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In this article we explore the concept of depletion through social reproduction (DSR). We describe depletion, identify its key indicators and suggest different methodologies that could be used to measure it. We discuss issues having to do with gendered harm as well as questions about how depletion might be reversed. We conclude that recognizing DSR in this way can be a powerful tool for understanding the consequences of non-recognition of the value of domestic work to national economies, as well as the harm that might accrue in the doing of this work at both a systemic and individual level.---

This article develops a framework to examine the co-constitutive nature of performance and politics and to suggest that such a framework is critical to promoting an interdisciplinary approach to understanding our complex political world. It does this by disaggregating the component parts of political performance and suggesting how, once these are made visible, we are able to reflect upon more complex processes of its re-aggregation into our analysis of politics. The framework is constituted along two axes -one that maps individual performance, which is nevertheless socially embedded; and the other that charts the political effects of performance. The framework allows us to reflect upon social and political institutions, movements and events and analyse these through the prism of performance and politics. The empirical core of the article is the Indian parliament. 'Cleggmania. ... One sure-footed TV performance, and the Lib Dem leader [Nick Clegg] has transformed the election campaign,' headlined The Independent in April 2010 (Merrik, 2010). Several things contributed to this performance: he took the time to rehearse his presentation; he had a clear message -a challenge to a two-party system that is failing the electorate; he spoke to the audience -both in the room and through television -by calling people by their first names and by looking directly into the cameras; and his delivery of the Clegg/Lib Dem package came across as credible -he was seen as 'sincere', without political artifice. His performance built on public cynicism of politicians but went further with glimpses of a positive alternative (Merrik, 2010). The performance worked; it convinced his audiences, invoked new audiences and delivered at the ballot box a result that few would have expected before that first debate. Did Clegg's performance alone make possible this seismic shift in British politics? Has the impact been a lasting one? Of course, the political backdrop to this performance cannot be overlooked, but it did underline the fact that performance matters in and to politics. Perhaps it is because the role of performance is so often overlooked in political analysis that the effect of Clegg's performance surprised many students of British politics.I have been studying the importance of ceremony and ritual in parliament, through which we can trace the circulation of meanings, the particularity of institutional cultures and the sedimentation of power in political institutions (Rai, 2010). This alerted me to the importance of performance in and to politics, which can be broadly defined as the distribution of power, and, specifically, how the changes over time in the social profile of parliaments 1 are reflected in the political performances conducted within them. In this article I develop a framework for reading political performance in institutional politics -in this case, the social organisation of governance such as parliaments 2 (Lowndes and Roberts, 2013). In this context I define the term 'political performance' as those performances that ...

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