What are the human costs of caring, how are they reproduced across the boundaries of class, race, gender, and generation, and how might they be reversed?
This event launches Professor Shirin Rai's book 'Depletion', which explores the human costs of caring and shows how depletion is both a contributing factor and an outcome of economic, environmental, health and social crises. The book is a strong indictment of taking the work of care for granted at the cost of the lives of those who perform it. It argues that the struggles to reverse depletion are struggles for a good life, generative of new imaginings of how this work of care, both draining and joyful, can be reorganised for a better future for all.
The event is co-hosted by the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity and the LSE Department of Gender Studies.
Speaker
Professor Shirin Rai
Shirin M Rai is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her research interests are in the fields of political economy of development, gender and political institutions, and performance and politics. She is the author of several books, the latest of which is: Depletion: The Human Cost of Care (Oxford University Press).
Discussant
Christopher Choong Weng Wai
Christopher Choong Weng Wai is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity. He is the Deputy Director of Research at Khazanah Research Institute (currently on study leave) and a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick.
Discussant
Professor Juanita Elias
Juanita Elias is a Professor of International Political Economy in the Department of Politics & International Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Her research and teaching expertise are in the areas of feminist political economy, migration and employment, and Southeast Asian political economy. She has published her research widely including in highly ranked international academic journals. She is vice chair of the British International Studies Association and an editor at Review of International Political Economy.
Discussant
Professor Diane Elson
Diane Elson is an internationally known researcher on gender equality and economic development. She is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. In 2016 she was awarded the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought and in 2018, the International Book Prize, Japan Society of Political Economy. She has published widely on gender equality and economic policy, including articles in World Development, Journal of International Development, Feminist Economics, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, and International Review of Applied Economics.
Discussant
Dr Ania Plomien
Ania Plomien is an Associate Professor in Gender and Social Science and Deputy Head of Department (Research) in the LSE Department of Gender Studies, and Deputy Director of the Research Programme on Gender Justice and the Wellbeing Economy. Her feminist political economy research centres on the problem of neoliberalisation of the state and the crisis of social reproduction in Europe, in particular via market-reach into care, food and housing provisioning and the associated gendered harms. She is the co-author of Gender, Migration and Domestic Work: Masculinities, Male Labour and Fathering in the UK and USA (2013) and co-editor of The Sage Handbook of Feminist Theory (2014).
Chair
Professor Sumi Madhok
Sumi Madhok is Professor of Political Theory and Gender Studies and Head of the LSE Department of Gender Studies. Her work combines theoretical, conceptual and philosophical investigations with detailed ethnographies of the lived experiences, political subjectivation, and political struggles for rights and justice, specifically, in South Asia.
Banner Image: Photo by davide ragusa on Unsplash