Social reproduction as the reproduction of capitalism

Abstract

Focaal’s recent Forum discussion, prompted by Jan Newberry and Rachel Rosen’s (2020) “Women and children together and apart: Finding the time for social reproduction theory,” takes a fresh view on finance capitalism by foregrounding its unlikeliest of actors: children. Children usually feature in scholarship as objects of care and investment in future goals that are not their own, rather than as the active building blocks of society. Indeed, their very positioning as children implies their nonagency. The authors in this Forum offer alternative understandings of children’s agency, and of the price of its retraction, as a lens into the workings of contemporary capitalism.