Ecologies of violence in urban peripheries in times of multispecies health emergencies

Abstract Violence is a health problem and a determinant of health emergencies, with structural dimensions going beyond interpersonal physical aggression. In this text, we outline the ecologies of violence and relate them to COVID-19 pandemic experiences in a favela of São Paulo city, taking a multispecies health perspective. We show how imposed precariousness, exploitation, persecution, territorial expulsions, imprisonment practices, and household aggressions harm peripheral beings - humans and other-than-humans - finding in health emergencies the opportunity to rise to the condition of a syndemic of violence. This occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, in recent epidemics, and it is expected to happen in the next health emergency. Through de ecologies of violence, we hope to give more visibility to the entanglement that frustrates prevention and protection efforts in the face of health emergencies - an entanglement between marginalising apparatuses, modalities of violence, and health emergencies, materialised in multispecies collectives.