[News] CfP RC21 Antwerp: Social reproduction in hypercommodified homes

[Eva Kuschinski]

Lieber AK,

Wir freuen uns über Einreichungen aus der feministischen Geographie, 
leitet unten stehenden CfP gerne an potentiell Interessierte weiter.

Liebe Grüße, Eva


Call for Papers for ISA RC21 conference, Antwerp, 6-8 July 2020

Social reproduction in hypercommodified homes (session #89)

Session organizers:Eva Kuschinski, HafenCity University: 
eva.kuschinski at hcu-hamburg.de; Leon Rosa Reichle, Centre for Urban 
Research on Austerity, De Montfort University: leon.reichle at dmu.ac.uk


Within critical social science, the housing question has been 
historically marginalized over (other) workplace struggles (Gray, 2018). 
The home as a workplace of racialized and gendered reproductive labour 
has been treated as secondary to matters of (industrial) production. 
Even urban studies most often centre around “public” space, workplace 
struggles or, when considered specifically with housing, its role as an 
asset. This is paralleled by the marginalization of women’s presences, 
participation and leadership of social struggles around housing (Hughes, 
Wright, 2018). Symbolic for a dominance of androcentric perspectives in 
society, academia and unfortunately many political struggles, the 
question of the reproductive sphere, its relevance for capitalism and 
social relations in total, and hence its strategic position for 
transformative politics has been either ignored or treated as a separate 
and secondary issue. Ignorant of ground-breaking analytical and 
political feminist work (Dalla Costa, 2019; Federici, 2012, 2004) 
demonstrating the centrality of relations of social reproduction in 
capitalism, even critical housing scholars have neglected in-depth 
analyses of questions around racialized and gendered relations of social 
reproduction, at most mentioning them in passing (Aalbers, Christophers, 
2014).

While feminist accounts of social reproduction (Bhattacharya, Vogel, 
2017) are reviving in the face of deepening multiple crises and social 
inequalities, systematic feminist analyses of the housing question 
remain sporadic (Roberts, 2013; Watson, 1986).

We believe that a lot is to be learnt from reconceptualizing critical 
housing scholarship through the prism of  social reproduction. In doing 
so, we suggest considering relational approaches, linking the 
micro-social sphere of the household to societal relations of 
reproduction. Whereas critical social theories on the neoliberalization 
of work have long emphasized its relational effects as competitive, 
divisive and isolating (Sennett, 1998), we are curious about relational 
analyses on the neoliberalization of housing.

Hence we propose to reconsider relations of reproduction and relations 
around the sphere of social reproduction as an entrypoint to critical 
urban analysis. In homes, the centres of daily lives, relations of 
social reproduction meet institutions of private property, the dominant 
relation-way of capitalism (Adamczak, 2017). In contexts of state 
withdrawal and increasing housing financialization, this encounter is 
often violent. As reproductive spaces are politically turned into scarce 
market goods on an internationally competitive housing market, we are 
interested in the consequences for social and reproductive relations on 
different scales.

Within these transformations, what is the role of historically gendered 
relations within the reproductive sphere of the home?

How to theorize (increasingly financialized) housing as the site of 
commodified yet precarious and multiply marginalized care labour?

How can we understand the role of current and historical struggles for 
the right to housing as reproductive struggles; struggles for spaces 
securing the basic reproduction of human life?

How can we conceive of these as intersectional class struggles?

How to theorize racialized exclusion from the housing market within 
these struggles?

How does the reproduction of social relations change within these 
developments?

How are reproductive relations stabilized or changed, progressively or 
regressively within such struggles?

How can we navigate the different scales of relations of reproduction 
within the home, the neighbourhood, the city, globally?

We invite theoretical or empirical paper presentations that centre 
around reproductive relations in a context marked by the increasing 
hypercommodification of housing. These can be concerned with social 
struggles, with the impacts of housing neoliberalization on 
(intersectional) relations of reproduction, with (the changing 
reproduction of) urban communities, with theoretical (and empirical) 
approaches to the changing role of the state in social reproduction and 
anything else you wish to surprise us with!

We hope to hear from four presenters and leave ample time for discussion 
at the end, to discuss controversies, draw links, consider abstractions 
or define specificities. Therefore we ask you to keep your presentations 
to 15 minutes strict.

Please contact us with any questions or uncertainties, we are excitedly 
looking forward to your abstracts!

Submission details: Please submit your abstract (max 250 words) until 15 
Marchvia the following 
link:https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/conferences/rc21-sensing-the-city/call-for-papers/submit-your-abstract/ 


-- 
Eva Kuschinski M. A.
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin | Research and Teaching Associate
Geschichte und Theorie der Stadt| History and Theory of the City

Bürozeiten: Di - Do | Office Hours: Tue - Thu

HafenCity Universität Hamburg
Überseeallee 16, Raum 4 128
20457 Hamburg
+49(0) 40/42827-5208

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