Mapping Social Reproduction Theory

This groundbreaking collection explores the profound power of Social Reproduction Theory to deepen our understanding of everyday life under capitalism. While many Marxists tend to focus on the productive economy, this book focuses on issues such as child care, health care, education, family life and the roles of gender, race and sexuality, all of which are central to understanding the relationship between economic exploitation and social oppression. In this book, leading writers such as Lise Vogel, Nancy Fraser, David McNally and Susan Ferguson reveal the ways in which daily and generational reproductive labour, found in households, schools, hospitals and prisons, also sustains the drive for accumulation. Presenting a more sophisticated alternative to intersectionality, these essays provide ideas which have important strategic implications for anti-capitalists, anti-racists and feminists attempting to find a path through the seemingly ever more complex world we live in.

"These essays reveal the intensity of the battle between the exterminationist death-making force of Israeli colonialism and the Palestinian determination to produce and sustain a flourishing and liberated collective life" Abdel Razzaq Takriti, Palestinian Historian and Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair in Arab Studies, Rice University Social reproduction theory explores how the daily renewal of human life, and therefore human labour, is essential to capitalism. Here, for the first time, the theory is applied to the setting of Palestine. Israel's settler colonialism is premised on the destruction of Palestinian lives, undermining Palestinian social reproduction at every turn. That project, which ramped up after October 7, has a terrible logic. By examining the concrete, historically specific details, the authors begin to reshape and refine the theory of Social Reproduction, shedding light on why Israel's assault is so brutal. Chapters look at Israel's mass murder of a generation of Palestinians in Gaza, the effects of ecocide, the relationship between land dispossession and class, Israel's selective pronatalism, and scholasticide among other topics. Tithi Bhattacharya is Professor of South Asian History at Purdue University and the author of Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence, editor of Social Reproduction Theory and co-author of Feminism for the 99% which has been translated into over 30 languages. Susan Ferguson is Associate Professor Emerita at Wilfrid Laurier University and a Research Affiliate at the University of Houston. She is the author of Women and Work.

Many communities in the United States have been abandoned by the state. What happens when natural disasters add to their misery? This book looks at the broken relationship between the federal government and civil society in times of crises. Mutual aid has gained renewed importance in providing relief when hurricanes, floods and pandemics hit, as cuts to state spending put significant strain on communities struggling to survive. Harking back to the self-organised welfare programmes of the Black Panther Party, radical social movements from Occupy to Black Lives Matter are building autonomous aid networks within and against the state. However, as the federal responsibility for relief is lifted, mutual aid faces a profound dilemma: do ordinary people become complicit in their own exploitation? Reframing disaster relief through the lens of social reproduction, Peer Illner tracks the shifts in American emergency aid, from the economic crises of the 1970s to the Covid-19 pandemic, raising difficult questions about mutual aid's double-edged role in cuts to social spending. As sea levels rise, climate change worsens and new pandemics sweep the globe, Illner's analysis of the interrelations between the state, the market and grassroots initiatives will prove indispensable.

How do we integrate the theoretical underpinnings of Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) into our understanding of the social harms inflicted upon us? How can we use it to inform our struggles and affect societal change under capitalism? Integrating our understanding of productive and reproductive spheres and exploring the connection between identity-based oppression and class exploitation, SRT has emerged as a powerful Marxist frame for social analysis and political practice. In this book, Aaron Jaffe extracts SRT's radical potential, relying on recent struggles, including the International Women's Strike and the teachers' strikes, showing how we can use SRT to motivate socialist politics and strategy. Using Social Reproduction Theory to appreciate distinct forms of social domination, this unique and necessary book will have vital strategic implications for anti-capitalists, anti-racists, LGBT activists, disability activists and feminists.

Women's lives are burdened by the weight of debt. But collectively, it can be resisted

Eros and Alienation delves into the underexplored relationship between alienated labour and sexuality. Our deeply human drive to shape the world around us and fulfil ourselves through labour is subverted by capitalist alienation, leaving us to find fulfilment elsewhere. As a result, our erotic drives become the central focus for transformation and life-making, but are themselves restricted and fuelled by whatever energy is left after completing the monetised or social reproductive work required to survive. This alienation encounters ongoing resistance, as life-making activity can never be fully separated from the person who labours. Alan Sears explores the ways this alienation frames the processes of gender and sexual formation, showing how the organisation of work contributes to the development of a dominant regime of gendered sexualities, defined by a binary gender mapping of desire as heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual.

"Drawing on Marxist theory and integrating a feminist perspective, Vogel offers a compelling critique of bourgeois society and women's oppression-a critique that not only advances theory, but also engages deeply with the historical and political conditions of social transformation" Melda Yaman, İstanbul University "Already a key reference for understanding one of the major activists and thinkers of Marxist feminism ... A legacy from the twentieth century to the twenty-first!" Aurore Koechlin, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Lise Vogel is a unique voice in feminist theory. This book collects her best essays, opening a window into the last half-century of US socialist feminism. A trailblazer in the 1970s, Vogel planted the seeds for contemporary Social Reproduction Theory with her 'unitary theory' of capitalist exploitation and the oppression of women. Along with others, she challenged established views within the academy and movement by insisting that Marxist theory can accommodate not only class, but also race and gender. Today her work is more popular than ever, inspiring socialist feminists to develop inclusive liberatory ideas for the next generation. Selected from five decades of Vogel's work, including long out-of-print material, this volume is a crucial resource for readers interested in the intellectual history of Marxist feminism and twentieth-century activism. Lise Vogel is a feminist sociologist from the United States. She is the author of many books, including Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory. Kirstin Munro is an Assistant Professor of Economics at The New School for Social Research in New York, and author of The Production of Everyday Life in Eco-Conscious Households.

'This insightful, thoughtful work needs to be read by all of us ... Fielder brings together the two concepts of labour – work and giving birth – and shows us how both are subsumed under capitalism' Barbara Katz Rothman, author of In Labor 'Entirely original and a fascinating read' Robbie Davis-Floyd, cultural, medical and reproductive anthropologist 'Fielder's nuanced analysis demonstrates the contradictory features of obstetrics in capitalist society. A pivotal addition to Marxist understandings of pregnancy and childbirth' Kirstin Munro, Assistant Professor, The New School for Social Research Childbirth is often described as a natural process, and yet the choices we make around birth, the risks we face, and the care available to us, are tightly bound up in the dynamics of the capitalist system in which we live. Capitalist relations shape childbirth in largely unacknowledged ways but with intensely inequitable, often traumatic, effects. Going into Labour is a Marxist analysis of the labor of childbirth and of birth care. Through the chapters, former midwife Anna Fielder interrogates key features of contemporary childbearing, situating birth as a crucial site of struggle against capitalism. Fielder writes about productivity drives, insurance companies, risk formulations and calls for scientific evidence. She emphasizes the pay of birth workers, such as midwives and nurses, and their working conditions. She also signals the importance of political struggles in birthing arenas against forces including racism, colonialism, misogyny, and cisheteronormativity. As capitalism draws on these forces, shaping contemporary inequities and oppressions, activists work to gestate futures that aspire beyond the present constraints. Anna Fielder is a sociologist in the Midwifery Department, Auckland University of Technology (AUT).