📰 New publication “Political Work and the Social Reproduction of Households, State and Capitalism”

Isabelle Guérin, Kaveri Haritas (O.P. Jindal Global University, India), and Kalpana Karunakaran (Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India) have published “Political Work and the Social Reproduction of Households, State and Capitalism” in the last issue of Mondes en Développement: 50 ans de Mondes en développement.

This paper is part of the POlitical WOrk (POWO) project (see the dedicated page here), aims at testing the relevance of the concept “political work”, defining and conceptualizing it in relation to issues of democracy, inequalities and skills, while exploring its policy implications.

Abstract: This article presents the concept of “political work” to account for the active and daily role of many poor women in the accountability of the state. Political work appears as a specific form of unpaid, invisibilized, and feminized work, considered an extension of female domestic work. Yet political work plays a major role in the social reproduction of families, of the state and of capitalism and in the social inequalities underlying capitalism. This paper focuses on India, while extending its findings to other contexts in conclusion, suggesting that India is not an exception.

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