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Reframing #COVID19 from conflict to a crisis of care - something we should all be doing. Social reproduction is a useful way to think about this. https://twitter.com/RachelBLevinson/status/1250122468066578433">https://twitter.com/RachelBLe...
Social reproduction includes the day-to-day activities we do to maintain life - cooking, cleaning, parenting, caring.
#COVID19 is a crisis of social reproduction because our economic system requires us to do paid work in order to get what we need to survive.
We need wages to buy food, pay rent, buy medication, pay for health care etc.
We need wages to buy food, pay rent, buy medication, pay for health care etc.
#COVID19 is exposing how dysfunctional such a system is. Mass unemployment means we have a huge portion of society unable to meet basic needs - needs that must be met in order to maintain their existence.
Social reproduction points at the structural, intimate relationship between that work and capitalism:
Without the day-to-day activities of social reproduction, entire social systems cannot be reproduced.
Without the day-to-day activities of social reproduction, entire social systems cannot be reproduced.
We have a crisis of social reproduction when we can& #39;t do those day-to-day activities because we don& #39;t have money to buy necessities, like food to cook. Or a place to cook it, because we can& #39;t make rent.
There is a fundamental contradiction between an economic system that requires and creates precarity, and human needs.
This contradiction has always existed in capitalism but #COVID19 has revealed how it undermines well-being; how tenuous a grasp we have on managing it, and why so many of us are so anxious all the time.
Also, social reproduction happens through a gendered division of labor- women and girls are disproportionately tasked with these typically unpaid or poorly paid activities.
That doesn& #39;t mean men and boys don& #39;t also do them. Everybody does.
That doesn& #39;t mean men and boys don& #39;t also do them. Everybody does.
But these crises tend to weigh esp heavily on women, because women do more of these activities. And in single parent households, women tend to support more dependents than men, often on lower and fewer incomes.
This piece from @gregggonsalves and @akapczynski makes some similar points about #COVID19 and "The Economy" and is well-worth reading: http://bostonreview.net/science-nature/gregg-gonsalves-amy-kapczynski-markets-v-lives">https://bostonreview.net/science-n...
I make a (non-COVID-19) theoretical argument about social reproduction and economic thought/practice here: #39;s_Radical_about_Feminist_Radical_Political_Economy">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327738326_What& #39;s_Radical_about_Feminist_Radical_Political_Economy">https://www.researchgate.net/publicati...