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. In recent years, a new wave of feminist mobilizations has emerged, defending the need to fight against gender oppression, racist and colonial forms of violence, and to reverse the subordination of social reproductive activities to the realm of for-profit production (Arruzza, Bhattacharya, and Fraser 2019). In other words, both in theory and in practice, the question of how to organize reproductive activities has made a comeback. This small research group seeks to contribute to this critical scholarship by undertaking a genealogical and cartographic analysis of social reproduction debates, mapping the shifting conceptualizations of care, labor, and communal life across time and space. Aligned with ISRF’s commitment to fostering new modes of inquiry, this research challenges dominant theoretical approaches to work and its future –particularly discussions on democratization, which remain largely confined to the traditional workplace. By synthesizing social and political theory, political economy, and feminist theory, the project aims to develop novel imaginaries for organizing social reproduction beyond the narrow confines of the market and the privatized nuclear family. In doing so, it seeks to expand the possibilities for reconciling care, work, and freedom.