Intersectionality and Social-Reproduction Feminisms
Toward an Integrative Ontology
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Susan Ferguson in
Current site
Google Scholar
Seeking to capture the multi-layered, contradictory, nature of subjectivities and social positions through a framework which insists upon the complex, dynamic nature of the social, intersectionality feminism has inspired Marxist-Feminists to push the social-reproduction feminism paradigm beyond a narrow preoccupation with gender/class relations. Yet even its most politically radical articulations stop short of fully theorising the integrative logic they espouse. This article explores the roots of this under-theorisation, and suggests that a more fully integrative ontology informs certain formulations of social-reproduction feminism. In understanding the social as constituted by practical human activity whose object (the social and natural world) is organised capitalistically, social-reproduction feminism highlights the dialectical relationship between the capitalist whole and its differentiated parts. The challenge for Marxist-Feminism is to embrace this dialectical approach while building on the insights of intersectionality feminism to more convincingly capture the unity of a complex, diverse social whole.
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Ackerly Brooke & McDermott Rose ‘Introduction. Recent Developments in Intersectionality Research: Expanding beyond Race and Gender’ Politics & Gender 2012 8 367 370
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Anthias Floya ‘Hierarchies of Social Location, Class and Intersectionality: Towards a Translocational Frame’ International Sociology 2012 28 1 121 138
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Arat-Koç Sedef Bezanson & Luxton ‘Whose Social Reproduction? Transnational Motherhood and Challenges to Feminist Political Economy’ 2006 2006
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Bakker Isabella & Silvey Rachel Beyond States and Markets: The Challenges of Social Reproduction 2008 London Routledge
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Bannerji Himani ‘Building from Marx: Reflections on Class and Race’ Social Justice 2005 32 4 144 160
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Bannerji Himani Bakan Abigail B. & Dua Enakshi ‘Marxism and Anti-Racism in Theory and Practice: Reflections and Interpretations’ Theorizing Anti-Racism: Linkages in Marxism and Critical Race Theories 2014 Toronto University of Toronto Press
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Bezanson Kate & Luxton Meg Social Reproduction: Feminist Political Economy Challenges Neo-Liberalism 2006 Montreal and Kingston McGill-Queen’s University Press
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Bilge Sirma ‘Intersectionality Undone: Saving Intersectionality from Feminist Intersectionality Studies’ Du Bois Review 2013 10 2 405 424
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Butler Judith Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity 1990 London Routledge
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Carbado Devon , Crenshaw Kimberlé , Mays Vickie & Tomlinson Barbara ‘Intersectionality: Mapping the Movements of a Theory’ Du Bois Review 2013 10 2 303 312
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Chang Grace Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy 2000 Cambridge, MA South End Press
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Colen Shellee Ginsburg Faye D. & Rapp Rayna ‘“Like a Mother to Them”: Stratified Reproduction and West Indian Childcare Workers and Employers in New York’ Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction 1995 Berkeley University of California Press
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Crenshaw Kimberlé Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics 1989 Chicago University of Chicago Legal Forum
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Ferguson Susan ‘Building on the Strengths of the Socialist Feminism Tradition’ Critical Sociology 1999 25 1 1 15
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Ferguson Susan ‘Canadian Contributions to Social Reproduction Feminism: Race and Embodied Labor’ Race, Gender, Class 2008 15 1/2 42 57
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Ferguson Susan & McNally David ‘Capital, Labour-power, and Gender-relations: Introduction to the Historical Materialism Edition of Marxism and the Oppression of Women’ 2013 Vogel 2013.
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Ferguson Susan & McNally David Panitch Leo & Albo Greg ‘Precarious Migrants: Gender, Race and the Social Reproduction of a Global Working Class’ Socialist Register 2015: Transforming Classes 2014 London Merlin Press
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Gibson-Graham J.K. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy 2006 Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press [1996]
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Glenn Evelyn Nakano ‘From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor’ Signs 1992 18 1 1 43
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Hill Collins Patricia Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment 1990 London Routledge
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Hontagneu-Sotelo Pierrette & Avilla Ernestine Zinn Maxine B. , Hontagneu-Sotelo Pierrette & Messner Michael A. ‘“I’m Here, but I’m There”: The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood’ Gender Through the Prism of Difference 2000 Boston Allyn and Bacon
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Katz Cindi ‘Vagabond Capitalism and the Necessity of Social Reproduction’ Antipode 2001 33 709 738
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Kerner Ina ‘Questions of Intersectionality: Reflections on the Current Debate in German Gender Studies’ European Journal of Women’s Studies 2012 19 2 203 218
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Mianda Gertrude ‘Féminisme africain: divergences ou convergences des discours?’ Présence Africaine: Revue culturelle du monde noir 1997 155 87 99
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Palmer Phyllis Domesticity and Dirt: Housewives and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920–1945 1989 Philadelphia Temple University Press
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Picchio Antonella Social Reproduction: The Political Economy of the Labour Market 1992 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
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Vogel Lise Woman Questions: Essays for a Materialist Feminism 1995 London Routledge
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Vogel Lise Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory 2013 Leiden Brill
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Williams Raymond Marxism and Literature 1977 Oxford Oxford University Press
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Winker Gabriele & Degele Nina ‘Intersectionality as Multi-level Analysis: Dealing with Social Inequality’ European Journal of Women’s Studies 2011 18 1 51 66
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Wright Melissa Disposable Women and other Myths of Global Capitalism 2006 London Routledge
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Yuval-Davis Nira ‘Intersectionality and Feminist Politics’ European Journal of Women’s Studies 2006 13 3 193 209
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2
See Ferguson 1999, 2008; Luxton 2006; Luxton, Ferguson, Schein and Carty 2014.
