of care’ intensified (though by no means instigated) by the pandemic ( The Economist, 2021 ). These key policy commitments appeared to reverse decades of state-led divestment, marketization and (re)privatization of services to support care and social reproduction, researched and theorized by feminist scholars, including feminist economic and labour geographers (see, for example, Bakker and Silvey, 2008 ; Molinari and Pratt, 2021 ; Schwiter et al, 2018a ). They were precipitated by evidence in Canada and elsewhere that the economic impacts of the pandemic are
Engineering social reproduction at Ford, 1910s In 1913, at the Highland Park factory of the Ford Motor Company, the annual turnover rate reached 370 per cent. In January 1914, management shortened the workday from nine to eight hours and doubled the average daily wage from 2.50 to 5 dollars for those who had ‘passed’ Ford Sociological Department’s meticulous inspections into the folds of personal and family life. The ‘sociologists’ analysed three different aspects of the lives of workers: social and biographical information; economic and financial situation
protective caution’ ( Gibson-Graham, 2006 : xxxv) And finally, if we take seriously Federici’s (2012 : 3) assertion that it is through the day-to-day activities by means of which we produce our existence, that we can develop our capacity to cooperate and not only resist our dehumanisation, but learn to reconstruct the world as a space of nurturing, creativity, and care ... might we then recognise that the terrain of social reproduction, inclusive of our everyday interactions and concern (or lack thereof) for others, is a key site of political struggle for radical
Spanning the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, this comparative study brings maternal workers’ politicized voices to the centre of contemporary debates on childcare, work and gender.
The book illustrates how maternal workers continue to organize against low pay, exploitative working conditions and state retrenchment and provides a unique theorization of feminist divisions and solidarities.
Bringing together social reproduction with maternal studies, this is a resonating call to build a cross-sectoral, intersectional movement around childcare. Maud Perrier shows why social reproduction needs to be at the centre of a critical theory of work, care and mothering for post-pandemic times.
Key messages The polycrisis needs to be understood as a crisis of social reproduction that takes on a political form. The political management (and resistance) to the crisis of social reproduction leads to a form of authoritarian statism. The crisis leads to increasing resistance that is unable to be managed within existing formal political institutions. The state is increasingly the site of political contestation over social reproduction. Polycrisis or capitalist crisis? In 2022, the Sri Lankan economy was in a parlous condition. There was no
The chances of entering higher education can be seen as the product of a selection process, which throughout the school system is applied with very unequal severity, depending on the student’s social origin. In fact, for the most disadvantaged classes, it is purely and simply a matter of elimination . ( Bourdieu and Passeron, 1979 : 2, emphasis in original) This quote points to the barriers facing young people from disadvantaged backgrounds as they navigate an education system where their culture, practices, knowledge, tastes and dispositions (habitus
Introduction As a feminist political economic geographer, Beverley Mullings brings to economic geography a much-needed focus on global and intimate forms of neoliberal governmentality through an intersectional, multi-scalar analysis. Committed to feminist political economy, she has been a leader in pushing the discipline to centre the multiple systems of oppression that shape people’s lives. Importantly, she has done this by focusing on the relationship between diaspora, home and spheres of social reproduction – areas of essential economic activity but not
77 SIX Social work and reproduction: regulation and family life This chapter considers social work’s response to theories of ‘reproduction’ and ‘relationships’, especially given the feminised nature of social work. It explores typical case scenarios and examines the extent to which social work practice supports traditional family responsibilities that underpin the post-industrial economy. One of the aims is to demonstrate the significance of sociological approaches for practice, especially in relation to social exclusion and poverty, and to use different methods
Key messages This themed section is an interdisciplinary exploration into the invisibilisation of social reproduction. The neglect of social reproduction has gendered costs, which we theorise as ‘depletion through social reproduction’. The law and the state underpin gendered norms and are both important institutions to study in this context. Mitigation strategies are used by individuals, households and communities, which need to be supported at the policy and legal levels. Introduction This themed section is an interdisciplinary exploration into
Key messages Crises of working-class social reproduction are normal and recurrent features of capitalist development, central to the mechanisms through which capital reproduces itself. Changing patterns in working-class strategies for social reproduction are always dependent on or determined by changes in capital accumulation. We are not witnessing a ‘capitalist crisis’, but a global crisis of working-class economic survival. Introduction Having corresponded over a number of years, the two authors present here, under equal joint authorship, a
