We have hosted a set of lively well-attended events and meetings setting the ‘global economies of care’ firmly on the agenda of research, writing and activism on inequalities:
Defending democracy: building solidarity with persecuted writers, journalists, and artists
Hosted by LSE Festival: Power and Politics
Saturday 15 June 2024 at 2:00pm – 3:00pm. In-person and online event. Marshall Building.
Speakers: Ross Holder, Head of the Asia/ Pacific Region at PEN International; Professor Alpa Shah, Professor of Anthropology at LSE; Salman Usmani, writer, editor, and digital communications specialist
Chair: Dr Ayca Cubucku, Associate Professor in Human Rights and Co-Director of LSE Human Rights at LSE
Amidst the surge of global authoritarianism, how do we protect the freedom of speech and the freedom of dissent that is crucial for democracy? What is the role of global financial institutions and regimes in the crackdown on dissent in faraway places? What role do international human rights organisations, cultural spaces and educational institutions have in protecting the spaces of democracy globally?
In this event, we examine the persecution of writers, academics, journalists and artists across the globe, and question the unwitting role of international financial regimes and reflect on how we might cultivate international solidarity and carve out vital spaces of hope in these globally challenging times.
The search for democracy in the world's largest democracy
Hosted by International Inequalities Institute, LSE Human Rights, Department of Anthropology and Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity
Tuesday 26 March 2024, 6.30pm to 8.00pm. In-person and online event. Centre Building (CBG) Auditorium.
Watch the recording here.
Speaker:
Professor Alpa Shah, Professor of Anthropology, LSE
Discussants:
Professor Christophe Jaffrelot, Avantha Chair and Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King's India Institute
Professor Tarun Khaitan, Professor (Chair) in Public Law, LSE
Priyanka Kotamraju, independent journalist from India
Chair:
ProfessorDeborah James, Professor in the Department of Anthropology, LSE
Join us to launch and discuss Alpa Shah’s new book, The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the search for democracy in India.
As general elections fast approach in the world’s largest democracy, this event asks what democracy today must urgently ensure for our common future. In her latest book, Alpa Shah pulls back the curtain on Indian democracy to tell the remarkable and chilling story of the Bhima Koregaon case, in which 16 human rights defenders (the BK-16) – professors, lawyers, artists – have been imprisoned, without credible evidence and without trial, as Maoist terrorists. The BK-16 were accused of inciting violence and plotting to kill the Indian prime minister. But Professor Shah finds a shocking case of cyber warfare - hacked emails, mobile phones and implantation of electronic evidence used to make the arrests. Diving deep into the lives of the BK-16, The Incarcerationsshows how the case is a bellwether for the collapse of democracy and why these events matter to all of us.
Black Ghost of Empire: failed emancipations, reparations, and Maroon ecologies
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
Wednesday 7 June 2023, 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Online and in-person public event. Old Theatre, Old Building.
Watch the event recording
Speaker:
Professor Kris Manjapra, Professor, Department of History, Tufts University
Chair:
Professor Alpa Shah, Professor of Anthropology, LSE Department of Anthropology and Research Programme Leader, LSE III
To understand why the shadow of slavery haunts us today, we must confront the way that it ended. In this public event Kris Manjapra considers the implications of his book Black Ghost of Empire for climate justice. Manjapra argues that during each of the supposed emancipations from slavery – whether Haiti after the revolution, the British Empire in 1833 or the United States during the Civil War – Black people were dispossessed by the moves meant to free them. Emancipation codified existing racial-colonial hierarchies - rather than obliterating them, with far-reaching consequences for climate colonialism and for environmental justice.
Patriarchy: where did it all begin?
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute and the Wollstonecraft Society
Wednesday 24 May 2023, 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Online and in-person public event. Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building.
