chapters for upgrade:

1) method matters

‘take leave for a time of the noisy sphere of the market, where everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men, and follow the possessor of money and the possessor of labour power into the hidden abodes of production’ marx capital vol .1 p.176

Preliminary Notes on Reproducing the Global Factory: the neo-liberal home
This research will explore the complex and powerful intersections of gender, race and class that are present in the contemporary conditions of human reproduction by developing a post-colonial feminist framework to understand how neo-liberal globalisation has transformed reproductive labour and how this continues to reconfigure the political economy of the home, in light of the fact that in the last forty years major economic and political changes have occurred inside and outside the home in the both the global north and south.

The focus of this research is labour, specifically reproductive labour in the home, which is a form of labour that remains despite its centrality to human existence, an under-studied and under-theorised site of work and human activity. By unpacking the extent to which the home is changing as it increasingly becomes a place of low paid work, this research will try and make sense of the changes that are currently occurring and to contribute to both improving the conditions of work in the home and creating the possibilities for transforming not only reproductive labour but also the home.

It is not my intention to either romanticise the home as a space that is inherently ‘good’ or ‘naturalised’ or to moralise about the commodification of reproductive work. Rather the aim is to investigate (waged) domestic, care and sex work and (unwaged) reproductive labour together, to read across these sites of labour, so as to examine not only what is new and old but also what is different and what is similar to the labour processes involved and the subjects who perform the work. The inclusion of sex work within this analysis of reproductive labour follows from an analysis of sex as gendered labour as developed by various feminist theorists, while recognising that the work site of sex work is (usually) outside of the home.

2) the argument

section one: home & nation
(i) locating the home, where is the home, who is there, what are they doing?
– home as site of consumption, production, workplace and resistance

Historically, reproductive labour has been largely unpaid, performed by women and involved the raising and education of children; care of the elderly and the sick; household cleaning, paying the bills; shopping and preparing food; sex; and offering emotional support like listening. It would be an oversimplification to conclude that women’s increasing employment in paid work outside the home has been the only contributing factor to changes in the home. Other factors such as an ageing population, increased labour mobility and migration, lack of public services and the erosion of the welfare state must also be considered in any analysis of the shift to paid work in the domestic domain.

(ii) what does reproductive labour tell us about gender, race & class? Summary of arguments set out below – labour as value producing, the intersection of race and post colonial struggles and shifting the debate from essentialised notions of gender to a gender in common perspective
(iii) historical location of debates
productive / non productive definition of labour in relation to reproductive labour
wages for housework, 2nd wave (western) feminism,
(iv) citizenship, migration, low wages, global cities, neo-liberalism and post colonial capitalism

section two: invisible hands of the market
(i) doing the work that makes all other work possible
(ii) what is the labour? affective labour, intimate labour producing value / producing humans
(iii) gendered racialised bodies /waged and unwaged / constant work
(iv) workers struggles over conditions and wages

section three: reproducing the human is a migrant women’s job
intersection of race with gender and labour and the commodification of reproductive labour
migration from Global South – immigration laws, borders make cheap labour
slavery, colonialism, and post colonial subjects

section four: common ground
workers demands / feminist demands
gains at what cost, on whose back are we better off?
materialism feminism: beyond victims and victim-hood
what possibilities exist for an alliance on the basis of gender

section five: conclusion

Reproducing the Global Factory
Political Economy of Reproductive Labour in London and New York

Theoretical analysis of the uniquely interesting position both politically and epistemologically held by waged / unwaged reproductive workers in the context of a general reproductive labour regime emerging in New York and London

Workers and worker organisations offer reflections on the specificities of neo-liberal reproductive work – LABOUR CONTENT // POLITICAL CONTENT
Privatised, undervalued, gendered and racialised

The home – requires a definition – as the site of production of humans, Factory of the selves, relational labour, concrete social divisions of home based work / visible & invisible
As the principle site of reproduction
As a space / As a workplace
Class composition of workers / subject in the home
The housewife – a historical product of social engineering
How to locate / discuss the home now? Don’t want to focus on the middle class only. The home as a site of consumption – of commodities and of labour

Official counting / govt reports / stats
% of women working outside the home
where are they working
falling birth rate cf. migration
age of marriage % of marriage % of divorce rate
% of waged reproductive workers in the home – estimates only

Childcare // Nannies
Cleaning & Housework // Domestic Workers
Sex // Sex Workers
Elder Care // Domestic / Care workers

Cleaning: housework, migration has meant more cheap labour available, always a job for working class women – cleaning other people’s homes. Refusal of women to continue to do this work. Inability to do it and work full time, standards of cleaning

Childcare: affects all working women with children, maternity leave, school as 12 years of free childcare, free childcare in the UK for 3 and 4 year olds, nannies, au pairs, childcare centres, childminders, relatives

Eldercare:

Necessity of both child and elder care for working women

Analysis of the technical and social arrangements of production in the home.
What is produced in the home?

