Karmicielki świata. Mamki mleczne w świetle reprodukcji życia społecznego

Abstract

[Feeders of the World. Wet Nurses and Social Reproduction] The article is an attempt to outline the history of wet-nursing on the example of France from the late 18th century until the beginning of the 20th century. The main aim of the article is to highlight the social and economic changes undergone by the profession of wet-nursing. This study explores the process in which increasing industrialisation and urbanisation leads to wet nurses becoming gradually subjected to what Karl Marx described as formal subsumption of labour under capital. Wet-nursing was one of the most important functions contributing to societies’ survival and reproduction, which is why at the turn of the 19th century it was commodified and transformed into one of the most alienated types of labour. These processes were accompanied by a series of changes in the social and cultural perception of wet nurses, notably by the so-called rabble discourse typical for the 19th-century means of racialising working class people.