Social Reproduction Theory Research Articles

Bloodwork: Circulatory Disorders, Immunity, and the Scarring of Systems

AbstractIn June 2021, laboratory analysis of my blood indicated dangerously low levels of iron. This article chronicles my subsequent diagnosis of uterine fibroids, the hysterectomy that followed, and the scarring that came afterward. In doing so, the article tells the story of how blood circulates—or not—through biosocial systems. It shows how the properties of blood are frequently connected to conditions of exploitation to advance the argument that paying attention to how blood works, or “bloodwork,” can illuminate systemic inequality and alternative systems. In conversation with social reproduction theory, I consider capitalism’s powerful extractivist orderings of immunity in which my iron comes at another’s expense, alongside logics of immunity based on different circulatory visions. I hold on to the possibility of growing stronger without weakening others—so long as we can attend to history and its scars.

Political Work and Social Reproduction in India and Beyond

This commentary aims to show how the concept of ‘political work’ suggested by Kaveri Haritas (Haritas, 2021, In search of home: Citizenship, law and the politics of the poor) applies to a wide range of contexts and goods and services supposedly provided by the State in India but also elsewhere. The objective is also to outline the contributions of the concept of political work to feminist studies from the perspective of social reproduction theory.

Who cares for wellbeing? Corporate wellness, social reproduction and the essential worker

This paper seeks to contribute to the rethinking of wellbeing in organisation studies. First, it contributes to critiques of corporate wellness by drawing on social reproduction theory to show how the wellbeing of every individual worker is dependent on the efforts of many, often unacknowledged, others. Corporate wellness initiatives epitomise the dominant, neoliberal narrative of wellbeing in which individuals are posited as responsible for the maintenance of their own wellbeing. Against this, social reproduction theory highlights the relational, socially distributed and materially grounded character of wellbeing. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic opened an opportunity to radically rethink wellbeing. A social reproduction reading of the category of the essential worker allows us to analyse some of the tensions and contradictions involved in the work of producing wellbeing today. It shows the unequal distribution of both the work involved and of its rewards. In sum, this paper helps extend debates over wellbeing in organisation studies beyond, on the one hand, individualised accounts of wellbeing and, on the other, accounts that ultimately confine understandings of wellbeing to the traditional workplace. It argues for the need for organisational studies of wellbeing to take the wider social reproduction of wellbeing as its starting point.

Refusing and Redressing Gestational Labor: A Social Reproduction Account of Abortion

Abstract This article analyzes abortion politics from a Marxist feminist perspective by adapting social reproduction theory (SRT). Despite the urgent threats to abortion access facing feminists worldwide, abortion is largely absent from contemporary SRT. This absence is first addressed from a theoretical perspective through the development of three arguments: that SRT can connect abortion to the biological reproduction of labor power via gestational labor, that abortion can make gestational labor less alienating, and that abortion can function as a refusal of productivism and reproductive sexuality. The article then applies these arguments to a preexisting case study of reproductive justice and women in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. By situating abortion within migrant workers’ struggles over social reproduction processes, this analysis demonstrates that SRT is useful for the study of abortion and can generate insights different from those of the reproductive justice approach alone.

Social Reproduction of Post‐Soviet Migrant Labour: Braiding the International Political Economy

AbstractIn this article, we analyse the social reproduction of post‐Soviet migrant labour. Our inquiry builds on artwork by Olga Jitlina and Anna Tereshkina and by Mahpora Kiromova dealing with the effects of migration on family relations in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. We have braided the artwork with strands of social reproduction theory to examine the transnational household as a set of relationships that enables post‐Soviet and global capitalism to draw value out of unwaged work and to reproduce the differentiated (i.e. gendered and racialised) labour force. Our focus is on the tropes of family, weddings, love, and violence. The analysis of these tropes draws attention to the intersecting effects of globalised capitalism, local structures of value, the state, and patriarchy in post‐Soviet political economy. Through them we detail the fundamental co‐constitution of production and social reproduction, but also show that practices of social reproduction can be reservoirs of resistance and potential change.