What has happened historically to the home? What have been the changes? Why have these changes occurred? Is it possible to locate stable configurations of the home and the production processes that take place within it. If we investigate the effects of neo-liberalism (from the 1970’s) onwards and place the changes within an economic and political framework of crisis – crisis of capital and crisis of gender – women’s refusal to continue to perform unpaid labour, the demands of the women’s movement –

Genealogy of the home 20th century – 21st century
WW1
Interwar period
WW2
Post WW2 reconstruction 50-60’s
70’s – 80’s
90- 21st C

what do we need to map in order to understand the changes to the home in these periods
— women’s participation in the labour market outside the home
— feminist / anti-colonial struggles
— geographical movements – to the suburbs
— migration patterns
— decline of manufacturing / growth of service industry
— feminisation of the labour market
— capital / finance capital

historical questions

– formation of the working class / of the poor
the centrality of the home (texts: London hanged, Making of the English Working Class, Labour Lost)

Midnight notes: the revolts of feminism – leads to the development of the service industry
Looking at this industry – the service industry (what would Marx say about this commodification of the reproductive labour) is it productive for capital / or just reproductive for the working class? Does it produce profit for the ruling class?

What role has the reconfiguration of the home and the labour and production taking place within it played in the increasing inequity and redistribution of wealth in the 21st C?

To map the home now – is to map a neo-liberal home. What work is now done in the home? What work is now done outside? Under what conditions? And by who?
What is neo-liberalism. What do we mean by the neo-liberal home?
From the 70’s onwards – consumption lead growth. Wages – shift to debt
Are we now seeing a contraction of the service industry?

Compare the USA / UK
A story of slavery, colonialism and post colonialism.
What role did slavery / colonialism play in constructing the home and work within it
Gendered work – but also racialised work
Home based work in the USA – slavery, slave work, black women’s work, immigrants work
Historically the impact of colonialism on the home, role of decolonisation and anti-colonial struggles, civil rights movement, black rights movement / women’s movement
Re-colonisation through capitalist globalisation / migration
Home countries and global remittances

What relationship does the home have now to previous demands (from social movements – civil rights, feminists, migrants) and struggles
What struggles and resistances are emerging now / exist now in the home
What are the dynamics of the conflicts in the home
Consequences of demands / struggle – gains at what cost?
Can we politically evaluate previous demands

Fragmentation of the home
– what is transforming the home now?
– Struggle of the subjects – as workers and non-paid labourers
– Demands of the market / capital
– Changes to work outside the home
– Migration patterns – as autonomous movement?

Waged work in the home
– re/emergence of waged work in the home
– intimate labours conference in USA 2007?
– how common is it?
– If we focus on domestic, care and sex work
– Rational for limiting the scope to these – traditional role of the housewife
– Not to forget the previous transformations of reproductive labour that has moved outside of the home – clothes, textiles, food
– What is left is bounded by location – the question of sex?
– Unique location of work in the home
o Isolated, privatised, devalued
– similarities of workers situation and demands in relation to violence, abuse, exploitation to that of previous feminist discourse on the location of women in the home
o previously men were the focus, patriarchy, limit of collective organising, individualised, making dumb, lacking in opportunity
o now the employers are overwhelmingly women
o politics of visibility
o doing the work that makes all other work possible

What was the narrative of 2nd wave feminism?
– evaluate the gains that have been proclaimed. Who won the discourse war? Liberal feminism
– what would a contemporary analysis from a materialist feminist perspective look like
– we now have state feminism, institutionalised gender equality
– how do the majority of women arrange their reproductive labour while working
– if 70% of women work – who looks after the children, cleans the house,
– necessity of dual income households
– double shift / work inside and outside the home
– is the answer just that men should do more housework?

And what of Marx?
– waged work, Adam Smith and domestic work. Not productive labour
– the debate about productive / non-productive
– following marx – but incorporating feminist contributions to the debate
– what happens if we conceptualise work in the home as labour, and as productive labour
– certainly the home is a site of reproduction of capitalist social relations –
– relation to the wage

