Women, Children, and the Social Organization of Domestic Labor in Chile

2011 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nara Milanich

Abstract This article explores the relationship of domestic labor and social reproduction in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Chile, paying particular attention to the roles of children. Children figured as products of women’s reproductive labors, but they were also themselves crucial members of a domestic labor force structured by age as well as gender. Drawing on classified employment ads, judicial cases, and the records of Santiago’s main orphanage, the analysis highlights how the labor of childrearing and the labor of children existed within the same social field. Women’s and children’s domestic work, while increasingly distinct, mutually shaped each other. Children influenced employment opportunities and work arrangements for women, both mothers and childless women, and placed in vivid relief the tensions that pervaded women’s remunerated and unremunerated labors. Women’s work in turn shaped the fate of children. Ultimately, the analysis suggests that domestic and reproductive labor was a resource allocated not just at the level of the individual household but on a societal scale across social groups. Circulating through households of different class statuses and across rural and urban spaces, the labor of childrearing (including wet nursing and fosterage) and the labor of children (as servants and criados) was mobilized across dense social networks. Even as the circulation of this labor linked disparate social groups, it simultaneously differentiated them, materially and symbolically, thereby reproducing the multigenerational patterns of patronage and hierarchy that were constitutive of Chilean society. Finally, while domestic work is often associated with private spaces, the analysis finds that public beneficence institutions played an active role in training, subsidizing, and distributing it.

Author(s):  
Erynn Masi de Casanova ◽  
Maximina Salazar

What makes domestic work a bad job, even after efforts to formalize and improve working conditions? This book examines three reasons for persistent exploitation. First, the tasks of social reproduction are devalued. Second, informal work arrangements escape regulation. And third, unequal class relations are built into this type of employment. The book provides both theoretical discussions about domestic work and concrete ideas for improving women's lives. Drawing on workers' stories of lucha, trabajo, and sacrificio—struggle, work, and sacrifice—the book offers a new take on an old occupation. From the intimate experience of being a body out of place in an employer's home, to the common work histories of Ecuadorian women in different cities, to the possibilities for radical collective action at the national level, the book shows how and why women do this stigmatized and precarious work and how they resist exploitation in the search for dignified employment. From these searing stories of workers' lives, the book identifies patterns in domestic workers' experiences that will be helpful in understanding the situation of workers elsewhere and offers possible solutions for promoting and ensuring workers' rights that have relevance far beyond Ecuador.


2020 ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Ergin Bulut

This chapter assesses the domestic dimensions of the unequal ludopolitical regime. Keeping the discussion on social reproduction alive, it asks: What kind of classed femininities are at work in the domestic space, as far as the reproduction of techno-masculinity at Studio Desire is concerned? Drawing on interviews with game developers' partners, the chapter reveals the dialectical relationship between Studio Desire's techno-masculine work culture and the domestic labor behind it. The taxing emotional toxicity at work is rendered tolerable thanks to the mobilization of women's emotional capacities at home. The chapter's distinct focus lies in its framing of women not simply as providers of domestic work but also as active agents who politically critique industry practices. Overall, it provides a response to techno-utopian claims about how digital technologies would terminate social inequalities within the domestic space, pointing to continuities in terms of love's exploitative dimensions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (11) ◽  
pp. 325-328
Author(s):  
I. Petrov

The article is devoted to the consideration of the cultural needs of the individual. It is shown that the needs of the individual, social groups, communities are related to the culture of society, which allows us to use such a concept as ‘cultural needs’, which can be classified in different ways, depending on what we lay in the basis of ‘division’. Culture makes real what is in a person in a potential state, that is, it gives the opportunity to realize its essential forces.


Author(s):  
Raya Muttarak ◽  
Wiraporn Pothisiri

In this paper we investigate how well residents of the Andaman coast in Phang Nga province, Thailand, are prepared for earthquakes and tsunami. It is hypothesized that formal education can promote disaster preparedness because education enhances individual cognitive and learning skills, as well as access to information. A survey was conducted of 557 households in the areas that received tsunami warnings following the Indian Ocean earthquakes on 11 April 2012. Interviews were carried out during the period of numerous aftershocks, which put residents in the region on high alert. The respondents were asked what emergency preparedness measures they had taken following the 11 April earthquakes. Using the partial proportional odds model, the paper investigates determinants of personal disaster preparedness measured as the number of preparedness actions taken. Controlling for village effects, we find that formal education, measured at the individual, household, and community levels, has a positive relationship with taking preparedness measures. For the survey group without past disaster experience, the education level of household members is positively related to disaster preparedness. The findings also show that disaster related training is most effective for individuals with high educational attainment. Furthermore, living in a community with a higher proportion of women who have at least a secondary education increases the likelihood of disaster preparedness. In conclusion, we found that formal education can increase disaster preparedness and reduce vulnerability to natural hazards.