I’ll Take a Year Off and Look What Happened’: How Family Caregiving Responsibilities Influence Educational Trajectories in the United States

Higher educational attainment has been linked to better health and economic outcomes. However, little is known about how family caregiving responsibilities influence individuals’ educational trajectories in the United States (U.S.). Currently, 26% of U.S. undergraduates have at least one dependent child. While some literature describes the experiences of college-student parents, few studies examine the myriad ways family caregiving may singly or simultaneously present, including caregiving for children, relatives, household members, and older adults. The literature shows that caregiving for relatives, household members, and older adults is a common experience, with 20% of Americans providing care for an adult. Guided by social reproduction theory and reproductive labor, this paper examined qualitative interviews (n=31) from the Educational Trajectories & Health study to understand how caregiving responsibilities, broadly defined, influenced educational trajectories. Participants who identified as women discussed bearing disproportionate expectations to take on family caregiving responsibilities, including caregiving for siblings and aging parents. For most participants, family caregiving responsibilities substantially influenced educational decisions. Some experienced additional caregiving responsibilities but still attained their educational goals; others with family caregiving responsibilities discussed stretching and substituting resources in an effort to manage but ultimately having to step back from their stated educational pursuits. Situating these findings within broader social and structural contexts, this analysis examines educational disruption when family caregiving responsibilities arise. Findings have implications for policies that support students with family caregiving responsibilities at school, state, and federal levels.

Roots of Social Reproduction Theory in Marx and Engels: A Total Analysis of Society and Life

Roots of Social Reproduction Theory in Marx and Engels: A Total Analysis of Society and Life

Territorializing local public policy: Building social muscle, sustaining participation in food system transformation

This article focuses on experiences of engagement with public institutions to explore the nature of local level state-society relations that might enable the construction of food sovereignty. It illustrates how peasants and activists struggling for food sovereignty can benefit from and shape the impact of a variety of institutional supports to enable food system transformation. It draws on the concept of territorialized food systems, to illustrate the importance of considering the what and the how of policy and on feminist social reproduction theory to add nuance and depth to how we think about the process of leveraging public policy to enable food sovereignty. I develop the concept of social muscle to describe some of the ways that social movements try to build strength and resilience in order to navigate contradictions as they arise in this process. I argue that territorializing food systems can help reclaim control over food policy at the local level, but it also requires coordination among a range of diverse actors. A feminist analytical lens helps to visibilize this diversity of actors, understand and overcome some of the barriers to participation in policy processes that they may face. Finally, I suggest that no political opportunity can be seized upon or sustained without social muscle, which is required to guide policy making towards the construction of food sovereignty and which needs to be constantly strengthened.

Critical realism methodology as a guiding framework for interdisciplinary theory enrichment: Reflections on a study of empowerment.

Philosophy of science and ontological assumptions underpin our work as scholars, explicitly, or implicitly. In this paper, we develop empowerment theory with a critical realism (CR) lens. Through the example of a study of empowerment, we examine how can it be used as a guiding paradigm for research in community psychology (CP). We sought to increase theoretical rigor by using a CR approach to interdisciplinarity. We put empowerment into conversation with Social Reproduction Theory and Black, Indigenous, People of Color feminisms, because both represent situated knowledge that address experiences with oppression and focus on dismantling systems of oppression. We illustrate how a CR approach shaped our understanding of empowerment, and in turn, provided an analysis that was (a) more nuanced and actionable, (b) more aligned with CP values and definitions of social justice, and (c) more likely to contribute to the field by developing an intersectional anticapitalist and feminist intervention into empowerment literature. This paper highlights how, aligned with an interdisciplinary CR approach, we questioned assumptions about empowerment theory, which influenced our empirical work so that we could provide a more focused critique of unjust social arrangements, and with it, the possibility to act upon those arrangements.