Watch the event recording
Listen to the podcast
Speakers:
Angela Saini, Journalist and Author
Bee Rowlatt, Author and Programmer of Events, Wollstonecraft Society
Chair:
Professor Alpa Shah, Professor of Anthropology, LSE Department of Anthropology and Research Programme Leader, LSE III
Award-winning writer Angela Saini gives this year’s Wollstonecraft Society Lecture, sharing from her hotly-anticipated book The Patriarchs. Join us as Angela reveals the true roots of gendered oppression, and the complex history of how male domination became embedded in societies across the globe. Travelling to the world’s earliest known human settlements, and tracing cultural and political histories from the Americas to Asia, she overturns simplistic universal theories to show that what patriarchy is and how far it goes back really depends on where you are. Despite the push back against sexism and exploitation in our own time, even revolutionary efforts to bring about equality have often ended in failure and backlash.
Aid and the Transnational Extraction of Care
Part of the Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 30 May 12.30pm to 1.30pm. Online and in-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.
Watch the event recording
Speaker:
Dr Dinah Hannaford, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Houston
Chair:
Dr Shalini Grover, Research Fellow, LSE III
Hiring domestic workers is a routine part of the expat development lifestyle. Though nearly every expat aid worker in the developing world has local people working within the intimate sphere of their homes—as maids, nannies, security guards, gardeners, and chauffeurs—these relationships are seldom, if ever, discussed in analyses of the development paradigm and its praxis. Examining aid workers as employers of domestic labor provides an opportunity to reach a deeper understanding about the function of development both as an industry and as an orienting framework in our contemporary world, as well as a means to consider the role of aid workers as post-colonial subjects in Africa.
Second Care Theme public meeting
The second Care Theme public meeting was organized by Laura Sochas and Shalini Grover on 14th March 2023, where we went deeper into our members individual research interests. The meeting brought together those working on care across the LSE, as well as III visiting fellows.
Viable Lives: Life beyond survival in rural North India
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 7 March 12.00pm to 1.00pm. Online and in-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.
Watch the event recording
Speakers:
Professor Craig Jeffrey, Professor of Human Geography, University of Melbourne
Associate Professor Jane Dyson, Associate Professor of Human Geography, University of Melbourne
Chair:
Dr Shalini Grover, Research Fellow, LSE III
Many minoritized and marginalised populations, including young people, are debating what constitutes a ‘survivable life’ and, in turn, how life can be arranged so that it is more than just survival. In this process they are often analysing how to conceptualise ‘life’. Notwithstanding these trends, however, there is little scholarly work on local discourses and practices of life and viability. This seminar contributes to redressing the balance by examining the spatial and temporal process through which young people imagine and build viable lives in an area of the Indian Himalayas.
Meeting with Female Union Leaders from the Global South
In February 2023 we will have the rare honour of hosting female union leaders from Domestic Workers Organizations who work for SEWA in India, Echoes of Humanity in Zimbabwe and the National Federation of Women Workers of Dominican Republic. They shared their hard work, stories and challenges by engaging with the LSE International Inequalities Institute staff and the AFSEE Fellows. We interacted with the following union leaders:
Ruth Esther Díaz de Medina has a degree in Business Administration, a Master's Degree in Security and Social Protection and diplomas in Regional, Political and Commercial Integration, Social Security with a Perspective of Gender, Occupational Risks with a Gender and Family perspective, labour law, interregional union training on Social Security and seminars for the Promotion of the Ratification of Convention 102 for Latin American Workers, union competences for the promotion of decent work and social justice , strengthening union networks and Effects of the global financial and economic crisis on social security systems, especially pensions.
Dr Charity Chenga is one of the founding members of Echoes of Humanity, linked to the Machitenda village through her mother’s family. She is actively involved in oral history about the area. She uses football tournaments to establish community engagement as well as trust. Most activities in the area are participatory resulting in having a background of both practitioner and researcher in community development. This has enhanced hr education to PhD level.