A question of methods
– action research
– workers inquiry / militant research [precarious la dervia text from Maria?]
– interviews with feminists from the 70’s as history
o in depth interviews with five key feminists from 70’s / 80’s era
– gumtree ad for nannies, domestics and cleaners
– pay for interviews and travel
– sex worker organisation – who do they see the work that they do? Is sex care?
– Domestic Workers United in New York – bill of rights, legislation
– Interviews with families
o At home with a working family in London / New York
o She / he works – have children
o As employers
o The nanny / childcare arrangements / au pair
• Where does she live
• Her visa / age / status
• Her children?
o Domestic worker / cleaner
• PhD students with cleaners??
• What work are they expected to do
• Paid by time?
o Elder Care
• Taking care of who?
• What other options are there for healthcare for the elderly
o How do people arrange care services in their home – currently
• How would they like to have this happen in relation to staying at home / working / sharing with their partner

interviewing, participant observation, ethnographic fieldwork, oral histories, life-stories, archival research

– for contemporary social research in the light of post colonial conflicts
– debates about the question of social knowledge production
– introduce post colonial ethnography so as to develop multidisciplinary theoretical practices and methodological approaches to understand current processes of subjectivation and resistance to post colonial forms of capitalist, sexist, racial exploitation

Offer some tentative analysis and suggestions as to the effects of neo-liberalism on contemporary reproductive labour in the home.

Relates to materialist feminist and post colonial reading of the home. Materialist feminist critique of traditional and current Marxist theory about precarity and labour. Post colonial anyalsis of the ‘gains’ of women in the north. My point of departure is the contemporary home and that the possibility of new political alliances and modes of reproduction relies – to understand this space we need to consider

– the redress to Law – to rights
– commodification of reproductive labour
– employment laws that relate to labour in the home
– migration / immigration policies that effect workers in the home

What do I mean by neo-liberalism / neo-liberal globalisation
– I understand the neo-liberal project to be about extending market systems and logics into every sphere of life
– I want to understand how that logic has impacted on the home and the labours that occur within it

Location: Home / Households/ Private Sphere / Non-public
Two Global cities: London and New York
Subjects: Members of households

How useful is it to still view the organisation of home through heterosexual nuclear families structures.
Wife, Husband, Children
The staff / paid workers in the home / workers who do the traditional work of women
– nanny, cleaner, domestic workers, au pairs, sex workers
– childcare, housework, sex

Effects of women’s re entry into the waged labour market – movement in and out of the waged labour market
Value of the wage – what does a wage bring – independence from men / male wage, maternity leave – but no paternity leave, full time vs part time wages
Demands of the 1970’s Wages for Housework

What has changed since the 1970’s – are we still demanding wages for housework. Of in a fucked up way have we ‘won’ the demand. The relevance silence from the feminist movement. What feminist movement. What happened to the fight? What are the topics now. Certainly not questions about our lives – now feminism is about violence and saving other women

Global chains of care – global north suffering from care deficit
Generations of knowledge of care and how to raise children disappearing – lost. The Rise of the Parent as a figure. Of parenthood. In previous organisations forms – women were always around children. As a child, before marriage, looking after children who were not biologically yours.

What is labour – definition ‘purposeful human activity’
Productive / Non-productive for capital – Marxist distinction – in relation to creating value / surplus value. The production of labour power. The mystification of the private sphere. The understanding of the arrival of labour power on the market. The trick of capitalist organisation. We have been forced to pay and work for our own reproduction – from birth, childcare, education, health.

The invisible hands of the market –

What is the work of reproduction
Who is the work of reproduction?

Historical organisation of reproductive work in the home

Significant events / shifts –

20th C
Interwar 1920 – 1930’s – Depression / Crisis
Second World War – late 1930’s – 1945
Postwar – 1945 – 1960’s
1960 – 1970’s – womens liberation movt
1980 / 1990 / 2000 – neo-liberal globalisation

19th C – industrial revolution
18th C – shifting from feudalism to capitalism

chapters 10,000 words average (8000 min – 12,000 max)

section: words
introductory text 200 – 1000
1st main section 2000 – 2500
2nd main section 2000 – 2500
3rd main section 2000 – 2500
4th main section 2000 – 2500
conclusion 200 – 1000

max word length: 100,000
aim for 80,000 (with 20,000 margin)
chapters: 10,000 average (8,000 min – 12,000 max)

Lead in chapter – 2 chapters (20,000)
(introduces and sets up core material)
– what do readers need to know in order to appreciate the core research?
– restrict to two or three main lines of argument
– methods chapter as appendix

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Set Up Core Material (traditionally Lit Review)

Core Material – 5 chapters (50,000)
(value added research)

Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7: Core Research Material

Lead out chapters – 2 chapters (20,000)
(integrate, summation, restatement)

Chapter 8: bring together and intergrate the conclusions from core chapters covering different components of research
Chapter 9: Limited opening up from results of analysis back into the wider literature

Maria Mies (1998) Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour London: Zed Books

Siliva Federici (2004) Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation, New York: Autonomedia

Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James (1972) The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community Falling Down Press: Bristol

Leopoldina Fortunati (1981) The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labour and Captial Autonomedia: New York