Neoliberal capitalism and the political aesthetics of tradwife imagery

Music as Social and Cultural Reproduction: A Sociological Analysis of Educational Processes in Ontario Schools. Un article de la revue Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes (Numéro 5, 1984, p. 1-373) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

“The Problem of Order” proposed by Talcott Parsons, which has been argued in many ways, is still one of the most important sociological theme among contemoporary authors such as Nilkas Luhmann and Anthony Giddens. How the problem of order is treated with in the theories of Luhmann and Giddens, is discussed here. Though both theories are of course different from each other, they both arrive at “the theory of reproduction”. From the viewpoint of reproduction, the order is not considered as a state just against the disorder (conflict), but a process which continuously renews the precedential order in time by human practice. Society fundamentally depends on “paradox” or “contradiction”, and the social order is inherently impossible. Therefore the social order can be only temporarily constructed. Luhmann and Giddens analyze these mechanisms, each relatively laying emphasis on an 'ideal' or 'real' aspect. Theory of reproduction indicates that simple dualism of order-disorder is ineffective, but it has a tendency to invalidate the distinction between stability and non-stability, which is a core of the problem order. It is necessary to utilize the theory of reproduction to analyze various modes of stability and non-stability.

“Cultural capital” is a key concept in the work of Pierre Bourdieu. It plays a central role in Bourdieu’s account of the generation of class inequalities in educational attainment, which has evident affinities with those advanced by other sociologists of education; but also in his far more ambitious – though empirically unsustainable – theory of social reproduction. Much confusion can then be shown to arise from a failure to distinguish between the uses of the concept in the two quite differing contexts of what might be labelled as Bourdieu “domesticated” and Bourdieu “wild”. Researchers using the concept in the former context often fail to appreciate its radical nature and, in turn, the full extent to which their findings undermine Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction; while those who would wish to understand the concept in the latter context have difficulty in showing its continuing fitness for research purposes, given the failure of the larger theory in which it is embedded. Advantage would follow from leaving the language of “cultural capital” to those who still seek to rescue this theory, and otherwise replacing it with a more differentiated conceptual approach.

The need for theory in the sociology of education which deals with both structure and identity is discussed. It is argued that such theory is particularly relevant to an analysis of how schooling acts as an agent of social reproduction. Using Berger and Luckmann's social construction of reality theory (1966) as a basis, a number of theoretical perspectives which are relevant to the development of a theory of schooling and social reproduction are discussed. Two levels of analysis are considered: firstly the development of identity in the school context, and secondly the role of the education system in the reproduction of the social structure. Drawing on these ideas, the paper attempts to begin to move towards a theory of schooling and social reproduction which deals with both levels of analysis. It is suggested that the school processes which centre on school organization are significant mediators between identity and structure. It seems to be important that future empirical and theoretical work in sociology of education should focus on this mediating level. Only when we fully understand how schools replicate the social structure can we develop a viable pedagogy for change.

Most scholarship within social reproduction theory focuses on women’s paid and unpaid care and domestic work, typically within the global North. Rarely has social reproduction theory grappled with unfree labour in commodity supply chains, particularly in the global South. However, these labour relations also involve gendered power relations that cut across the productive and reproductive realms of the economy, which can be illuminated by social reproduction theory analysis. In this article, we reflect on how social reproduction theory can be used to make sense of unfree labour’s role in global supply chains, expanding its geographical scope and the forms of labour exploitation encompassed within it. Conceptually, we harness the insights of social reproduction theory, and Jeffrey Harrod and Robert W Cox’s work on ‘unprotected work’ in the global economy to examine how gendered power relations shape patterns of unfree labour. Empirically, we analyse interview and survey data collected among cocoa workers in Ghana through LeBaron’s Global Business of Forced Labour project. We argue that social reproduction theory can move global supply chain scholarship beyond its presently economistic emphasis on the productive sphere and can shed light into the overlaps between social oppression, economic exploitation, and social reproduction.

