Reproduction was left behind, relegated to a new private domestic sphere, where it was sentimentalized and naturalized, performed for the sake of “love” and “virtue,” as opposed to money. Production moved into factories and offices, where it was considered “economic” and remunerated with cash wages. The rise of capitalism intensified this gender division-by splitting economic production off from social reproduction, treating them as two separate things, located in two distinct institutions and coordinated in two different ways. The lion’s share of responsibility for it has been assigned to women, although men have always performed some of it too. Historically, social reproduction has been gendered. Without it, there would be no social organization-no economy, no polity, no culture. Simultaneously affective and material, it supplies the “social glue” that underpins social cooperation. This sort of activity is absolutely essential to society. Another part is about sustaining horizontal ties among friends, family, neighborhoods, and community. One part of this has to do with the ties between the generations-so, birthing and raising children and caring for the elderly. Nancy Fraser: Social reproduction is about the creation and maintenance of social bonds. Sarah Leonard: What is social reproduction, and why does it lie at the core of your feminist analysis? Lately, Fraser has turned to address what she calls a “crisis of care.” Her essay of that title appears in issue 100 of New Left Review (July/August). Advancing a critique of capitalism and a radically different vision of feminism, she shows how gender justice must lie at the heart of any struggle for an egalitarian society. In her latest book Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis, Fraser contends with liberal feminism’s troubling convergence with capitalism, and the ways in which feminism can provide a veneer of liberation for a system of relentless exploitation. Nancy Fraser is a professor of philosophy and politics at The New School for Social Research and one of the most respected critical theorists working today. Sarah Leonard and Nancy Fraser ▪ Fall 2016 In an interview, Nancy Fraser contends with liberal feminism’s troubling convergence with contemporary capitalism, and offers a radically different vision of gender justice.
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