Shirin M. Rai, Professor of Politics and International Studies, The University of Warwick
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Monday 6 February 2012
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6.30pm - 8.00pm
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New Theatre, East Building, LSE
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Co-hosted with the Department of Government
Open to all - no booking required. Followed by an informal drinks reception from 8.00pm in the Gender Institute Open Space.
A recording of the lecture is available here
Abstract
In this paper, I aim to assess to what extent the concept of depletion can be applied to the various aspects of social reproduction. I will argue that if in the absence of recognition of the value of and therefore the measurement of social reproduction we also cannot measure depletion, it then follows that the intensification of depletion can result in a rapid erosion of human capacities and well-being, household resources and social networks without this being systematically mapped and addressed. This increases economic vulnerability and in times of crisis exacerbates the economic as well as social costs of market failure. Applying the concept of depletion to social reproduction involves, I argue, identifying indicators and forms of measurement as well as appropriate terminology at three different levels – individual, household and community. Issues to do with harm and subsidy are relevant here as well as questions about how depletion is mitigated and how in the end it might be reversed. I illustrate these arguments with 'real life' scenarios of depletion and conclude that the concept of depletion is an important measure of the costs of social reproductive work and that there is urgent need for this cost to be identified, measured and integrated into discussion about social policy. This paper builds on collaborative work with colleagues in Coventry and Keele universities.
Biography
Shirin M. Rai studied at the University of Delhi (India) and Cambridge University (UK) and joined the University of Warwick in 1989. She is Professor in the department of Politics and International Studies. She has directed a four year Leverhulme Trust funded programme on Gendered Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament (2007-2011). Her research interests lie in the area of feminist politics, gender and political institutions, globalisation and development studies. She has written extensively on issues of gender, governance and development in journals such as Signs, Hypatia, New Political Economy, International Feminist Journal of Politics and Political Studies. She is the author of Gender and the Political Economy of Development: from Nationalism to Globalisation (2002). Her latest works are Feminists Theorize the International Political Economy, Special Issue of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (co-ed. With Kate Bedford); The Gender Politics of Development (2008, Zed Books/Zubaan Publishers), (co-ed) Global Governance: Feminist Perspectives (2008, Palgrave) and (ed.) Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament (2010). She is the co-editor (with Wyn Grant) of the Manchester University Press book series Perspectives on Democratic Practice.