Social Work and the ‘Social Doctor’: Bowlby, Social Reproduction and ‘Common Sense’

Abstract This article furnishes a critical commentary on the work of John Bowlby. It is argued that social work’s critical engagement with his contributions demands that his ideas are historised. An exploration of his rarely examined early articles reveals a figure preoccupied with the wider social world and not simply the dyadic relationship involving the mother and her child. Viewing himself as a ‘social doctor’, Bowlby was also relentlessly intent on shaping public and professional perceptions within the framework of the ‘Fordist’ economic and social settlement after the Second World War. It is maintained that Bowlby and ‘Bowlbyism’ might be more fully understood if examined through the lens of Marxist feminist social reproduction theory and alongside Gramscian ideas about ‘common sense’.

The Reviewing of Social Reproduction Theories: Social Capital on Students’ Academic Success

Inequality in human society exists in our lives and influences educational sources. Educational equity is a manifestation of social equity. It is a state of educational development in which a certain society not only gives all members of society freedom and equal choice, but also shares public educational resources at the time and all levels. In fact, education equity should include at least two essential aspects: equality of educational rights and equality of educational opportunities. This article investigates the reasons and phenomena of social reproductions by reviewing some relevant theories of social capital. The main arguments of our research are:1) education is a way of gathering different groups into an average position and helps students benefit from each other. Therefore, the theoretical concepts of social capital influence individual educational success [1], [2] & [3]; 2) Educational competition and social reproduction are caused by unequal educational resources; 3) The academic gap are extended due to various family classes. By reviewing previous research, this article, to some extent, illustrates the cause of social reproductions, which might inspire future researchers.

Circuits of Social Reproduction: Nature, Labor, and Capitalism

This article offers a reformulation of social reproduction theory’s (SRT’s) circuit of social reproduction that is suitable for the Global South. Drawing from existing literature, the article argues that wage labor is not always central to social reproduction and that there exist multiple labors of social reproduction associated with capitalist production, noncapitalist commodity production, and subsistence production. These stylized interrelated labor processes, which are coconstituted with nature, represent the circuits of social reproduction. The circuits clarify how working people engage in social reproduction even when the wage economy is inadequate for survival. They also offer a basis for interrogating crises of social reproduction when the totality of work time does not guarantee socially determined necessary consumption. These reworked circuits present opportunities for identifying both potential sites of exploitation and sites of resistance in the Global South. JEL Classification: B51, B54, Q56

Class or individual habitus? Willingness to spend more on reconciliation policies in Europe

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.

Into the Unknown: Experiences of Social Newcomers Entering Medical Education.

Amid efforts to diversify the medical profession, research has yet to fully explore the role of early social ties to the field. This study examined diversity through the experiences of students without early ties to medicine through family members working in health care (i.e., "newcomers") in comparison with more-connected peers (i.e., "insiders"), examining how social newcomers to medicine negotiate challenges stemming from their outsider status. The author conducted an exploratory qualitative study from 2018 to 2021 using a constructivist grounded theory approach. Following a voluntary preliminary survey of 2 cohorts of first-year medical students about their social connections in health care, the author conducted interviews over the next 2 years with students who had indicated their willingness to participate. Interviews addressed how social context shaped-and continued to influence-their journeys into medicine. Eighty second- and third-year students participated in 94 interviews, including some follow-up interviews for longitudinal insight into outsider status. Interviews from the second year (58 new, 14 follow-up) provided the foundation of the qualitative results. Students experienced outsider status primarily on the basis of being newcomers to medicine, often compounded by intersectional characteristics, including first-generation college status, rural or low-income background, race or ethnicity, and nontraditional status. For some, an early shortage of social capital became internalized, continuing to influence confidence and belonging well into training, in line with social reproduction theory. However, newcomers also experienced benefits associated with diverse backgrounds which helped them find a sense of belonging in medicine, as suggested by community cultural wealth and antideficit perspectives. Newcomer status proved to be a central cause of outsiderness for students from all backgrounds and warrants greater attention from stakeholders, perhaps mirroring the undergraduate focus on first-generation college-goers. Findings suggest institutions that provide robust networking and community-building opportunities are best positioned to support newcomers.

Social reproduction as the reproduction of capitalism

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.

