Mechanical Maids and Family Androids: Racialised Post-Care Imaginaries in Humans (2015–), Sleep Dealer (2008) and Her (2013)

2019 ◽  
Vol 123 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-39
Author(s):  
Kerry Mackereth
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Operating Systems ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Television Show ◽  
The Social ◽  
Relations Of Power

Feminist investigations into caring technologies emphasise the tension between their reproduction of care’s assumed femininity and their ability to destabilise gendered markers and systems. However, the existing literature ignores the historical racialisation of care and its perpetuation in the form of the posthuman caring object. This article examines how racialised relations of power shape the posthumanisation of care in three science-fiction works, Channel 4’s television show Humans (2015), Alex Riviera’s film Sleep Dealer (2008) and Spike Jonze’s film Her (2013). While Her’s disembodied operating systems are premised upon an implicit whiteness, posthuman caring objects in Humans and Sleep Dealer take a racialised, embodied form. Drawing upon the work of Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten, this article examines how the racialised objects in Humans and Sleep Dealer are constituted as both labourers and commodities, purchased for the purpose of facilitating white reproductivity. Nonetheless, this article also documents how these caring technologies complicate key binaries such as subject/object, human/machine and productive/reproductive labour. In doing so, they disrupt the whiteness of the social reproduction paradigm. The article concludes by calling for greater feminist engagement with the racialisation of care labour in human and posthuman forms, in order to challenge white, heterosexual models of reproductivity based upon the exploitation of racialised labour.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louçã Francisco ◽  
Ash Michael
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
First Century ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Global Restructuring ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Diffusion ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Mode Of Production

This book investigates two questions, how did finance become hegemonic in the capitalist system; and what are the social consequences of the rise of finance? We do not dwell on other topics, such as the evolution of the mode of production or the development of class conflict over the longer run. Our theme is not the genesis, history, dynamics, or contradictions of capitalism but, instead, we address the rise of financialization beginning in the last quarter of the twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-first century. Therefore, we investigate the transnationalization of the circuits and processes of capital accumulation that originated the expansion and financialization of the mechanisms of production, social reproduction, and hegemony, including the ideology, the functioning of the states, and the political decision making. We do not discuss the prevailing neoliberalism as an ideology, although we pay attention to the creation and diffusion of ideas, since we sketch an overview of the process of global restructuring of production and finance leading to the prevalence of the shadow economy....

scholarly journals Specialist Knowledge Practices of Craftsmen and Clerics in Senegal

Africa ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Dilley
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Specialized Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Practices ◽  
Hierarchical Relations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
Relations Of Power

This article examines the specialized knowledge practices of two sets of culturally recognized ‘experts’ in Senegal: Islamic clerics and craftsmen. Their respective bodies of knowledge are often regarded as being in opposition, and in some respects antithetical, to one another. The aim of this article is to examine this claim by means of an investigation of how knowledge is conceived by each party. The analysis attempts to expose local epistemologies, which are deduced from an investigation of ‘expert’ knowledge practices and indigenous claims to knowledge. The social processes of knowledge acquisition and transmission are also examined with reference to the idea of initiatory learning. It is in these areas that commonalities between the bodies of knowledge and sets of knowledge practices are to be found. Yet, despite parallels between the epistemologies of both bodies of expertise and between their respective modes of knowledge transmission, the social consequences of ‘expertise’ are different in each case. The hierarchical relations of power that inform the articulation of the dominant clerics with marginalized craftsmen groups serve to profile ‘expertise’ in different ways, each one implying its own sense of authority and social range of legitimacy.

The “laborless fuel”: Landscape, energy transitions and natural gas in the postwar U.S.

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862098712
Author(s):  
Carlo Sica
Keyword(s):  
Natural Gas ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Business Owners ◽  
Energy Landscapes ◽  
Technological Systems ◽  
Energy Transitions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Landscapes

The dire need for an energy transition to mitigate and reverse global warming is inspiring scholars to reexamine political influences on technological systems. The multi-level perspective of the socio-technical transitions framework acknowledges how technological systems are affected by the social and political landscapes where they are built. Energy landscapes literatures elaborate on the socio-technical transitions framework by explaining how the boundaries of landscapes are negotiated in the context of energy transitions. Energy scholars have found that negotiations over the form and purpose of energy landscapes frequently skew in favor of capital accumulation instead of social reproduction. Studies of landscapes in human geography and labor history have shown how the power imbalance energy scholars observed can be corrected by workers and their communities struggling against business owners and the state. Using archival data, I show how U.S. natural gas legislation in the postwar period was intended to limit coalminers’ demands for landscapes of social reproduction. This point matters because the vulnerabilities of industrial capitalism to energy worker organization could be exploited to push for a just and sustainable energy transition like the Green New Deal.

scholarly journals LOCAL BENEFITS OF THE ATLANTIC FOREST: EVIDENCES FROM RURAL COMMUNITIES IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 87-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
GISELE GARCIA ALARCON ◽  
ALFREDO CELSO FANTINI ◽  
CARLOS H. SALVADOR
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Forest Resources ◽  
Environmental Services ◽  
Ecological Corridor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Local Use

Abstract Environmental services provided by forests are essential to the social reproduction of populations in rural areas. Perceptions about the services provided by forests play an important role in the planning of landscapes; however, few studies have investigated this issue. This study aimed at understanding how farmers perceive the role of forests in maintaining environmental services. One hundred farmers from the Chapecó Ecological Corridor - SC were interviewed. Provisioning and regulating services were mentioned most often. Water availability ranked first (65%), followed by the maintenance of habitat for biodiversity (34%) and firewood (23%). Income and local use of forest resources were the variables that best explained farmers' perceptions of forest benefits. Nevertheless, the use of forest resources has been limited by restrictions imposed by environmental legislation, which is affecting the perception of farmers about the wide range of environmental services provided by forests.

scholarly journals Food, Class, and Health: The Role of the Perceived Body in the Social Reproduction of Health

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shawna L. Carroll Chapman ◽  
Li-Tzy Wu
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
The Social
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