistant to drugs, thus further endangering the patient and the public. Farmer uses this to illustrate his main argument: that only substantial, long-term community investments can truly protect the health and human rights of the poor.

Overall, I found Farmer to be incredibly well-informed, eloquent, and thoughtful. Oh yeah, and one of things I appreciated most: nearly all the books I read are 'downers,' ie, they talk about all the depressing problems that plague humanity without really proposing any solutions. Farmer not only discusses solutions, but his case study of Haiti demonstrates how he's actually been able to make a difference in people's lives by tying the struggle for health care into the struggle for other economic rights--access to nutritious food, clean water, transportation, etc. Unlike most books of this genre, it didn't make me feel like giving up in despair--instead, I pulled out my checkbook, and have been donating regularly to his org ever since, because I find their work incredibly admirable and important.

The only reason I'm giving it 4 instead of 5 stars is because I found it a bit dry and hard to get through. I also felt his chapter on the Zapatistas didn't flow well with the rest of the book. (less)

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Apr 05, 2012 Laura rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: textbooks

The first bit of this book was quite gripping and compelling, but like a preacher who doesn't know enough to sit down after he's gotten his point across and quit preaching while his subject - and his audience - are still fresh, Farmer continues to belabour his topic until the reader gets bored, frustrated and possibly aggravated. Farmer is obviously passionate about his topic, as well as dogmatic, but I feel, he's also unrealistically utopian. Yes, I agree that the poor should be able to access...more

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Oct 21, 2011 Rebecca rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, book-of-substance

Paul Farmer is a doctor who, for the last 20 or so years made his lifes' work helping the poor. In this book Farmer takes on the disconnect between being poor and access to proper health care. He uses case studies to explain his point. Having spent most of his time outside of the United States and in countries like Russia and his favorite place, Haiti and Cuba. He weaves personal stories, case notes and well chosen quotes from poets and influential people to tell the story of these chronically d...more

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Jul 29, 2011 Jason Yang rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wow, what a powerful, angry depiction of social injustices in global health. Paul Farmer makes no secret his disdain for the chronic, institutional barriers for deploying modern medical advances to the world's poor (what he terms structural violence).

I found this work both sobering and motivating - sobered by the reality that I live in a hypocritical state, motivated by the opportunity to see things change.

While I overall agree with the challenges toward a change in the global health infrastruct...more

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Jul 31, 2010 Tatiana rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: worldsaving, nonfiction

This book is a clear call to action. If you've been following my reviews, you know that I've had an epiphany of sorts from following Dr. Paul Farmer's work. He's the doctor to the poor, the one who cofounded Partners in Health, which treats poor people in nine different countries all over the world, in some of the settings of extreme poverty. They've been working in Haiti for about 25 years, since the early 80s.

His books have raised my awareness of what's actually going on in the world. This is...more

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Apr 29, 2010 Mariana rated it 5 of 5 stars

I so enjoyed this amazing, angry, revolutionary, and thought-provoking book based on the premise: each human holds the right to effective health care. Paul Farmer practices what he writes for at least 27 years.

"To act as a physician in the service of poor or otherwise oppressed people is to prevent, whenever possible, the diseases that afflict them but also to treat and, if possible, to cure. So where’s the innovation in that? How would a health intervention inspired by liberation theology be di...more

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Oct 23, 2009 W. Bradford Littlejohn rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's books like this that make me temporarily enraged with America, its obscene affluence, and hypocritical Christian support of it, and that make me want to abandon my trek toward academia and do something more useful, like helping the oppressed.

Edit:
I should add that I'm not actually sure whether I should give this book 4 stars. From a Christian and theoretical standpoint, it's very lacking. He is not himself a Christian, and though he claims to draw on the insights of liberation theology to f...more

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Nov 24, 2009 Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars

For health care activists, Paul Farmer is our hero. He is both a physician and an organizer/writer.

Farmer takes Haiti where he has worked for years, as his jumping off point with this book, and shows how health care is tied to class, power and justice. He uses tuberculosis as an example of how health care is treated in a society where injustice reigns. He shows that poor health for people in poor areas is a political decision, not an inevitable consequence of poor countries or areas.

