AFTER VIOLENCE: 3R, RECONSTRUCTION, RECONCILIATION ...

up to net and gross national products; leaving out the enormous
costs of "modernization" on nature, the human spirit, social and
world structure and culture in general./12/
We are up against a general cultural syndrome which makes
struggles to have invisible effects taken seriously even more
problematic. The syndrome serves a rather obvious function: when
only visible effects of violence are considered costs are high,
but manageable. The more complete the accounting, the more
hesitation there should be before a war is launched, under
assumptions of rationality. The same goes for unfettered economic
growth, sometimes similar to warfare, but the costs are the
effects of structural violence built into the economic and
political structure, rather than the effects of direct violence.
Thus, it also makes sense to talk about growth-torn people,
growth-torn societies,/13/ and growth-torn worlds. A quick glance
at Table 3.1 tells us something about similarities, and about the
dissimilarities. The similarities are obvious. And for the
dissimilarities there are simple translation rules:
- for "killed, wounded, soldiers unemployed", substitute
"mortality, morbidity, workers unemployed";
- for "material damage" substitute "opportunity costs";
- the delayed violence works by polluting nature and humans;
- for "revenge, victory, trauma, glory" substitute "revolution,
violent if needed", "revolution failed" and "utopia."
The left hand column has an air of the obvious except for one
more recent entry in the callous "number killed, number wounded,
material damage" reports about wars: the number of women raped.
The use of women's bodies as battlefields between gangs of men is
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