Meenakshi Gopinath

Day 3: Learning from the Community: Collective Actions in the Face of Emergency

Perspective
Meenakshi Gopinath, Founder-Director, Women in Security Conflict, Management and Peace (WISCOMP), New Delhi, India

The Symbol & the Substance: The Ethics of Care in an Embattled World

The world is today in a liminal space, where the old is dying and the new has yet to be born. To live in today’s world is, for many, to live a life of paradox and contradiction. Unprecedented breakthroughs in science and technology coexist with symptoms of decay and despair. New crises plummet unprecedented numbers of human beings into ‘precarity’ – economic, social, and psychological. The added disruptions caused by COVID have completely reconfigured the world as we knew it – revealing the Janus face of the anthropocentric and androcentric paradigms of ‘progress’ and its associated pathologies.

This presentation is an invitation to dialogue on how a new conceptual vocabulary for an ethics of care can be scripted for today’s embattled world. It asks the following questions:

How can the ethics of care be infused and enriched by ideas of both interconnectedness and inter-sectionality to restore the canvas of coexistence in fractured societies? How do we distinguish between survival and resilience? How have communities defined ‘care work’ especially during the pandemic and in situations of violent conflict? How have women’s movements attempted to link the ‘ethics of care’ with issues of justice for those in the shadows of silence by pushing for recognizing ‘invisible’ care work and labor. How does the concept of the ‘relational self’ and ‘restorative activity’ find resonance in the work of communities that attempt to expand ‘healing spaces’ in organizations and societies beyond transactional relationships?

Can we draw lessons from the environmental movements in the Global South, mostly led by women, with their emphasis on indigenous knowledge systems and mutuality to provide us with the alphabets for an alternative paradigm?

BIOGRAPHY:

Meenakshi Gopinath is currently Chair, Centre for Policy Research, and Founder-Director of Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP), an initiative that promotes the leadership of South Asian women in the areas of peace, international affairs and regional cooperation. She is also Principal Emerita of Lady Shri Ram College, a premier women’s institution in India. A member of multi-track peace initiatives in South Asia, Meenakshi’s work and several publications focus on Gender, Security, Peacebuilding and Education. Her interests also include issues of human rights and gender, conflict transformation, Buddhist and Gandhian philosophy and the performing Arts. She was the first woman to serve on the National Security Advisory Board of India. She serves on the Boards of several Civil society initiatives for peace and nonviolence as well as educational institutes.

In recognition of her contribution to the field of women’s education and empowerment, she has received several national and international awards including the National Honour of Padma Shri. She also held the L.M. Singhvi fellowship at the David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies (DDMI), University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Visiting MacArthur Senior Fellowship at Nanyang University, Singapore, was conferred the Honorary Doctorate Degree of Letters (Honoris Causa) for significant contribution to the education of women and commitment to global peace, La Trobe University, Australia, She was Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Social Sciences, Monash University (2015).