24 | Resisting Domestic, Market, and State Violence | Anna Mullany

Published: July 28, 2021, 6:15 p.m.

Content warning: today's episode discusses domestic violence.


We also appreciate your patience with this episode as we know it is a few weeks behind our usual schedule! Thank you all for your support.


Short SMOA listener story: bit.ly/smoasurvey


In this episode, Anna Mullany discusses the interrelationship between domestic abuse, capitalism and political economy, patriarchy, and the teaching of social medicine. She discusses the history of the anti-domestic violence movement, the violence of the state, the rise of the carceral state, and the 'social problem apparatus.' She also shares stories from students learning about structural violence and social medicine in the classroom. In combining the micro and macro, she points a way towards emancipation for all. 


Anna Mullany is  a 4th year doctoral student at the School of Public Health and Health  Sciences at the University of MA Amherst. The focus of her doctoral  work is on rural intimate partner violence and social services. Taking a political economic perspective, she looks at how the structural determinants of health determine people's wellbeing and daily lives within capitalism. She is committed to investigating how we create a truly equitable world in which health for all is a reality. She teaches courses on "Health Communication" and "Population Health and  Imperialism" to undergraduates in the Public Health Department at UMass Amherst. Additionally, she is on faculty with the Spark Teacher Education Institute in Brattleboro, VT. Prior to her doctoral studies  she worked for 6 years at the Women’s Freedom Center in Brattleboro, VT – a crisis center responding to intimate partner violence. Anna  also serves as a one of the hosts of Indigo Radio, a weekly radio show on the Brattleboro Community Radio Station WVEW, broadcasts of which focus on connecting local and global issues.


Recommended Resources:

  • Harvey M. How Do We Explain the Social, Political, and Economic Determinants  of Health? A Call for the Inclusion of Social Theories of Health  Inequality Within U.S.-Based Public Health Pedagogy. Pedagogy in Health Promotion. 2020;6(4):246-252. bit.ly/3iNgzNX
  • Gimenez, M. Capitalism and the Oppression of Women: Marx Revisited. Science & Society, 2005;69(1), 11-32. bit.ly/3kTxbGA
  • Waitzkin, H. "The Social Origins of Illness: A Neglected History" in The Second Sickness: Contradictions of Capitalist Health Care (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). bit.ly/3eUsJU5
  • Brown TM, Fee E. Rudolf Carl Virchow: medical scientist, social reformer, role model. Am J Public Health. 2006;96(12):2104-5. bit.ly/3x5cObK
  • Indigo Radio, bit.ly/3kU4iu3
  • Spark Teacher Education, bit.ly/3BBRcr7