An Archaeology of reproductive subsumption: classing the household, women and ecology in Senegambia

Women in the global South experience multiple forms of oppression, irregular, low-paid work at the bottom of global value chains (WB 2020) and are among the most vulnerable to climate change (Nelleman et al. 2011). Their work of social reproduction – the regenerative work at home and in fields, including child and family care and gardening – makes them the quintessential ‘meta-industrial labour’, i.e. historically the cheapest form of energy supply after horsepower (Salleh 2009). At the same time, through their reproductive work women are perceived as the last bastions of fading biodiversity, a beacon of social and environmental sustainability (UNDP 2016; Barca 2020). This project argues that to better understand the contradictions and the tensions, limits and potentials of women’s work for the necessary ecological transition we must comprehend how the process of social reproduction and, in particular, the reproduction of labour power and of the environment changes with the development of capitalism (Federici 2004).