Depletion: The Human Costs of Caring?
Hybrid event
In this lecture Shirin Rai will examine the human costs of care and caring and how these are reproduced across the boundaries of class, race and gender as well as across generations. She will explore the multiple facets of social reproductive work and how its undervaluing is not just a theoretical gap in our knowledge, but a cost to those who perform this work, which she calls ‘depletion through social reproduction’. She will argue that if unrecognized, depletion erodes individual lives as well as social institutions (family, community groups and our ecologies), which is generative of harm. Inequalities of race, gender and class are critical in the understanding of depletion as are human and non-human costs in different contexts. She will show how depletion is both a contributing factor and an outcome of economic, environmental, health and social crises; the resilience of those who care, however, makes them the shock absorbers of these crises. Reversal of depletion take different and complex forms – mitigation, replenishment and transformation. The struggles to reverse depletion are struggles for a good life.

Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI).
DSPI Members do not need to register.
Date: 13 February 2025, 16:00
Venue: 32-42 Wellington Square (Barnett House), 32-42 Wellington Square OX1 2ER
Speaker: Professor Shirin Rai (SOAS, University of London)
Organising department: Department of Social Policy and Intervention
Organisers: Dr Rossella Ciccia (University of Oxford), Professor Mary Daly (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: communications@spi.ox.ac.uk
Part of: DSPI Hilary Term Seminar Series 2025: Perspectives on Care
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=G96VzPWXk0-0uv5ouFLPkfqPctPXM59Fq6He-WZyDG5UNERVNk5RQTIxTlowRFJOUERJQThIQTBWNCQlQCN0PWcu
Cost: Free
Audience: Public
Editors: Faith Inch, Zoe Burns