Farmer sho...more

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Mar 29, 2008 Maureen Flatley rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book by the brilliant physician and human rights activist, Dr. Paul Farmer, is the single most trenchant analysis of our global human rights crisis I have ever read. Weaving together the inescapable links between poverty, food, shelter and healthcare, Dr. Farmer's book is a damning indictment of the international aid community.

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Jun 10, 2013 April Harrison rated it 3 of 5 stars

I love Paul Farmer's ideas--his humanist approach to global health inequities has completely changed popular conceptions of poverty, its causes, and how to mitigate its health effects. His work in Haiti redefined the model for international aid and today Partners in Health has grown into the representative of a modern movement for health as a human right. Reading Paul Farmer's papers allows access to solidarity with these efforts, an insight into his own perspectives, and some brilliant argument...more

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Oct 29, 2012 Josh Meares rated it 4 of 5 stars

Paul Farmer's book isn't the most well-written book you'll ever read, but it's one of the most consistently challenging. I'm not sure that I agree with his liberal theological framework, but his collection of stories, his documentations of the uses of power and its effects on those who are the most vulnerable, is like opening up a crypt. The air is stale and bitter, but hopefully, we can begin to cleanse the situation.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:

If assaults on dignity are anything but ra...more Paul Farmer's book isn't the most well-written book you'll ever read, but it's one of the most consistently challenging. I'm not sure that I agree with his liberal theological framework, but his collection of stories, his documentations of the uses of power and its effects on those who are the most vulnerable, is like opening up a crypt. The air is stale and bitter, but hopefully, we can begin to cleanse the situation.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:

If assaults on dignity are anything but random in distribution or course, whose interests are served by the suggestion that they are haphazard?

This rings especially true in Haiti, to which aid flowed freely during almost all years of the Duvalier dictatorships and during much of the violent military rule that followed the collapse of the dictatorship in 1986. Now, however, during the rule of a democratically elected government, the United States has orchestrated an international aid embargo against the Haitian government, freezing an estimated $500 million in promised and greatly need assistance.

the World Health Organization now acknowledges that poverty is the world's greatest killer: "Poverty wields its destructive influence at every stage of human life, from the moment of conception to the grave. It conspires with the most deadly and painful diseases to bring a wretched existence to all those who suffer from it."

The U.S. travel ban and the distorted portrayal of Cuba in both popular and scholarly media ensure that the majority of North Americans do not learn that a poor, Third World country, gripped by economic crisis, and under constant attack from the most powerful nation in the world, is still able to achieve health standards higher than those in the capital of that powerful nation, Washington, D.C.

On Haiti refugee internment camp in Guantanamo -
They live in camps surrounded by razor barbed wire. They tie plastic garbage bags to the sides of the building to keep the rain out. They sleep on cots and hang sheets to create some semblance of privacy. They are guarded by the military and are not permitted to leave the camp, except under military escort. The Haitian detainees have been subjected to predawn military sweeps as they sleep by as many as 400 soldiers dressed in full riot gear. They are confined like prisoners and are subject to detention in the brig without hearing for camp rule infraction

hen U.S. forces invaded Haiti in the fall of 11994, they drove trucks straight to the offices of the armed forces and the brutal paramilitary group, the Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress (FRAPH), hauling away documents, photos, videos, and other material that contained extensive evidence of the egregious abuses of these forces, including gruesome "trophy photos" of FRAPH victims. Some foreign rights advocates in Haiti who came into possession of some of this material also handed it over to U.S. troops, relieved that it would be in safer hands. "There wasn't a photocopier working in the entire country, so you couldn't make copies of things, and in the chaos of the moment nowhere else was secure," one person told me. But everyone assumed the material would be returned to Haiti when things settled down. On the contrary, none of these approximately 16o,ooo pages of documents, photographs, videotapes, or audiotapes have been released by the United States back to the country to which they belong. They remain in U.S. government hands, under the control of the Department of Defense. The assumed reason for this intransigence is not flattering: the United States provided direct support to some of those directly implicated in abuses, paying key FRAPH leaders as intelligence sources, and these documents would almost certainly reveal these connections and the complicity of the U.S. government in supporting known thugs. The United States eventually offered to return the documents only if the Haitian government would agree to restrictions on the use of the material, and after certain portions were blacked out, but the Haitians refused these conditions. Despite formal requests to the U.S. government for access to the documents, the Haitian truth commission completed its work, and a number of important trials have gone forward, without the benefit of any of this damning documentary evidence."(less)

