COVID-19 & Structural Violence
Nandagiri, R., Coast, E., & Strong, J. (2020). COVID-19 and Abortion: Making Structural Violence Visible. International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health,46(Supplement 1), 83-89. https://doi.org/10.1363/46e1320
This was a long time percolating. Professor Coast, Joe, & I were discussing a number of ideas and framing concepts when “structural violence” came up. We were all struck by it and felt there was something to say, but we parked it for a rainy day.
I first learnt about “structural violence” from Prof Johan Galtung when I was studying for my MA in Peace and Conflict Studies. Prof Galtung was teaching us a week-long session on Peace Research, and I remember being fascinated by the concept but struggling to fully grasp it. It amuses me that all these years later, I’m not just engaging with it fully, but also trying to push it further along by applying it to abortion and SRH.
It also led to this amusing exchange on Twitter:
Co-authoring an article with my former supervisor/now colleague and my excellent friend was a true joy and privilege. It was a generative experience for not just our ideas and how they flourished, but for how I’ve understood writing up until now. There’s something especially inspiring to all be writing at the same time on the collaborative document - your vague “expand on this” is picked up and expanded on and in a way that captures exactly (or even better) what you meant to say. It’s allowed me to reimagine writing practices and I am now excited to embark on more collaborative writing projects.
It was also special to write this article for a journal like International Perspective on Sexual and Reproductive Health (IPSRH)- a home for many important and definitive abortion and SRH articles and scholarly work. Not only was the article part of an abortion supplement (a fitting home), it was published in the last issue of the journal.
We began writing this piece before we knew that the journal would be shutting down after this last issue. It feels all the more poignant to be published in it, alongside many incredible abortion scholars and researchers. It’s a huge blow to SRH studies that it won’t be around to publish critical and wide-ranging work from across the world, particularly the Global South. It is a loss that will be keenly felt.
I always imagined/hoped that my work would one day find a home in this journal, and it’s bittersweet that it has come in this way.