Narratives of coercive precarity experienced by mothers seeking asylum in the UK (Wales)

ABSTRACT This paper explores the impact of the UK’s racialized asylum system on mothers and their children. Asylum-seeking mothers in the UK are treated with hostility and suspicion and prohibited from basic socio-economic rights such as employment yet must also raise their children within this hostile environment. In this paper, based on a Thematic Narrative Analysis of interviews with refugee and asylum-seeking mothers in Wales, we argue that legalized hostility and exclusion are systemic coercive control. Using theories of social reproduction and coercive control, we explore the emotional and psychological impact of coercion on four women and show how this systemic coercive control leads to both the fracturing of families and the fracturing of motherhood. Through the analysis of asylum-seeking mothers’ experiences, we show that the coercion exerted on the women has direct and indirect impacts on their children through deprivation, isolation and fractured relationships.

Progress by death: Labor precaritization and the financialization of social reproduction in South Korea

This article looks at the contemporary South Korean political economy of crisis and recovery to visualize the material conditions of working-class lives and the ways in which their capacity to reproduce labor and life contradicts the regionally specific logic of ‘progress’. I visualize three critical scenes of workplace death that chart the ways in which the social reproduction capacity of the working class is fatally contracted in the era of neoliberal reforms. These scenes of death mirror the process of neoliberal transition that the financial crises of 1997 and 2008 accelerated in the region. In doing so, I articulate the notion of ‘progress by death’ as the intensified necropolitical logic of neoliberal capitalism that is led by the post-developmental state and fully transnationalized chaebol capital in South Korea. Building on feminist theories of social reproduction and the studies on the financialization of life, I argue that the logic of ‘progress by death’ as a constitutive element of financial capitalism reproduces the uneven patterns of growth and the transnational relations of violence, debt, and dispossession across Asian economies.

Cladding and community

The longstanding housing crisis in the UK, and London in particular, has been exacerbated in recent years by an increased understanding of the flammability of buildings and the arrival of what activists term ‘The Cladding Scandal’. In this paper, I show how in response to the health and financial risks of The Cladding Scandal, disparate groups come together to challenge the dominant politics of expertise through the enrolment of traditionally ‘expert’ forms of knowledge within community groups. I analyse community building practices, especially the lines of communication, to show a means by which the social reproduction of the city is sustained, to argue that such practices constitute an important but under-recognised form of expertise. Drawing together geographies of emotion and social reproduction theory, I demonstrate the productive possibilities of thinking through the social reproduction of the city and its politics of expertise by questioning the role, types and circulation of particular emotions.

Social reproduction, the popular economy and informality: Feminist reflections from Latin America

The economic discipline is characterised by hierarchical dualisms. This paper examines formal/informal and productive/reproductive binary categories by means of a dialogue between the social reproduction theory and the popular economy. A starting point is the wealth of feminist contributions that highlight both reproduction and work as the heart of socioeconomic phenomena. Based on formalization processes in Latin America, the article explores how public policy interventions focus on the productive sphere. However, upon closer examination, these policies seem to neglect reproductive activities, as well as the demands of popular sectors. We argue that the contributions of feminism are necessary to broaden the economic field.

Social Inequality in Religious Education: Examining the Impact of Sex, Socioeconomic Status, and Religious Socialization on Unequal Learning Opportunities

The study of social inequality has so far received little attention in religious education research, although this phenomenon has been studied in educational science and sociology of education research for fifty years. This article therefore aims to clarify the explanatory power of this research approach for research in religious education. Based on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural and social reproduction, a structural equation model is used to examine the extent to which students’ sex, socioeconomic status, and religious socialization determine unequal learning opportunities in religious education. The data basis of the study is a sample of 952 students from Germany who were interviewed by means of questionnaires. The results show that religious socialization and the students’ sex are relevant to unequal learning conditions, whereas the socioeconomic status of the family has a marginal influence. Unequal learning conditions are created in the classroom by differences in the perception of the relevance of the subject matter, and in the understanding of learning processes. Religious students are in both cases at an advantage compared to non-religious students.