The reemergence of Engels’ concept of social murder in response to growing social and health inequalities

Emerging Themes in Social Determinants of Health Theory and Research

“… 15 We documented how growing social and health inequalities have been associated with the reemergence of Friedrich Engels’s concept of social murder by which the capitalist economic system not only sickens many prematurely, but also consigns them to premature deaths. 16 We also showed increasing use of the concept of social murder in the mainstream news media. 17 It is unclear at this point whether the use of polemic in communicating information about the importance of the social determinants of health can be a means of spurring action to promote health-promoting public policy.…”

Desperately seeking reductions in health inequalities in Canada: Polemics and anger mobilization as the way forward?

“…Since Engels' coining of the phrase social murder in 1845, there has been little reference to it in the health-related academic literature. Medvedyuk et al (2021) carried out a review of the use of the term in academic journal articles since 1960. The nineteen-year period from 1960 to 1978 saw only three instances of the term.…”

“…The 1990s saw on average one to three articles per year, but by 2012 and through to 2017, the average has risen to 20 per year. This increase illustrates an increasing willingness amongst researchers to apply high valence negative terms to describe the adverse health effects brought on by problematic living and working conditions (Medvedyuk et al, 2021). Yet, as compared to the increase in the term ‘social determinants of health’, which averaged 1200 per year from 2017 to 2019, the increase is modest (Herrick & Bell, 2020).…”

“…In our own work, we are documenting the increasing use of terms such as structural violence, social death and social murder in the academic literature and mainstream and social media (Medvedyuk et al, 2021; Govender et al, 2021). We intend to carry out inquiries into the reactions high and low and positive and negative valence terms concerned with health inequalities elicit from researchers, advocates and students.…”

“…Instead, polemic, anger arousal and emotions were linked with concepts from the social movements and political change literature, certainly areas relevant to provoking health inequalitiesreducing public policy. Our analysis of how terms such as structural violence, social death and social murder are being applied to the health inequalities area draws upon our own related work (Medvedyuk et al, 2021) as does the illustrative example of HFI in Canada (Mendly-Zambo & Raphael, 2018). Raphael and Bryant (2016) document the profound influence UK research and policy has had on Canadian efforts to reduce health inequalities.…”