Social Reproduction Feminism and World-Culture: Introduction

Abstract

Over twenty years ago, Amrita Basu, Inderpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan and Liisa Malkki argued that ‘capitalism depended on sexism in order to be global’ (2001: 943). This special issue revisits and updates that claim by combining the critical lenses of social reproduction feminism, world-systems and world-ecology. As Basu et al. rightly observed, ‘[p]utting gender at the very center of considerations of globalization enables us to understand globalization as a set of very uneven processes that are based upon older hegemonic formations as well as new subjects and practices’ (2001: 943). In deploying a reinvigorated social reproduction feminism – which attests to the importance of the daily work of creating and supporting the emotional and physical needs of life outside of that which capital is willing to pay for – we interrogate both hegemonic and newer, gendered labour practices at the heart of the contemporary moment. Our contributors’ analyses of selected world-cultural production reflect how the battle for bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, equality of remuneration and recognition of ‘women's work’ as work rages on, in illustration of the global intensification of what Silvia Federici (2017) has called ‘a true war against women’.