PurposePublic willingness to pay for extra public benefits and services may demonstrate a tension between the common good (more services) and economic motives (higher taxes for all). In this article, the authors present an analysis of this trade-off by drawing upon the Bourdieusian theory of social reproduction and habitus.Design/methodology/approachEmploying the European Social Survey (2016), the authors first examine the patterns of relationships between the agents' position in the social structure and their attitudes across care regimes in Europe. The authors then analyse whether this link is mediated by agents' individual trajectories and dispositions, such as their beliefs towards equality or tradition, political orientation, or religiosity.FindingsThe findings support the importance of both sociation and individuation in habitus formation, albeit to varying degrees across the regimes. Individual attitudes are therefore shaped not only by interests of reproducing or maximising social positions but also by more reflexive propensities to think about the common good.Originality/valueIn this article, the authors draw upon the theory of social reproduction and habitus by Pierre Bourdieu, who has been thus far rarely employed in the study of welfare attitudes. The article also contributes to the literature that studies the trade-off between the expansion and financing of reconciliation policies.

Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) centers the production and reproduction of labor power under capitalism. This power to labor is determined individually, socially, and in relation to the totality of capital. These powers are produced and reproduced in and through social relations that, while capitalist, have tremendously diverse local conditions and histories. SRT provides a framework to think through the oppressive logics shaping the production, reproduction, and potencies of labor powers understood as diversely constituted. It argues that SRT is committed to the diversity of these labor powers over and against conditions that constrain both these powers and their actualizations in forms amenable to capital. It shows how SRT can offer resources to value the powers to work to satisfy human needs beyond exploitative and other oppressive social dynamics. Specifically, the paper highlights how a normative commitment to labor power can help SRT respond to charges of productivism, ableism, and narrow versions of workerism that are often leveled against left commitments to labor power. Building upon what I understand to be SRT’s normative critique of the form of labor power as constituted through capitalist social relations, the paper concludes by pointing to how SRT can promote struggles for social relations in which labor power could produce, actualize, and reproduce itself in freer ways.

Intersectionality is often understood to exist primarily as a corrective to other emancipatory theories rather than as a theory in its own right. Social reproduction theory (SRT), a strain of Marxist feminism exemplified in this article by contributors to the volume Social Reproduction Theory – Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression published in 2017, is characterized by a self-understanding that involves incorporating intersectional insights as a reaction to Black feminist interventions. In this narrative, intersectionality itself becomes obsolete, serving first and foremost as a step on SRT’s dialectical journey to becoming a better theory. Allegedly undertheorized intersectional frameworks constitute an ever-present foil for SRT’s self-image as an emancipatory theory of the capitalist social whole. This narrative is problematized on multiple levels in this article. SRT and its depiction of intersectionality are summarized in the first part of the paper. The second part demonstrates, on the one hand, that a historicization of intersectionality as ‘intervening’ into Marxist feminist theories, adding an intersectional perspective to feminist analysis of capitalism, ignores the formative role of analyses of Black women’s position as working subjects within overarching capitalist structures in intersectional thought. On the other hand, SRT's narrative occludes practical and theoretical implications of a framework that explicitly theorizes resistance from the margins. Building on this critique of SRT’s understanding of intersectionality, the third part develops an intersectional notion of solidarity, thus showing that the ostensibly seamless integration of intersectional insights into SRT obfuscates a potentially fruitful tension between the two frameworks pertaining to their respective understandings of solidarity and social transformation.

The theoretical basis for a critical sociology of economic life informalization and the variety of working activities towards a theory of social reproduction - the meanings of different survival strategies informalization and socialization mixes in Italy polarization, social classes and power in fragmented societies.

Interest in social reproduction theory (SRT) has been revived in the in the last ten odd years. This paper positions SRT, and its refraction through a geographic lens, as particularly well placed to address emerging issues in the context of ongoing crises—economic, environmental and of care—which have been enhanced by the Covid‐19 pandemic. I present an overview of the Marxist‐feminist traditions that constitute the basis for modern SRT. Through a survey of recent literature, I discuss the potential for extending contemporary SRT through intersectionality theory and suggest the need to draw on theoretical insights originating in the global periphery towards a postcolonial, decolonial SRT. Finally, I contextualize social reproduction theories within geography and suggest three emerging areas of scholarship in which combining a geographic and SRT perspective would yield productive understandings of the current moment and signal towards the construction of alternative, livable futures. These areas are debt and the financialization of social reproduction under neoliberalism; a turn towards a socioecological understanding of reproduction; and resistance, transformation and visions of the future through a “conscious appropriation” of life’s work and life sustaining practices at large.

