COVID-19 Seminar Series
Austerity, the homicidal present and the probable Russian future
- Venue: Zoom video conference platform
- Start: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 13:00:00 BST
- End: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 14:30:00 BST
Ted Schrecker, Professor of Global Health Policy, Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University in conjunction with the Fuse Health Inequalities research programme.
In his presentation, Ted Schrecker will explore the impact of COVID-19 on health inequalities in the UK by looking at the link between austerity and structural violence, and the longer term health consequences of economic crisis. He will argue that both are avoidable but require coordinated and progressive social and economic policies far beyond the health care sector.
A decade of austerity in the UK saw tax and spending policy redistribute income and wealth upward, increasing inequality and precarious existence, while simultaneously reducing the resources available for collective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In spite of warnings over the last 25 years, the result has been a highly unequal distribution of casualties, which can be best described by a sociological concept called structural violence (Farmer, Nizeye, Stulac, & Keshavjee, 2006[1]; Sparke, 2007[2]). This is a process in which social stratification (the cumulative result of unequal access to resources, opportunities, legal protection and political institutions), on various scales, generates drastic inequalities in illness, suffering and death.
The potential longer-term health consequences are inseparable from the pandemic’s social and economic consequences. Using the example of Russia, Professor Schrecker will highlight how the economic crisis in the 1990s saw life expectancy, especially for men, plunge by several years. Russian life expectancy did not recover when the country’s economy did, perhaps because that recovery was accompanied by rising economic inequality and massive capital flight.
Many aspects of this experience were avoidable; instead it was substantially worsened by ‘shock therapies’ promoted by Western institutions. What can the UK do to avoid these scenarios and what social and economic policies are needed that are currently missing? The connections between austerity and structural violence should also inform future research on the impact of COVID-19 on health inequalities.
- Farmer, P., Nizeye, B., Stulac, S., & Keshavjee, S. (2006). Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine. PLoS Medicine, 3, 1686-1691. Available: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0030449&type=printable.
- Sparke, M. (2007). How Research on Globalization Explains Structural Violence. Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity, University of Washington [On-line]. Available: http://www.washington.edu/omad/ctcenter/projects-common-book/mountains-beyond-mountains/how-research-on-globalization.
Programme
13:00 to 13:05 – Introduction and housekeeping (Dr Heather Brown, Senior Lecturer, Newcastle University, and Fuse Health Inequalities Research Programme Lead)
13:05 to 13:35 – Austerity, the homicidal present and the probable Russian (Professor Ted Schrecker)
13:35 to 13:40 - Response from Professor Charlotte Clarke, Executive Dean (Social Sciences and Health), Durham University
13:40 to 13:55 – Q and A
13:55 to 14:00 – Break
14:00 to 14:30 – Coffee social and discussion
Biography
Professor Ted Schrecker is a political scientist by background, and moved from Canada to take up a position at Durham University in June, 2013 before transferring to Newcastle University with colleagues from Durham's School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Health in 2017. His research interests focus on the political economy of health inequalities, especially as they are affected by neoliberal globalisation, and on issues at the interface of science, ethics, law and public policy. Earlier in his working life, he spent many years involved with environmental policy and law as a legislative researcher, academic and consultant. Ted is an Associate Member of the Fuse Health Inequalities Research Programme.
The views expressed in the seminars are exclusively those of the presenter(s).
