"Reproductive Labor contends that the move towards techno-scientific innovation in contemporary American life has come at the expense of the care work, or reproductive labor, so necessary to make society function. Jennifer Denbow shows how this focus on technology as a quick fix is a historical outgrowth of the neoliberal drive to privatizing public services. The systemic devaluation of reproductive labor, which is coded feminine and racialized, has resulted in both the impoverishment of those who perform care work and the disproportionate flow of resources towards "innovative" techno-scientific solutions. Denbow analyzes the precarity and marginalization of reproductive labor through platforms like Care.com, as well as how cutting-edge technologies like gene editing are being presented as panaceas to social ills while bypassing key ethical questions around such technologies. By drawing connections between seemingly disparate phenomenon, Denbow passionately illustrates the importance of protecting and funding reproductive labor"--

Jennifer Denbow examines how the push toward techno-scientific innovation in contemporary American life comes at the expense of the care work and reproductive labor that is necessary for society to function.

In Reproductive Labor and Innovation, Jennifer Denbow examines how the push toward technoscientific innovation in contemporary American life often comes at the expense of the care work and reproductive labor that is necessary for society to function. Noting that the gutting of social welfare programs has shifted the burden of solving problems to individuals, Denbow argues that the aggrandizement of innovation and the degradation of reproductive labor are intertwined facets of neoliberalism. She shows that the construction of innovation as a panacea to social ills justifies the accumulation of wealth for corporate innovators and the impoverishment of those feminized and racialized people who do the bulk of reproductive labor. Moreover, even innovative technology aimed at reproduction—such as digital care work platforms and noninvasive prenatal testing—obscure structural injustices and further devalue reproductive labor. By drawing connections between innovation discourse, the rise of neoliberalism, financialized capitalism, and the social and political degradation of reproductive labor, Denbow illustrates what needs to be done to destabilize the overvaluation of innovation and to offer collective support for reproduction.

What is Reproductive Labor Reproductive labor or work is often associated with care giving and domestic housework roles including cleaning, cooking, child care, and the unpaid domestic labor force. The term has taken on a role in feminist philosophy and discourse as a way of calling attention to how women in particular are assigned to the domestic sphere, where the labor is reproductive and thus uncompensated and unrecognized in a capitalist system. These theories have evolved as a parallel of histories focusing on the entrance of women into the labor force in the 1970s, providing an intersectionalist approach that recognizes that women have been a part of the labor force since before their incorporation into mainstream industry if reproductive labor is considered. How you will benefit (I) Insights, and validations about the following topics: Chapter 1: Reproductive labor Chapter 2: Feminist economics Chapter 3: Marxist feminism Chapter 4: Socialist feminism Chapter 5: Materialist feminism Chapter 6: Silvia Federici Chapter 7: Migrant domestic workers Chapter 8: Family economics Chapter 9: Selma James Chapter 10: Rhacel Parreñas Chapter 11: Care work Chapter 12: Wages for housework Chapter 13: Filipino domestic helpers in Canada Chapter 14: Women migrant workers from developing countries Chapter 15: Feminist interpretations of the Early Modern witch trials Chapter 16: Mariarosa Dalla Costa Chapter 17: Immaterial labor Chapter 18: Feminist urbanism Chapter 19: Feminism of the 99% Chapter 20: Caliban and the Witch Chapter 21: Women and migration (II) Answering the public top questions about reproductive labor. (III) Real world examples for the usage of reproductive labor in many fields. Who this book is for Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Reproductive Labor.

This innovative book analyses the role gender plays in the relationship between globalisation, migration and reproductive labour. Exploring the gendered experiences of migrant men and the social construction of racialised masculinities in the context of the 'international division of reproductive labour' (IDRL), it examines how new patterns of consumption and provision of paid domestic/care work lead to forms of inequality across racial, ethnic, gender and class lines. Based on an ethnographic analysis of the working and family lives of migrant men within the IDRL, it focuses on the practices and strategies of migrant men employed as domestic/care workers in Italy. The authors highlight how migrant men's experiences of reproductive labour and family are shaped by global forces and national public policies, and how they negotiate the changes and potential conflicts that their 'feminised' jobs entail. They draw on the voices of men and women of different nationalities to show how masculinities are constructed within the home through migrant men's interactions with male and female employers, women relations and their wider ethnic network. Bridging the divide between scholarship on international migration, care work and masculinity studies, this book will interest sociologists, anthropologists, economists, political scientists and social policy experts.

Forms of embodied labor, such as surrogacy and participation in clinical trials, are central to biomedical innovation, but they are rarely considered as labor. Melinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby take on that project, analyzing what they call "clinical labor," and asking what such an analysis might indicate about the organization of the bioeconomy and the broader organization of labor and value today. At the same time, they reflect on the challenges that clinical labor might pose to some of the founding assumptions of classical, Marxist, and post-Fordist theories of labor. Cooper and Waldby examine the rapidly expanding transnational labor markets surrounding assisted reproduction and experimental drug trials. As they discuss, the pharmaceutical industry demands ever greater numbers of trial subjects to meet its innovation imperatives. The assisted reproductive market grows as more and more households look to third-party providers for fertility services and sectors of the biomedical industry seek reproductive tissues rich in stem cells. Cooper and Waldby trace the historical conditions, political economy, and contemporary trajectory of clinical labor. Ultimately, they reveal clinical labor to be emblematic of labor in twenty-first-century neoliberal economies.

In more than a metaphorical sense, the womb has proven to be an important site of political struggle in and about Africa. By examining the political significance—and complex ramifications—of reproductive controversies in twentieth-century Kenya, this book explores why and how control of female initiation, abortion, childbirth, and premarital pregnancy have been crucial to the exercise of colonial and postcolonial power. This innovative book enriches the study of gender, reproduction, sexuality, and African history by revealing how reproductive controversies challenged long-standing social hierarchies and contributed to the construction of new ones that continue to influence the fraught politics of abortion, birth control, female genital cutting, and HIV/AIDS in Africa.