Paromita Sen has spent the last decade conducting research on issues related to gender and marginalisation, across the Global South. Her research draws on ethnographic and grounded methodologies primarily, with the goal of enabling access to voice and power for marginalised communities. After having spent 7 years in the US as a researcher and feminist activist, she moved back to India and set up the Research Vertical at SEWA Bharat where she is now the Research Manager. She is currently working with informal women workers, and supporting their empowerment through evidence generation, collectivisim and upskilling, and advocating with them
The event was organized by Matt Reynolds (PhD Candidate in Sociology), Louisa Acciari (Director of Gender and Disaster Institute at UCL) and Shalini Grover (Research Fellow and anthropologist at the III)
The English Heritage honoured the Ayah’s Home at 26 King Edward’s Road with a Blue Plaque on July 16th, 2022.
Farhanah Mamoojee, Niti Achary, Shalini Grover, Rozina Visram, Florain Stadler, Claire Lowrie and Jo Stanley: The English Heritage honoured the Ayah’s Home at 26 King Edward’s Road with a Blue Plaque on July 16th 2022. For our talks and contributions to this event see our Youtube video and Facebook video.
The Ayahs Home is known to have housed hundreds of destitute ayahs and amah’s, especially Indian and Chinese women who made voyages to the colonies from 1900-1942. The event was marked by a Flag inauguration with Meera Syal (independent filmmaker) and Anita Anand (BBC journalist) and had a large public turnout.
The event was widely covered in by the international press (BBC, BACSA, First Post, Times of India)
First Care Theme public meeting
The first Care Theme public meeting was organized by Shalini Grover and Laura Sochas on 25th January 2023. The meeting brought together those working on care across the LSE, as well as III visiting fellows and one scholar from University of London.
The Impact of Caste and Untouchability: A Missing Link in the Literature on Stunting in India
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 22 November 12.30pm to 1.30pm. Online and in-person public event. LSE Centre Building, Room 2.05.
Speaker:
Professor Ashwini Deshpande, Professor of Economics and Founding Director, Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA), Ashoka University, India
Chair:
Professor Naila Kabeer, Professor of Gender and Development, Department of Gender Studies, LSE
India is home to nearly a third of all stunted children. Previous research has overlooked the critical role of caste and the stigmatizing practice of untouchability in shaping incidence of stunting: upper caste (UC) Hindu children are 57% less likely to be stunted than the low-ranked Scheduled Caste (SCs) children. We document the strong negative correlation between the prevalence of the self-professed practice of untouchability and gaps in stunting rates between the UC-Hindu and SC children. The historical geographical span of Hinduism was bounded to the south by the Vindhya Mountain range. Hence, untouchability and caste practices were more rigid to the North of the Vindhya range, directly under the influence of the Indo-Aryan social order. Our estimates show that the SC children living to the south of the Vindhya range are around 30% taller, and have 40% lower levels of stunting, than their counterparts living to the north.
Social Reproduction and Domestic Service: An International Comparison
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 15 November 12.30pm to 1.30pm. Online and in-person public event. LSE Centre Building, Room 2.05.
Speaker:
Dr Marion Lieutaud, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, LSE Department of Methodology and Visiting Fellow, LSE III
Dr Paul Segal, Reader in Economics of Development, Department of International Development, Kings College London and Visiting Fellow, LSE III
Chair:
Dr Shalini Grover, Research Fellow, LSE III
Across the world, over 75 million people are domestic workers for private households (ILO 2021). Previous scholarship has unveiled their working conditions and transnational lives, and how domestic work is built on global inequalities (Parreñas 2015). This paper looks at the households who employ these workers, to understand the context, conditions and inequalities that make it possible for some families to purchase the reproductive labour (housework and carework) of others. Households divide this labour between family, community, the market, and the state. How they do this depends on factors including the extent of state provision of care services, and the degree of economic inequality. In order to identify and weigh these different dimensions, we consider a sample of 8 countries (4 Western European countries; 3 Eastern European countries including Russia; and Mexico) and we use a combination of time-use and expenditure data from cross-national surveys and national surveys.