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Jan 07, 2011 Harrison rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: justice

Paul Farmer’s Pathologies of Power is a written protest against the structural violence suffered by the poor. The first half of the book is devoted to anecdotes from his time spent in the rural highlands of Haiti, the HIV quarantine facilities of Guantanamo, the autonomous zones of Chiapas, and the prisons of Russia. Through these anecdotes Paul gives voice to the suffering poor in these areas in a way that neither dehumanizes nor romanticizes their suffering, a rare feat in literature about pov...more Paul Farmer’s Pathologies of Power is a written protest against the structural violence suffered by the poor. The first half of the book is devoted to anecdotes from his time spent in the rural highlands of Haiti, the HIV quarantine facilities of Guantanamo, the autonomous zones of Chiapas, and the prisons of Russia. Through these anecdotes Paul gives voice to the suffering poor in these areas in a way that neither dehumanizes nor romanticizes their suffering, a rare feat in literature about poverty.

As a physician, Paul focuses on the ways in which this suffering is experienced through degradation of health. Particularly shameful in these stories is the extent to which the poor suffer and die from curable diseases. “Li mouri bet,” Paul bemoans in Creole at the death of a young man from an infection, “what a stupid death.”

The poor live Hobbesian lives—nasty, brutish, and short—partially because of our market-based approach to medicine in which health is the exclusive privilege of those wealthy enough to afford it. Instead, Paul calls for a far different approach to medicine based on human rights, in which the benefits of medical knowledge developed collectively by the human race are made available to all as their birthright. Health, Paul argues is not a privilege of the rich man, but the right of every person.

In particular, Paul rails against the aid and development community obsessed with “cost effectiveness” who mark the price of a Haitian life shockingly low—less than the cost of a round of antibiotics necessary to treat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. Complacent in the charity model of health care, the global heath community timidly seeks only to provide the low quality care afforded by the castoffs of the rich rather than call into question the structural violence that keeps the poor in poverty.

Drawing heavily from liberation theology, Paul argues for a reorientation of societal values toward the preferential option for the poor. From the diabetes of Americas urban slums to the HIV of sub-Saharan Africa, the poor bear the majority of the disease burden, and so Paul calls especially on physicians to lead this priority shift to the poor by focus their efforts on those that need their care, not just those that can afford it.

More than some nominal increase in the American aid budget, what is called for is the recognition of the inherent rights of every human being regardless of nationality. This entails the coordinated effort to secure those rights not merely through the charity of the rich, but through the profound alteration of those structures which deprive people of these rights in the first place.

It’s a bold challenge, to be sure, but one of the first that actually has hope to establish a just global society.

Paul's style of writing is sometimes meandering and disjointed which is why I can't give the book 5 stars, but all in all this book is a must-read for anyone interested in global health or human rights.
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Nov 05, 2010 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a very eye-opening book, and a good introduction to Paul Farmer's way of thinking. He is truly an advocate for equality-global equality, true equality.

I greatly respect how Paul Farmer combines his knowledge of anthropology and medicine with his passion for working among the "forgotten and erased" people of our times, particularly citizens of Haiti. He exposes government policies for their fallacies (particularly American policies towards Haiti), speaks bluntly of the abuses of power in...more

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Feb 06, 2010 Faye rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder which is about Paul Farmer, this is the first book I have read written by Paul Farmer. He calls himself a physician and an anthropologist which makes a lot of sense from what I know about him. I also saw Tracy Kidder speak once and talk about his experience learning about and becoming friends with Paul Farmer. In Pathologies of Power he talks about "structured violence" against the poor around the world and he points out that the lack of social a...more I read Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder which is about Paul Farmer, this is the first book I have read written by Paul Farmer. He calls himself a physician and an anthropologist which makes a lot of sense from what I know about him. I also saw Tracy Kidder speak once and talk about his experience learning about and becoming friends with Paul Farmer. In Pathologies of Power he talks about "structured violence" against the poor around the world and he points out that the lack of social and economic justice which is a form of violence (denying access to jobs, food, and medical care) and that what happens to the poor is not random.

