The Work of Reproduction: Genealogies, Cartographies, Imaginaries

With Pedro M. Rey-Araújo

Our present moment is marked by a care crisis—a social depletion crisis partly endemic to capitalist societies, partly exacerbated by the latest phase of financialized capitalism (Fraser 2016; Dowling 2021; Gago and Cavallero 2021; Carson 2023). The historical shift from the family wage model to today’s two-earner households, along with the simultaneous financialization of the economy and the rollback of the welfare state, has intensified pressure on households, relaunching personal forms of domination and reviving the family as a social imaginary and a unit of privatized care (Carson 2017; Cooper 2017). Despite more diverse and democratic family structures, the inequalities and injustices surrounding care work have not vanished – as the Covid experience made clear.