Issue 57 – Social Reproduction

Sedef Arat-Koç

 Yasemin Dildar

This article critically examines the Marxist-feminist approaches gathered under the umbrella of social reproduction feminism. Social reproduction feminism analyzes women’s domestic labor in the context of social reproduction and argues that a unitary theory combining women’s oppression and capitalist exploitation is possible. According to this approach, the conditions enabling women’s oppression should be explained by the social reproductive needs of the capitalist social formation instead of a transhistorical patriarchal impulse. The article starts with a discussion of the need for a unitary theory based on the theoretical limitations of dual or triple systems approaches which argue that patriarchy and capitalism should be analyzed as separate systems. After giving a brief history of the rise of social reproduction feminism and unitary theory, it focuses on two major theoretical problems. First one is the value debate in social reproduction theory (SRT); whether domestic labor can be incorporated into Marxian value analysis. Second is analytical duality, whether SRT overcomes the analytical duality by unifying class and gender dynamics in the same theory. SRT does not explain women’s oppression with only capital but it assigns a greater determining power to capital accumulation process in relation to other social hierarchies in the analysis of social totality under capitalism. It is argued that this attempt to analyze the reproduction of both gender and capital dialectically as part of an integrated totality is a worthwhile and stimulating endeavor despite the gaps in SRT.
Keywords: Social reproduction theory, Marxist feminism, dual systems theories, gender, class

Gülnur Acar Savran 

Funda Hülagü

Patriarkal toplumsal cinsiyet sözleşmesinde kadınlar lehine yapılan iyileştirmeler döneminin kısmen sona erdiği, anti-feminist devlet projelerinin ve örgütlü feminizm karşıtı mücadelenin yükseldiği bir tarihsel dönemeçteyiz. Bu makale, bu dönemeci belirleyen politik-ekonomik mantık üzerine bir tartışma denemesinde bulunmakta, toplumsal yeniden üretim kuramı ışığında yapılacak bir kapitalist devlet okumasının, feminist kuram ve siyaset için eski, ama eskimeyen kimi tartışma gündemlerini yeniden zorunlu kıldığını iddia etmektedir. Makaleye göre, kadına yönelik şiddet faillerinin kimi zaman eksik kimi zaman fazla-suçlulaştırılması siyaseti, toplumsal yeniden üretim krizinin devlet üzerinde yarattığı çifte yapısal tazyikten ayrı düşünülemez. Bu çifte tazyikin bir öğesini patriarkal toplumsal cinsiyet sözleşmesindeki kırılmalar/zaaflar teşkil ederken, diğer öğesini mutlak ve göreli sömürü oranlarının emeğin değerlenme süreçlerinde yarattığı dalgalanmalar oluşturmaktadır. Bu her iki unsur da kapitalist devletin “cinsiyet temelli stratejik seçimlerini” belirlemektedir. Ancak hangi tarihsel dönemde hangi unsurun ne oranda ağır basacağını, son kertede klasik patriarkanın yüz değiştirerek de olsa hüküm sürmeye devam ettiği Küresel Güney ülkelerinde devletin politik antropolojisine rengini veren ve/veya devlet-toplum kompleksi açısından önem verilen erkek emeğinin toplumsal değer hiyerarşilerindeki konumu belirlemektedir. Toplumsal yeniden üretim süreçlerindeki yıpranmanın krize evrildiği dönemlerde, değer hiyerarşileri sarsılmakla kalmaz, kapitalist devletin bir karar vermesi gerekir: bir toplumsal grup olarak hangi kadınları ve hangi erkekleri politika yapım süreçlerinin ve kriz yönetiminin merkezine koymalı? Kadınların toplumsal konumunu mu iyileştirmeli, erkeklerin siyasal konumunu mu sabitlemeli? Finansal kapitalizm döneminde bu temel çelişki, siyasi iktidarların diyagonal kararlar almasına, devletin bir “kriz-devleti” haline gelmesine neden olmaktadır.
Anahtar Kelimleler: Toplumsal yeniden üretim, patriarka, kapitalist devlet, kadına yönelik şiddet, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP)

Hilal Kara

Drawing on work experiences of young people described as a transition category, this study examines a spatio-temporal analysis of the everlasting crisis in social reproduction in Turkey’s transformation into neoliberal authoritarianism adopting a conservative politics. Examining the questions raised by feminist analyses of work and labour and extensive fieldwork based on in-depth interviews with young graduates, this study finds out that the combination of Turkey’s ongoing transformation into neoliberal authoritarianism and conservative gender regime produces a particular spatio temporality characterized by an everlasting waiting experience for young people, where they are stuck in a vicious cycle of indebtedness, unemployment and precarious employment and exposed to state-induced familist and conservative gender regime. Even though this spatio-temporality is seen as the site of suppression and surveillance by the patriarchal-neoliberal state, it also has the potential for producing invisible, mundane, and silent resistance mechanisms as young people navigate precarious life and work conditions.
Keywords: Social reproduction, crisis, gender, informalization, precarious youth