Unfree: Migrant domestic labour in the Middle East
Wednesday 5 October 2022
Watch the video. Listen to the podcast.
Speakers: Professor Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Professor of Sociology and Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California; Lina Abou Habib, Director of the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, American University of Beirut; Dr Steffen Hertog, Associate Professor of Comparative Politics, LSE
Chair: Dr Shalini Grover, Research Fellow, LSE III
Mobilising Productive Subjectivities: Transnational production and social reproduction in unequal Europe
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 11 October 12.30pm to 1.30pm. Online and in-person public event. LSE Centre Building, Room 2.05.
Speaker:
Dr Ania Plomien, Associate Professor, Department of Gender Studies, LSE
Chair:
Dr Shalini Grover, Research Fellow, LSE III
Drawing on an ongoing collaborative project (with Dr Gregory Schwarz) on transnational labour mobility with Polish and Ukrainian migrants working in the food, housing and care sectors in Germany, Poland, and the UK, this event interrogates the dialectical relationship between (global) forces of production and (local) necessities of social reproduction.
The event focuses on the gendered lived experiences of labouring subjectivities of transnational workers, as they confront the necessities of provisioning in a field increasingly dominated by market (vis-à-vis state and household) resourcing. Plomien considers the role that different historico-culturally constituted ‘productive subjectivities’ play in facilitating the social reproduction of European capitalism and draw out the implications for gender inequality, the extent to which inequalities are being accommodated and re-inscribed, rather than transformed.
Watch the video
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Nine Paths: What it means to be a minority woman in a majoritarian state
Monday 6 June 2022
. Listen to the podcast.
Speakers: Sonia Faleiro, Journalist and Writer; Professor Patricia Jeffrey, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Edinburgh; Dr Lexi Stadlen, Anthropologist and Author of Nine Paths: A Year in the Life of an Indian Village
Chair: Professor Alpa Shah, Professor of Anthropology and Convenor Global Economies of Care Research Programme, LSE III
Evacuating Women Judges in Afghanistan: a tale of international feminist solidarity
Tuesday 3 May 2022
Watch the video. Listen to the podcast.
Speaker:
Baroness Kennedy, Member, House of Lords, Chair of Justice, the British arm of the International Commission of Jurists
Discussants:
Fawzia Amini, former Senior Judge in Afghanistan's Supreme Court
Bee Rowlatt, Chair, Wollstonecraft Society
Chair:
Professor Alpa Shah, Professor of Anthropology and Convenor, Global Economies of Care Research Programme, LSE III
Homelessness and Care: Anthro-vision revealing what is hidden in plain sight
Thursday 24 March 2022
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Speakers: Simon Tawfic, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, LSE; Dr Mayanka Mukherjee, Fellow in Social Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, LSE, Dr Johannes Lenhard, Research Associate and Co-ordinator, Max Planck Cambridge Centre for Ethics, Economy and Social Change
Chair: Professor Alpa Shah, Professor in Anthropology and Convenor, Global Economies of Care Research Programme, LSE III
The Dawn of Everything
2021
Watch the video. Listen to the podcast.
Speakers: Professor David Wengrow, Institute of Archaeology, University College London; Professor Alpa Shah, Professor in Anthropology and Convenor, Global Economies of Care Research Programme, LSE III
Chair: Professor Francisco Ferreira, Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and Director, LSE III
Investing in Care? Private Finance and Social Infrastructures
Co-hosted with UCL Geography
Wednesday 07 July 2021
Speakers: Dr Emma Dowling and Dr Horton
Discussant: Professor Bev Skeggs
Chair: Dr Alpa Shah
Social care is often seen as a drain on the economy, subject to a sustained crisis, which has been exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic. Yet in the UK and internationally these services have attracted huge investor interest over the last two decades – from private equity firms and real estate funds to impact investors. In this event, we explored: Why has private finance come to play such a significant role in care homes, home care and related efforts to achieve social impact? What does this mean for the many people working in care and all of us who rely on these services? What alternative approaches could we promote that might address the inequalities of the current ‘financialised’ system?
