Spatializing social reproduction theory: integrating state space and the urban fabric

Abstract

This article sets out to extend the core ideas of social reproduction theory (SRT), an increasingly influential strand of scholarship within and beyond critical geopolitical economy. It suggests that while SRT productively addresses longstanding debates within Marxist feminism, it has yet to adequately theorize the shifting spatialities of reproductive work and the relationship between social reproduction and the state. To address this relative weakness, this article stages a dialogue between SRT and the emergent neo-Lefebvrian literature on state space and the multiscalar geographies of capitalist urbanization. The primary claim at stake in this context is that reproductive work is periodically and systematically reorganized and re-spatialized in relation to the broader crisis dynamics of capital, and the reweaving of the urban fabric; and, moreover, that this process of reorganization and re-spatialization is profoundly mediated, managed, and canalized by state spatial practices. To concretize this theorization, this article closes with a brief historical reading of US imperial expansion and urbanization between roughly 1898 and 1925.