Depletion

Abstract

Abstract This book examines the human costs of care and caring and how these are reproduced across generations—a topic often overlooked in the theoretical analysis of the issue. It explores the multiple facets of social reproductive work and argues that this work has significant human costs, which are neglected. Unrecognized, depletion erodes individual lives as well as social institutions and our environment (family, community groups, and ecologies), and is generative of harm—historic, present, and anticipatory—at each of these levels. Consent does not mitigate harm. Recognition of depletion can result in strategizing for the reversal of this harm in complex and multilayered forms: mitigation, replenishment, and transformation. Building on case studies from across the globe, and developing innovative methodologies, the book argues that intersectional inequalities of race, gender, and class are critical in the understanding of depletion. This book is a strong indictment of overlooking depletion; the struggles to reverse depletion are struggles for a good life, generative of new imaginings of how this work of care, both draining and joyful, can be reorganized and reversed.

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