I can't believe I started reading this book and the earthquake in Haiti happened a week later. God, there is just so much suffering there now and has been in the past. He is comparing the treatment of AIDs patients from Haiti in Guantanamo and comparing it to the HIV sanatoriums in Cuba. He documents eye-witness and victim accounts and shows that the conclusions for each case are exactly the opposite as portrayed in US media outlets. In a moment of cynicism Farmer states: "Granted that in this postmodern moment, when we are told that only willfully naive positivists seek something called the truth, it is important to acknowledge that more than one discrepant version may be true in some important sense. But some versions, surely, must have more points of contact with external reality and actual events than others." I wonder it the failure of US foreign policy with Haitians in and outside of Haiti will come out with the earthquake disaster?

At the end of this book Farmer summarizes a new agenda for health AND human rights with 6 points: 1) Make health and healing the symbolic core of the agenda (not profits), 2) Make provision of services central to the agenda (for the poor), 3) Establish new research agendas (to make drugs and other therapies cheaper), 4) Assume a broader educational mandate (beyond health professionals), 5) Achieve independence from powerful governments and bureaucracies (that are so often human rights violators), and 6) Secure more resources for health and human rights (social and economic justice). (less)

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Feb 27, 2009 Elie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, public-health

Farmer argues convincingly and at length for social and economic rights for the "other billion," pointing out increasing disparities in health and human rights for the world's poor. His solid footing in liberation theology and social justice make 'Pathologies of Power' a compelling read, particularly for those of us in healing professions like medicine or public health. His explanation of how international aid is often used to maintain a status quo that exacerbates inequality is food for thought...more

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Oct 28, 2008 Mirwais marked it as to-read

i will learn the way of treating patients

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Jul 31, 2011 Martha rated it 5 of 5 stars

Farmer tells of his experiences working as a physician in Haiti, Russia and Peru. As an anthropologist he is careful and sensitive while describing the events he has witnessed in prisons and clinics in these countries.
Farmer offers some useful criticisms and recommendations, while they are largely long term solutions he also reminds us there is much to be done at home to ensure we do not continue contributing to the violence and utter neglect of health/human rights issues in other parts of the...more

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Aug 21, 2012 Eliot rated it 5 of 5 stars

p.6 "The liberal political agenda has rarely included the powerless, the destitute, the truly disadvantaged. It has never concerned itself with those popularly classified as the 'undeserving' poor: drug addicts, sex workers, illegal 'aliens', welfare recipients, or the homeless, to name a few. It is even less concerned with populations beyond national borders"

p.7 "Human rights violations are not accidents; they are not random in distribution or effect. Rights violations are, rather, symptoms of...more

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Nov 03, 2012 Jamie rated it 5 of 5 stars

A moving account of how the asymmetry of social and economic power can prevent the sharing of opportunities and limit the control of people over their own lives. Farmer points to the damaging effects of 'structural violence' "...that includes a host of offensives against human dignity: extreme and relative poverty, social inequalities ranging from racism to gender inequality and the more spectacular forms of violence that are uncontestedly human rights abuses, some of them punishment for efforts...more A moving account of how the asymmetry of social and economic power can prevent the sharing of opportunities and limit the control of people over their own lives. Farmer points to the damaging effects of 'structural violence' "...that includes a host of offensives against human dignity: extreme and relative poverty, social inequalities ranging from racism to gender inequality and the more spectacular forms of violence that are uncontestedly human rights abuses, some of them punishment for efforts to escape structural violence..." that all guarantee that violent acts will ensue. The violence is 'structured' "...by historically given (and often economically driven) processes and forces that conspire - whether through routine, ritual, or as is more commonly the case, the hard surfaces of life - to constrain agency."

The poor and disadvantaged don't just need civil and political rights, they also need social and economic rights. Unfortunately, social and economic suffering is diminished by its lack of proximity, a limited conception of its weight and a limited understanding of its dynamics and distribution.

Farmer focuses on three examples of structural violence he directly bore witness to. The first related to the detention and assault of Haitian refugees in Guantanamo, including the forced use of long-acting contraceptives in 1992. The second related to the Zapatista uprising in Mexico in 1994. The third relates to the multi-drug resistant TB prevalent in Russian prisons in the 1990s.