While neuroscientific literature suggests that some parts of the brain are not fully developed until the mid-20s, public discourse is skewed toward early child development (ECD) because of its supposed long-term economic benefits. Some researchers have gone so far as to say that society overinvests in remedial programs for disadvantaged adolescents. Such claims resist advocacy efforts for extended care for children in out-of-home care and discourage policy and legislative concerns regarding investing in early adulthood. In this commentary, we unpack the literature on brain development and critically discuss its selective use by legislators and policymakers for investments in ECD. Despite the availability of neuroscientific and economic evidence, it is not prominent in the discourse surrounding supportive interventions like extending care. Using Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction, we discuss how preference is given to only the type of knowledge that preserves the social structures that work to ensure the multigenerational flow of capital among dominant groups. Also, social institutions act within the dimensions set by the social structure, constantly shaping and reshaping ways of facilitating capital preservation among the upper classes. We conclude that, in addition to moral argument, the current neuroscientific evidence may support investment in extended care programs.

Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) takes as its starting point the recognition that household activity in the capitalist mode of production constitutes far more than the production of use values. The activities that take place within households are understood to be part of the entire process of reproduction of society, i.e. social reproduction. The proponents of SRT have stimulated much valuable empirical research on these activities. However, there are major problems in the SRT framework within which these activities are placed. Although presented in the form of a contribution to Marxist theory, SRT contradicts the most basic precepts of this theory. SRT diverges fundamentally from Marxist theory in its use of the term “social reproduction,” and in the related distinctions between “reproductive” and “productive” labor, and between “paid” and “unpaid” labor.

The aim of this article is to articulate the theory of resistance with the theories of social and cultural reproduction, within the boundaries of the new sociology of education. Starting from the concepts of classification and framing developed by Basil Bernstein and of Pierre Bourdieu's social camp, the author defines some concepts which, in his opinion, are basic to establish the theory of resistance with conceptual rigour and analytical capacity. It will thus be possible to constitute a referential theoretical matrix for the development of counter‐hegemonic curricula, teaching materials and pedagogical practices, whose objective is to oppose the schools’ social and cultural reproduction in its different forms (of class, race, ethnic groups and gender), at its two levels—the reproduction of the sexual and social division of labour and of the inculcation of the dominant ideologies.

The paper reflects upon the principles and practice of an alternative educational system operating in rural Mexico in the light of Bourdieu’s theory of cultural and social reproduction. Bourdieu’s theory seeks to explain processes of reproduction of power relations within schools and society; whereas alternative educational systems seek to expand educational access in deprived areas in order to counteract processes of social inequality. The paper argues that, although Bourdieu’s theory does not fully explain the gradual inclusion of more people from disadvantaged backgrounds into education through alternative educational systems, processes of social reproduction in deprived communities still occur mainly because of lack of state support after primary school level, and a shortage of better infrastructure and opportunities for this sector of the population. Since the widespread upward educational and class mobility of the rural poor has not yet been achieved, the paper concludes that the processes of cultural and social reproduction continue despite the introduction of alternative educational systems.

The study on how Marx created the theory of social capital reproduction shows that this theory ranks among his original contributions to economics. In this theory, Marx’s analysis of Department II and the exchange relation reveals the conditions that capitalist reproduction must follow if it is to proceed smoothly. The fully indirect exchange process indicates that the capitalists’ individual consumption preferences, and changes in these preferences, are factors not only in determining capital accumulation but also in destroying the proportional relations of reproduction. Although Marx proposed the decomposition of Department II and made a theoretical analysis of the law of the simple reproduction of social capital after decomposition, he did not construct a complete model or make the same decomposition of the two major departments in the analysis of the reproduction of social capital on an extended scale. As a result, it is necessary to develop a technical supplement on the basis of Marx’s department decomposition principle, so as to cast light on the correctness of his theory of social capital reproduction and on the inevitability of capitalist reproduction crises.