Recognizing the Full Costs of Care? Compensation for Families in South Africa’s Silicosis Class Action

Remedying depletion through social reproduction: a critical engagement with the United Nations’ business and human rights framework

“…When workers become ill and are forced to leave their employment, they often become dependent on family members for their care. This care burden, if not supported by the company and the state, causes depletion of social reproduction entailing a range of harmful impacts on individuals, family, community and even on the physical infrastructure of the worker's household (Goldblatt and Rai, 2018). The harm through depletion is experienced not only by individuals involved in this workto their health, both physical and mental, and to their sense of self as well as to their entitlements, but also to the fabric of the household and those who inhabit it.…”

“…In our previous work (Goldblatt and Rai, 2018) we have noted that the feminist critiques of tort law can assist us in understanding why the complexities of care work and the depletion that may result from it are often absent in law dealing with the compensation of harm. Conaghan (2003: 192) has pointed to the difficulty law faces in dealing with the relational nature of harm, emotions and intimacy.…”

“…Persistent feminist campaigns, methodological developments, and legal initiatives have seen some progress in the direction of recognition of social reproductive work. One example of a domestic legal initiative to include the value of social reproduction in compensation is the case brought against mining houses in South Africa for illness caused to miners (see Nkala and Others v. Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited and Others, 2016) where the court did take into account the harms to the carers of the miners (see Goldblatt and Rai, 2018). However, even in this case, the out of court settlement which does compensate dependents, did not take into account the value of care work of the family carers.…”

“…The UN's new focus on the recognition of unpaid domestic labour in the SDGs (SDG 5.4) is an opportunity to consider how the multiple ways in which the harmful impacts of such work, conceptualised by Rai et al (2014) as depletion through social reproduction (forthwith, depletion), could be recognised better and compensated for even as we struggle to transform the gendered regime of care itself (see also Elson, 2000). Building on this work, we have argued (Goldblatt and Rai, 2018) that harmful practicesin our case study through corporate negligence -often have ripple effects beyond the obvious individual victims; unpaid carers of those directly affected also suffer harms as a result of depletion. The law usually fails to recognise or compensate this work in remedying harms because this labour is invisible and taken for granted.…”

Social bodies and social justice

“…In the humanities and social sciences, for example, the body features prominently in an increasing number of approaches to social justice. From the discourses of precariousness (Butler, 2005) and vulnerability (Fineman, 2010; 2014; 2015; 2017a; 2017b) to the capabilities approach (Nussbaum, 2011; Sen, 1980), social flesh (Beasley and Bacchi, 2007) and depletion (Goldblatt and Rai, 2017), the body has been positioned as a site for understanding and responding to our common humanity. Within such models, the embedded fleshiness of the human condition is foregrounded with the hope of leveraging a more responsive state (Fineman, 2010): one that recognises not only common rights and state obligations, but also our specificity and ethical individualism (Sen, 1980).…”