To make sense of extreme suffering there is a need to understand the mechanisms that produce it. This requires an understanding of the historical nature of a particular person and society in the broader global context, i.e. there is a need for analysis that is historically deep and geographically broad. The root causes of a problem need to be understood and holistically addressed, "...what happens to poor people is never divorced from the actions of the powerful." This also most importantly necessitates the elicitation of experiences and views of the poor people and the incorporation of these views into all observations, judgements and actions.

Ultimately, the poor need liberation rather than assistance. The question is often less about 'development' and more about the redistribution of goods and services, of sharing the fruits of science and technology.

"...we once again hear the voice from liberation theology. This voice does not call for equally good treatment of the poor; it demands preferential treatment for the poor...fighting to protect the rights of the vulnerable, over and above the rights of the powerful...Many factors might limit feasibility, but that didn't stop the authors of the Universal Declaration from setting high goals. That we have failed to meet them does not imply that the next step is to lower our sights, although this has been the default logic in many instances. Rather, the next step is to try new approaches and to hedge our bets with indisputably effective interventions."(less)

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Jun 02, 2011 Lora rated it 3 of 5 stars

Overall, this book makes some important points that should be considered by people working in the field of global health, development, missions, healthcare, and government. Paul Farmer is a very wordy writer, but sifting through the mess may be worth it.

One very strong takeaway from the end of the book is that we often make excuses in the name of "sustainability" or "cost-effectiveness." Farmer's point is that these can easily become excuses to deliver sub-par care to people who are living in p...more

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Nov 26, 2008 Drew rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: anthro

Prior to my trip to Santa Fe, I finished reading Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, by Paul Farmer. I wanted to finish it up before I moderated our HIV/AIDS panel at CGS’s second annual conference. I wanted to see if there was any great material I could draw on for my portion of the panel.

This is a great book, which really helped drill in his concept of “a preferential option for the poor”. It laid out a solid epidemiological case and backed it up with deep...more

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Apr 20, 2008 John added it

This book is about suffering, public and individual health, poverty, and the human right to be healthy. It makes the case that access to health care is an often violated human right and that this is unacceptable on moral grounds, drawing on examples from Farmer's personal observations in Haiti, the US, Russia, Peru, and Mexico. There is heavy criticism of global inequality. I think I need to re-read the book to fully understand it, though. Occasionally I had trouble knitting together the ideas i...more

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Oct 12, 2008 Yorgos rated it 4 of 5 stars

I had trouble getting through this book. It was dense, full of statistics and academic terms I was unfamiliar with. He created or adopted a vocabulary and a way of writing to fit the subject matter, ostensibly to make it easier to describe what he wanted to say, but it felt at times like the vocabulary was just to cover a vagueness in how he tied his experiences together. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I didn't get it.
The experiences themselves, described in the first half of the book ab...more

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Oct 05, 2008 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars

Pathologies of Power is an angry-toned book describing structural violence and how it impacts health and human rights of the poor.

Though he never defines structural violence, Farmer provides vivid examples to explain the structural depravities (ie. oppressive propped up dictatorships, developed nations that decry human rights abuses but than sell arms to offenders that propagate the human rights abuses) that underly poverty and poor health. He has the unique perspective from his vast experience...more Pathologies of Power is an angry-toned book describing structural violence and how it impacts health and human rights of the poor.

Though he never defines structural violence, Farmer provides vivid examples to explain the structural depravities (ie. oppressive propped up dictatorships, developed nations that decry human rights abuses but than sell arms to offenders that propagate the human rights abuses) that underly poverty and poor health. He has the unique perspective from his vast experience as a medical professional and anthropologist. He provides a more credible view than the university trained human rights "expert" writing from a cushy office in a metropolis.

He is pretty scathing in his criticism of medical ethics and human rights as we know them. Farmer is angered that medical ethics curriculum consists of discussions of right to die and ethics of organ donations (like the curriculum of my medical school), yet shuns the topic of health inequities (ie. no access to basic healthcare for so many).

Writing-wise, the book is a bit repetitive at times; it is sometimes also hard to follow Farmer's logic. Nonetheless, I really love this book. His tone of anger matches mine. As a medical student, it harks back to something I've heard before... we (as members of the medical community) have been accomplices in the crime of preserving the inequality that abounds.