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Good Girls: Sonia Faleiro in conversation with Alpa Shah
Wednesday 2 June 2021
Speakers: Sonia Faleiro and Dr Alpa Shah
Chair: Dr Armine Ishkanian
Sonia Faleiro was in conversation with Alpa Shah about her new book ‘Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing’. A deep investigation into the death of two low caste teenage girls, Faleiro explores the coming of age, the failures of care, and the violence of caste, honour and shame in contemporary India.
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Mary Wollstonecraft and the Vindication of Human Rights
Wednesday 28 April 2021
Speakers: Professor Amartya Sen and Bee Rowlatt
Chair: Dr Alpa Shah
Mary Wollstonecraft claimed human rights for all. She overcame limited education and a background of domestic violence to become an educational and political pioneer, and one of the greatest thinkers of the eighteenth century. As well as her intellectual audacity, it is Wollstonecraft’s love for humanity, her self-proclaimed “ardent affection for the human race” that continues to inspire. This event explored how, despite a savage pandemic, economic downturn, and increasing isolation in both political and individual life, there is a counter-story of community building and education, of optimism and hope.
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Post-Divorce Intimacy in Contemporary Asia
Thursday 25 March 2021
Speakers/Participants: Allison Alexy (University of Michigan), Asha L. Abeyasekera (University of Colombo), Kay Cook (Swinburne University of Technology), Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Caren Freeman (University of Virginia), Katy Gardner (LSE), Shalini Grover (LSE), Chaya Koren (University of Haifa), Livia Holden (University of Paris Nanterre and University of Padoua), Jayaprakash Mishra (Indian Institute of Technology), Quah Ee Ling Sharon (University of Wollongong), Kaveri Qureshi (University of Edinburgh), Tannistha Samanta (FLAME University) and Kailing Xie (University of Warwick)
Chairs: Dr Shalini Grover (Research Fellow, LSE III) and Dr Kaveri Qureshi (Lecturer, Social Policy, University of Edinburgh)
This workshop on divorce and its aftermath in contemporary Asia was based on a forthcoming edited volume. Rapid socio-economic changes across Asia, along with the unremitting emphasis on strong family values, make the Asian region an illuminating case study for research on divorce and intimacy. Across differences of class, ethnicity and race, and community, our volume seeks to examine post-divorce trajectories. Can the lived experience of divorce be a porthole, in the sense of a break with the past, a gateway between two worlds; or does it augment stark inequalities that are historically rooted? What can divorce signal about family formations, societal transformations, age and identity in globalizing Asia? Our papers explored how former spouses - including heterosexual and queer subjects, reconfigure themselves in relation to one another, and remap a whole set of other intimate relationships, to rebuild their lives after divorce.
See the workshop programme here
Read the workshop report here
Households, Inequalities and Care: lockdown experiences from the UK, New Zealand and India - Inequalities Seminar series
Tuesday 09 March 2021
Speakers: Dr Alpa Shah, Professor Laura Bear, and Dr Nick Long
Chair: Dr Insa Koch
This event explored how the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the need to centre an understanding of the household in policy-making and politics if we are to mitigate inequalities. It did so by unveiling the insights of immersive anthropological research on the impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns as experienced in the UK, New Zealand and India. It explored the inequalities, in particular an informal and formal care deficit generated by UK national and local lockdowns, along with the problematic assumptions about the household and community in COVID-19 policy interventions in the UK. The seminar analysed the success, but also the limitations, of bubble policies in the New Zealand as a strategy for allowing citizens to support loved ones living beyond their immediate residence whilst nevertheless preventing the spread of COVID-19. It highlighted the significance of the spatio-temporal division of households that were at the heart of the plight of the hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers who took to their feet and marched home when the lockdowns were called in India. Overall, speakers suggested alternative approaches to policy and politics grounded in anthropological insights and methods.
