CSGD Seminar: Should social protection speak to social justice?

In this CSGD seminar, Dr Hania Sholkamy, an associate research professor at the Social Research Centre of the American University in Cairo, will discuss whether social protection should speak to social justice.

Register for the social protection seminar. 

Seminar Abstract

Social protection has evolved as a field of experts whereby technocratic concepts and language signal but do not question political and moral worlds. Rendering technocratic and almost inevitable conditions and arrangements that are historical, political, ethical and avoidable is a feature and fact of most applied work. For example, a health condition has to be treated even if its causes are unexamined. However, social protection interventions cannot be so dissociated from the conditions that created the poverty and vulnerability from which they are protecting in the same way. The ways by which social protection programs are targeted, designed, benchmarked and evaluated are contextual and not abstract issues.

This lecture will speak to this broader world whereby social policy to protect poor persons and families is discussed as a political and contingent process whereby approach, design, entitlements, implementation and governance are reflections of power dynamics and not simply of best practice. The specific examples provided to make the case will be drawn from Egypt and its gender-inclusive social protection program.

Speaker Bio

Hania Sholkamy is an associate research professor at the Social Research Centre of the American University in Cairo and has designed cash protection programmes in Egypt.