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4
Sayers 1985, p. 16.
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8
Nash 2008, p. 4.
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10
Ackerly and McDermott 2012, p. 367.
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11
Davis 2008, p. 68.
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12
Ackerly and McDermott 2012, p. 367. See Davis 2008, p. 75, for a snapshot of the literature. Also see Butler 1990; Bannerji 2005; McCall 2005; Nash 2008; Winker and Degele 2011.
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13
Yuval-Davis 2006, p. 195. The term ‘camp’ is in scare-quotes because each ‘camp’s’ adherents do not rigidly subscribe to and/or defend the distinctions Yuval-Davis draws.
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14
Nash 2008, pp. 6, 7.
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16
Carbado, Crenshaw, Mays and Tomlinson 2013, p. 206.
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17
Nash 2008, p. 12.
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18
See Dhamoon 2011, p. 233; Nash 2008, pp. 6–7; and Yuval-Davis 2006, pp. 195–8, for elaborations on these criticisms. See Carbado et al. for a partial rebuttal (Carbado, Crenshaw, Mays and Tomlinson 2013, p. 308).
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20
Yuval-Davis 2006, p. 195.
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21
Nash 2008, p. 10.
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22
See, for example, Yuval-Davis 2006, p. 195. Crenshaw and others who take an additive approach will describe oppressions as interdependent, but this is asserted rather than explained.
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23
Hill Collins 1990, p. 222. Hill Collins uses the term ‘interlocking’ to evoke the necessary relation of systems of oppression in the broader social context (as opposed to the more contingent ‘intersectional’ historical moments).
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24
Dhamoon 2011, p. 234.
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25
Dhamoon 2011, pp. 238–9.
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26
Anthias 2012, p. 130.
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27
Yuval-Davis 2006, p. 195.
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29
Dhamoon 2011, pp. 238–9 (emphasis added).
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30
Anthias 2012, p. 132. Anthias does not explicitly equate ‘translocational’ with ‘transnational’, but is unclear about what else might constitute the former.
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31
Anthias 2012, pp. 133 and 131.
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33
See Davis 2008. As well, Dhamoon’s ‘matrixes of meaning-making’ (Dhamoon 2011) seem to see power primarily in discursive terms.
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35
See McNally 2015.
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36
Williams 1977, pp. 83–9.
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37
Bannerji 2005, p. 146.
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38
Bannerji 2014, p. 128.
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41
See, for example, Nash 2008, p. 13; and Anthias 2012, p. 131.
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42
Laslett and Brenner 1989, p. 382.
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43
Marx 1964, p. 111; Marx and Engels 1932, Volume 1, Chapter 1. If this expansive understanding of labour is indeed a premise of history, its internal differentiation (over time and across space) needs to be explained. An exclusive focus on any particular form of labour (value-creating, or domestic, or peasant, for instance) risks occluding the wider picture.
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44
Gramsci 1971, pp. 34–5.
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48
Ferguson and McNally 2013, p. xxv.
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50
For example, see Picchio 1992.
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51
Luxton 2006, pp. 36–7.
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52
Marx 1973, p. 29.
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53
Marx 1976, pp. 275, 716.
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56
Miles 1989, p. 70.
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57
Ferguson 2008; see also Katz 2001.
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61
Ollman 1971, Section iii.
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68
See McNally 2015, pp. 142–4.
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Intersectionality and Social-Reproduction Feminisms
Toward an Integrative Ontology
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Susan Ferguson in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Seeking to capture the multi-layered, contradictory, nature of subjectivities and social positions through a framework which insists upon the complex, dynamic nature of the social, intersectionality feminism has inspired Marxist-Feminists to push the social-reproduction feminism paradigm beyond a narrow preoccupation with gender/class relations. Yet even its most politically radical articulations stop short of fully theorising the integrative logic they espouse. This article explores the roots of this under-theorisation, and suggests that a more fully integrative ontology informs certain formulations of social-reproduction feminism. In understanding the social as constituted by practical human activity whose object (the social and natural world) is organised capitalistically, social-reproduction feminism highlights the dialectical relationship between the capitalist whole and its differentiated parts. The challenge for Marxist-Feminism is to embrace this dialectical approach while building on the insights of intersectionality feminism to more convincingly capture the unity of a complex, diverse social whole.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 9305 | 2585 | 190 |
| Full Text Views | 2384 | 531 | 28 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 3492 | 1118 | 62 |