Watch the video
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Building a Caring Economy
Thursday 04 February 2021
Speakers: Madeleine Bunting, Professor Diane Elson, and Professor Lynne Segal
Chair: Dr Alpa Shah
The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has made us aware of an acute crisis of care that lies at the heart of global inequalities. Care has long been marginalised and neglected as a central part of our economy. It’s a crisis not just of care workers but moves from the intimate domain of our households to global planetary care itself. What is this crisis of care, how should we think about care, and what can be done to make care more central to what we value? How do we build back our global economy by putting care – care of people and care of the environment - at its centre? These crucial questions were addressed through a discussion of three major recent interventions: The Labours of Love, The Care Manifesto and Creating a Caring Economy.
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Covid and its Impact on Domestic Workers: Continental Perspectives on Argentina, India, and the United Kingdom
Tuesday 01 December 2020
Speakers: Dr Shalini Grover, Professor Louise Ryan, Dr Lorena Poblete, Dr Joyce Jiang, and Dr Neha Wadhawan
Chair: Dr Alpa Shah
This International Inequalities Institute seminar compared the experiences of domestic workers in India, Argentina and the UK to address three fundamental issues. It asked what the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed about the inequalities faced by domestic workers and dexplore how the impact of the pandemic on domestic care workers makes us reflect on the question of what is work. The seminar also investigated the implications of the pandemic on work relations between employers and domestic workers. The aim was to highlight, examine and compare the multiple crises and inequalities of care experienced by those who are essential to giving care across three continents.
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Classes of Labour: work and life in a central Indian steel town
Wednesday 11 November 2020
Speaker: Professor Jonathan Parry
Discussants: Dr Maxim Bolt, Professor Geert De Neve, Dr Nayanika Mathur, Dr Massimiliano Mollona, Dr Nate Roberts, and Dr Christian Strümpell
Chair: Dr Alpa Shah
How should we understand the human conditions of the Indian workforce? This event discussed and celebrated, Professor Jonathan Parry’s magnum opus “Classes of Labour: Work and Life in a central Indian Steel Town”, a classic in the social sciences.
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Care-work for Colonial and Contemporary White Families in India: A Historical-Anthropological Study of the Racialized Romanticization of the Ayah
Tuesday 07 July 2020
Speakers: Dr Satyasikha Chakraborty and Dr Shalini Grover
Discussants: Professor Nandini Gooptu and Professor Swapna M. Banerjee
Chair: Professor Alpa Shah
programme Introduction: Professor Beverley Skeggs
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Caring Forward: the global care economy and its future
Thursday 20 June 2020
Speaker: Ai-jen Poo
Chair: Professor Beverley Skeggs
Acclaimed US labour organiser Ai-jen Poo spoke on the global care economy and offer a vision for its future. We have a complex relationship with care work. It sustains us and our entire global economy, but we often forget to consider who provides care and at what cost. Community organising, local and global campaigns, and efforts led by researchers, creatives and international organisations are focusing increasing attention on the alarming inequalities (re)produced by the global care economy. How can we challenge the conditions of precarity experienced by so many care workers around the world? How can we care forward together?
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The Labour of Care: work, law and finance
Tuesday 01 May 2018
Speakers: Dr Lydia Hayes, Kevin Lucas, Dr Insa Koch and Professor Nicola Lacey
Chair: Professor Beverley Skeggs
Caring is one of the most pressing concerns for anyone who is a parent, ageing, less able, and/or looking after anyone who needs support, yet it is often taken for granted as an activity. This event focused on the consequences for care when the most basic human/e pursuit has been turned into a “for profit” activity. What happens when a basic social emotion is monetised? What does this mean for the future of humanity?
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