We have hosted a set of lively well-attended events setting the ‘global economies of care’ firmly on the agenda of research, writing and activism on inequalities:
Evacuating Women Judges in Afghanistan: a tale of international feminist solidarity
Tuesday 03 May 2022
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, Department of Anthropology and Convenor, Global Economies of Care Research Theme, LSE III
The fall of Kabul last summer was a minute-by-minute tragedy, as the Taliban swept to power and many Afghans desperately tried to escape. Among the most vulnerable were women lawyers who had formerly stood up to the Taliban, and as the ‘death lists’ began to circulate, these women had the most to lose. In the spirt of Mary Wollstonecraft, Baroness Kennedy shares the extraordinary stories behind the evacuation of Afghan women judges following the fall of Kabul, and her own connection to their escape. This exchange will examine the hopes for women's rights internationally, set the story we all watched on the news into the framework of international justice, and consider those who are left behind.
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Homelessness and Care: Anthro-vision revealing what is hidden in plain sight
Thursday 24 March 2022.
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 (Department of Anthropology and Convenor Global Economies of Care Research Theme, LSE III)
What is the relationship between homelessness and care? This event examines the vitality of care and how it is negotiated at the margins of society in unexpected ways through deep ethnographic research among the homeless.
This panel discussion disrupts static notions of care which remain endemic in policy discussions about homelessness, home and belonging. Informed by ethnographic research from across Western Europe, we share observations on how those threatened with displacement cultivate a sense of belonging through subtle, everyday acts of care for places, buildings and people.
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The Dawn of Everything
2021
Speakers: Professor David Wengrow (Institute of Archaeology, University College London) and Professor Alpa Shah (Convenor Global Economies of Care Research Theme and Professor in Anthropology, Department of Anthropology)
Chair: Professor Francisco Ferreira (Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and LSE III Director)
In this event, Prof David Wengrow was in conversation with Prof Alpa Shah about his new book co-authored with the late David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.
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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.
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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
Theme 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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