Embodying the Cost of a Predatory State

Depletion via Social Reproduction in Venezuela’s Crisis (2013–2021)

Bibliographic Data

ID12426153
AuthorsM Lopez Blanco (0000-0003-1828-0998, Huron University, corresponding author), Andrea Rosales (0000-0001-6797-6241, York University), Antulio Rosales (York University)
Year2025
Publication date2025-10-06
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Politics International Studies in Gender State & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1072-4745 • E-ISSN: 1468-2893
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/sp/jxaf053
OpenAlexW4416834394
LanguageEN
References cited36

This article brings together the literatures of predation and depletion via social reproduction (DSR) to provide an explanation of the Venezuelan crisis (2013–2021). Venezuela’s gradual descent into a predatory state exacerbated the state’s reliance on the unpaid reproductive labor of women, which provoked gendered harms. We empirically examine DSR as exacerbated by predation that manifests in harms to citizenship entitlements, discursive harms, and bodily harms. The embodied consequences of the predatory state’s reliance on women’s labor manifest in the weakening of livelihoods, reproductive, labor, and political rights. The article proposes a framework to explain the embodied costs of the Venezuelan crisis, with the potential of explaining gendered aspects of the global authoritarian turn. The article broadens both the literature on the state capacity of predatory states by “embodying” it, and the literature on DSR by exploring forms of depletion that occur as a consequence of institutional decline and economic collapse

Authoritarianism · Embodied cognition · Politics · Reproduction · Social reproduction · State (computer science · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Gender Politics and Representation · Politics and Society in Latin America

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access