 Çağla Ünlütürk Ulutaş

In this study, based on Nancy Fraser’s theory that different phases of capitalism are accompanied by different crises of social reproduction, I develop the argument that every phase of capitalism harbors a social reproductive regime. Today, the new consensus between patriarchy and capitalist system is on the ability to benefit from the productive and reproductive characteristics of women via flexible employment arrangements. Working from home, which is one of the flexible working arrangements, has rapidly become widespread with Covid-19. Thus, the spatial combination of production and reproduction has extended women’s total time devoted to paid and unpaid work and deepened gender inequalities at home.
Keywords: Social reproduction, working from home, remote working, women’s labour

 Eda Kara

The subject of this work which aims to rethink migrant labour from a social reproduction point of view is how the social reproduction processes of guest workers (Gastarbeiter*innen) having immigrated from Turkey to Germany in the post WWII era were differently organised comparing to the nonmigrant workers at the time and how their social reproduction capasities were confiscated on different aspects. Although Social Reproduction Literature mainly eleborates on capitalist production and women’s work, it offers a fruitful framework through conceptualizing production and reproduction sphere in a theoretical totality and eleborating on the interplay between reproduction of different types of labour power and social reproduction processes. In this regard, this study aims to investigate the possibility of a theoretical framework for ethnicized forms of labor, drawing on the theoretical framework of social reproduction literature on gendered forms of labor. After summarizing the social reproduction perspective in its relation with migrant labour, it would be discussed that exploitation of migrant labour has played an important role in accumulation of capital in Germany and exposited on which aspects the confiscation of social reproduction capacities of migrant labour takes place.
Keywords: Social reproduction, migrant labour, guest workers, ethnicized forms of labour 

Ezgi Pınar

Any social agent from any segment of society has a link to the field of education and education policies. Education fulfills ideological, cultural, and economic functions in a society and all these functions are integrated with social reproduction function. The current and dominant interpretation of social reproduction theory does not deal with education, especially its social reproduction function. However, considering education in the context of social reproduction will expand the scope of social reproduction theory and contribute to the literature. In this study, education is elaborated in the context of the production and reproduction of the workforce and, this study aims to reveal the enriching theoretical interaction between the school and the phenomenon of social reproduction.
Keywords: Social reproduction, production of labour force, reproduction of labour force, education, domestic labour

Ayşem Sezer Şanlı-Funda Kemahlı Garipoğlu

This study focuses on the importance of R.W Connell’s “masculinities theory” in which she problematizes different types of masculinity and the concept of “hegemonic masculinity”, which she considers as the most dominant type in this theory, in explaining the reproduction process. The concept of hegemony, which Antonio Gramsci uses to explain the establishment of power relations between classes based on consent rather than coercion, is decisive in Connell’s works. In this study, which is designed as a theoretical research, it is discussed that Connell’s explanation of the reproduction process with the concept of “hegemonic masculinity” by focusing on Gramsci’s concept of “hegemony” and problematizing the practices of femininity and masculinity in the social order based on gender discrimination. In this context, Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity is both a hierarchy between masculinities, as a concept that deals with both the social organization of the gender order, It provides an important framework to comprehend how unequal social relations are reproduced and to consider the possibility of establishing an egalitarian social structure by reversing the direction of hegemony in this reproduction process.
Keywords: R. W. Connell, A. Gramsci, Reproduction, Hegemonic Masculinity, Gender.

Sarah Leonard – Nancy Fraser

Coşku Çelik – Olena Lyubchenko – Rhaysa Sampaio Ruas da Fonseca – Lina Nasr El Hag Ali

İhsan Ercan Sadi

Until the early decades of the twentieth century, it was common among economists that competition established the sine qua non of capitalist economies. This idea was shared by both classical and neoclassical economists; finding its purest forms of conceptualization as free competition in the former, and as perfect competition in the latter. As with the rise of joint stock companies and giant corporations from the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, on the other hand, this common belief in economics began to be subjected to criticisms, with a belief that capitalism had gone through fundamental changes, and hence reached the stage of monopoly capitalism. The main argument of those thinkers who we can classify under the label of the monopoly capital school was that the analysis of capitalism in the 20th century should be replaced by one that aims to theorize the monopolistic practices, which themselves had been both producing and were being subject to different laws of motion than those of the competitive capitalism in the 19th century. By the second half of the 20th century, this flow of thought produced two opposite reactions: i) first, such important neo-Smithian scholars as Paul Sweezy, Immanuel Wallerstein and Fernand Braudel started to read the history of capitalism in terms of trade relations rather than relations of production, and specifically in Braudel’s case, as a field necessarily comprehended as anti market; and ii) second, some group of social scientists pioneered by Anwar Shaikh argued that the theory of real competition that brings about the laws of capital accumulation as introduced by Karl Marx in his Capital still holds true for understanding contemporary capitalism; thus competition has not been eliminated by monopolistic practices, but rather has been unfolding with the development of capitalism, as firms have been adapting even stronger competitive capabilities and employing even harsher competitive strategies. In this paper, we aim to examine the theoretical coherence and the empirical validity of each argument on one hand; and to discuss whether capitalism has its own laws of motion, and if so, whether they change or not, on the other. In the conclusion, we propose two types of 2×2 competition-monopoly matrix.
Keywords: Neoclassical Theory of Competition, Monopoly Capital School, Commercialization Model, Marxist Theory of Real Competition.