Depletion: The Human Costs of Caring

The talk is based on Shirin Rai's award-winning book Depletion: the human costs of caring, in which Rai argues that reproduction of life doesn’t just happen – it is laboured over, in different contexts and with differential resources, unequally. Rai examines the costs of the systematic appropriation of social reproductive labour to argue that depletion affects individuals, households and communities; it endangers both society, the economy and indeed the planet, even as it is drawn upon as a ‘free good’ available to plug deficits in our collective everyday regimes. Importantly, Rai argues that depletion must be recognized in order for it to be reversed—the struggles to reverse depletion are struggles for a good life, generative of new imaginings of how caring and care work, both draining and joyful, can be reorganized for a better future for all.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Shirin M. Rai is Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS, University of London. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. Rai’s research interests lie in performance and politics, gender and politics and feminist international political economy. She has published extensively in these areas; her latest publish work include the co-edited Oxford Handbook of Politics and Performance. Depletion: the human costs of caring was published in 2024 and is the recipient of the Susan Strange Best Book Award by the British International Studies Association.

Event co-organised with the Geneva Graduate Gender Centre