I guess my biggest criticism (the reason I didn't give a 5/5) is that he's a bit too utopian. He's very preachy (thought not really hopeful) that we convert to liberation theology and use social justice to guide our actions. But, he does not provide tangible solutions. How does social justice fit into the way we live our lives? Let me clarify this... I agree with Farmer that there is structural violence in the world that is really instituted by wealthy nations. Our well-being comes at the expense of the impoverished, destitute sick in the developing world. As a book detailing health and human rights, he hits a home run, but in terms of giving suggestions to mitigate structural violence, he offers no pragmatic advice.

And the problem very well may be that there is no way to rectify this situation. It's a circle that cannot be straightened. How can we in the wealthiest nation in the world maintain our levels of consumption and turn a blind eye to the suffering that we can't/don't want to see? We're basically living our lives schizophrenically. Though this is less inspirational than I want to feel, I think it was would be a travesty if Farmer sugarcoated this. Like he quotes from Jim Kim, "The book isn't harsh; the realities it describes are harsh." (less)

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Nov 16, 2007 Zachary rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: health

Pathologies of Power is the impassioned work of Dr. Paul Farmer (whose life was detailed in Mountains Beyond Mountains), a doctor on a mission to provide health care to the world's poor. In Pathologies of Power, Dr. Farmer discusses the systems that cause those living in poverty to suffer increased threats to their human rights, especially their health, a concept he terms "structural violence." He goes on to write that more must be done than simply researching and recognizing these human rights...more

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Oct 23, 2007 Stephen rated it 5 of 5 stars

While Farmer's writing style is not always fantastic, that is not of much import to my opinion of his book.

As Tracy Kidder points out in his review: "This is an angry and a hopeful book, and, like everything Dr. Farmer has written, it has both passion and authority." Through a series of narratives and background information relating to Farmer's experiences in poverty stricken areas, he very effectively shows some direct connections between the way many of us live our lives and the misery which...more

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Jun 11, 2007 Meredith rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Farmer's well-documented look into the structure of poverty, aid, and human rights is fascinating and frustrating all at once. While his case studies are somewhat dry in the telling (to be expected from a physician and academic presenting the facts), his humanity leaps off the page in the details. His argument is punctuated with a compendium of relevant sources for more reading.

His thesis is groundbreaking. He argues that poverty is a symptom of human rights violations (in the form of governmen...more

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Jun 24, 2011 Pamela Saenger rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

"Pathologies of Power" reads like a manifesto. Farmer criticizes both charity and development models of international aid, arguing that civil and humanitarian rights are not sufficient to lift people out of destitution and sickness; the world's poor really need economic and social rights. The book is at times staggering, depressing, and repetitive. It's a convincing wake-up call and a rallying cry and, unfortunately, probably only going to be read by people already sympathetic to Farmer's worldv...more

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Dec 30, 2009 Andrea rated it 5 of 5 stars

A truly awesome and awe-inspiring introduction to the connection between health and human rights. Paul Farmer grounds the book in his experiences treating impoverished patients in Haiti, Russia and Chiapas. He elucidates the countless methods by which structural violence further violates and shackles them, and shines a light on the connections of that structural violence to organizations and institutions in the developed world that enable it and indeed profit by it. Assertions are well-cited, pr...more

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Feb 10, 2009 Meg Petersen rated it 5 of 5 stars

This probably isn't most people's idea of recreational reading, but Farmer's view of the aid community and how first world powers use aid and don't aid when they should really resonated with me. It's an angry book from one who knows just how angry we all should be. This has me looking for more of what he has written. I am particularly interested in more about Haiti. It wasn't always comfortable. We are all complicit in this and I could feel my own complicity as I read it. I thought about paralle...more

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About Paul Farmer

Paul Farmer is a U.S. anthropologist and physician, the Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard University, and an attending physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. In May 2009 he was named chairman of Harvard Medical School's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. His medical specialty is infectious diseases....more

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Books by Paul Farmer

Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues

AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame

Partner to the Poor: A Paul Farmer Reader

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title link	preview: Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10232.Pathologies_of_Power?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347933859l/10232.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10232.Pathologies_of_Power?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer[/url]

Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor

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