Author(s):  
Yulia P. Melentyeva

In recent years as public in general and specialist have been showing big interest to the matters of reading. According to discussion and launch of the “Support and Development of Reading National Program”, many Russian libraries are organizing the large-scale events like marathons, lecture cycles, bibliographic trainings etc. which should draw attention of different social groups to reading. The individual forms of attraction to reading are used much rare. To author’s mind the main reason of such an issue has to be the lack of information about forms and methods of attraction to reading.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 265-272
Author(s):  
Venelin Terziev ◽  
Preslava Dimitrova

The social policy of a country is a set of specific activities aimed at regulating the social relations between different in their social status subjects. This approach to clarifying social policy is also called functional and essentially addresses social policy as an activity to regulate the relationship of equality or inequality in society. It provides an opportunity to look for inequalities in the economic positions of individuals in relation to ownership, labor and working conditions, distribution of income and consumption, social security and health, to look for the sources of these inequalities and their social justification or undue application.The modern state takes on social functions that seek to regulate imbalances, to protect weak social positions and prevent the disintegration of the social system. It regulates the processes in society by harmonizing interests and opposing marginalization. Every modern country develops social activities that reflect the specifics of a particular society, correspond to its economic, political and cultural status. They are the result of political decisions aimed at directing and regulating the process of adaptation of the national society to the transformations of the market environment. Social policy is at the heart of the development and governance of each country. Despite the fact that too many factors and problems affect it, it largely determines the physical and mental state of the population as well as the relationships and interrelationships between people. On the other hand, social policy allows for a more global study and solving of vital social problems of civil society. On the basis of the programs and actions of political parties and state bodies, the guidelines for the development of society are outlined. Social policy should be seen as an activity to regulate the relationship of equality or inequality between different individuals and social groups in society. Its importance is determined by the possibility of establishing on the basis of the complex approach: the economic positions of the different social groups and individuals, by determining the differences between them in terms of income, consumption, working conditions, health, etc .; to explain the causes of inequality; to look for concrete and specific measures to overcome the emerging social disparities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 126-130
Author(s):  
N. V. SHAMANIN ◽  

The article raises the issue of the relationship of parent-child relationships and professional preferences in pedagogical dynasties. Particular attention is paid to the role of the family in the professional development of the individual. It has been suggested that there is a relationship between parent-child relationships and professional preferences.


Author(s):  
Surya Narayan Biswal ◽  
◽  
S. K. Mishra ◽  
M. K. Sarangi ◽  
◽  
...  

UNDP’s 2030 agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasized gender equality in augmenting human capital and alleviating poverty. For eradication of extreme poverty and building resilience for persons who are vulnerable to poverty, SDGs calls for a pro-poor and gender-sensitive policy framework. In this context, a gender-based study on multi-dimensional aspects of poverty is highly significant. Extant literature reveals that females are more deprived in different dimensions of poverty such as education, health, living standard, empowerment, environment, autonomy and social relationship. The present study is conducted with the basic objective of examining feminization of poverty in rural areas of Jagatsinghapur district of Odisha. Seven socio-economic dimensions comprising sixteen indicators have been taken into consideration to construct the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) using the Alkire-Foster (AF) Method at the individual level. The novelty of the study lies in analyzing MPI at the individual level for rural Odisha. Higher female deprivation is observed across social groups and all occupation categories except services. Dummy variable regression analysis also supports the major findings of the study. Complementary Cumulative Distribution Function satisfies strict first-order stochastic dominance condition and substantiates the feminisation of poverty at each level of poverty cut-off across all social groups and occupational categories except for services. The findings of the study have significant implications for developing suitable policies for gender equalization and poverty alleviation.


Author(s):  
Joshua S. Walden

The book’s epilogue explores the place of musical portraiture in the context of posthumous depictions of the deceased, and in relation to the so-called posthuman condition, which describes contemporary changes in the relationship of the individual with such aspects of life as technology and the body. It first examines Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to view how Bernard Herrmann’s score relates to issues of portraiture and the depiction of the identity of the deceased. It then considers the work of cyborg composer-artist Neil Harbisson, who has aimed, through the use of new capabilities of hybridity between the body and technology, to convey something akin to visual likeness in his series of Sound Portraits. The epilogue shows how an examination of contemporary views of posthumous and posthuman identities helps to illuminate the ways music represents the self throughout the genre of musical portraiture.


Author(s):  
Topher L. McDougal

In some cases of insurgency, the combat frontier is contested and erratic, as rebels target cities as their economic prey. In other cases, it is tidy and stable, seemingly representing an equilibrium in which cities are effectively protected from violent non-state actors. What factors account for these differences in the interface urban-based states and rural-based challengers? To explore this question, this book examines two regions representing two dramatically different outcomes. In West Africa (Liberia and Sierra Leone), capital cities became economic targets for rebels, who posed dire threats to the survival of the state. In Maoist India, despite an insurgent ideology aiming to overthrow the state via a strategy of progressive city capture, the combat frontier effectively firewalls cities from Maoist violence. This book argues that trade networks underpinning the economic relationship between rural and urban areas—termed “interstitial economies”—may differ dramatically in their impact on (and response to) the combat frontier. It explains rebel predatory tendencies toward cities as a function of transport networks allowing monopoly profits to be made by urban-based traders. It explains combat frontier delineation as a function of the social structure of the trade networks: hierarchical networks permit elite–elite bargains that cohere the frontier. These factors represent what might be termed respectively the “hardware” and “software” of the rural–urban economic relationship. Of interest to any student of political economy and violence, this book presents new arguments and insights about the relationships between violence and the economy, predation and production, core and periphery.


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