The 2011 Historical Materialism Conference in London saw the launch of a Marxist-Feminist set of ... more The 2011 Historical Materialism Conference in London saw the launch of a Marxist-Feminist set of panels. This issue is inspired by the success of those panels, and the remarkably sustained interest in reviving and moving beyond older debates and discussions. The special issue’s focus, Social-Reproduction Feminism, reflects and contextualises the ongoing work and engagement with that thematic that has threaded through the conferences in the 2010s. This Introduction provides a summary overview of the Social-Reproduction Feminism framework, situating it within Marxist-Feminist thinking and politics more generally, and calls on readers to consider its promise and potential as an historical-materialist approach to understanding capitalist social relations in terms of an integrated totality.
Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Jul 1, 2010
Edward Said's Orientalism was first published in 1978. In this work, Said demolished the myth... more Edward Said's Orientalism was first published in 1978. In this work, Said demolished the myths of the Orient that had been made famous by colonial literature as well as by European social sciences, revealing the intrinsically Eurocentric nature of discourses on the non-European ‘Other’. Though this influential work has been often praised, criticized and compared at the most disparate levels,
Colonialism figures in the work of Max Weber in multiple forms. While in his professorial address... more Colonialism figures in the work of Max Weber in multiple forms. While in his professorial address he supported internal colonialism as the antidote against the threat represented by the immigration of foreigners, in the writings on world religions colonialism appears as displacement, amnesia and Freudian slip. Colonial subjects in particular are portrayed as personalities unable to develop the mentality that would help them to free themselves from what Weber regarded as the chains of a communitarian, gregarious and subaltern life. In the end, I argue that Weber’s work contributed, albeit contradictorily and not always explicitly, to spread an idea of colonial violence as a force of progress and a racist idea of colonial others as backward.
Sara R. Farris interrogates contemporary debates on migration and development by highlighting the... more Sara R. Farris interrogates contemporary debates on migration and development by highlighting the role played by gender. She focuses on female migration to Europe with an historical and sociological perspective, showing how the number of women involved in international migrations has dramatically increased in the last 20 years. She analyses the main patterns of female migration and the challenges and specificities associated with the increasing presence of women in the receiving countries. She then shows how this growth in female migration is associated with development by drawing examples from recent literature and especially from South Asian contexts.
The 2011 Historical Materialism Conference in London saw the launch of a Marxist-Feminist set of ... more The 2011 Historical Materialism Conference in London saw the launch of a Marxist-Feminist set of panels. This issue is inspired by the success of those panels, and the remarkably sustained interest in reviving and moving beyond older debates and discussions. The special issue’s focus, Social-Reproduction Feminism, reflects and contextualises the ongoing work and engagement with that thematic that has threaded through the conferences in the 2010s. This Introduction provides a summary overview of the Social-Reproduction Feminism framework, situating it within Marxist-Feminist thinking and politics more generally, and calls on readers to consider its promise and potential as an historical-materialist approach to understanding capitalist social relations in terms of an integrated totality.
Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Jul 1, 2010
Edward Said's Orientalism was first published in 1978. In this work, Said demolished the myth... more Edward Said's Orientalism was first published in 1978. In this work, Said demolished the myths of the Orient that had been made famous by colonial literature as well as by European social sciences, revealing the intrinsically Eurocentric nature of discourses on the non-European ‘Other’. Though this influential work has been often praised, criticized and compared at the most disparate levels,
Colonialism figures in the work of Max Weber in multiple forms. While in his professorial address... more Colonialism figures in the work of Max Weber in multiple forms. While in his professorial address he supported internal colonialism as the antidote against the threat represented by the immigration of foreigners, in the writings on world religions colonialism appears as displacement, amnesia and Freudian slip. Colonial subjects in particular are portrayed as personalities unable to develop the mentality that would help them to free themselves from what Weber regarded as the chains of a communitarian, gregarious and subaltern life. In the end, I argue that Weber’s work contributed, albeit contradictorily and not always explicitly, to spread an idea of colonial violence as a force of progress and a racist idea of colonial others as backward.
Sara R. Farris interrogates contemporary debates on migration and development by highlighting the... more Sara R. Farris interrogates contemporary debates on migration and development by highlighting the role played by gender. She focuses on female migration to Europe with an historical and sociological perspective, showing how the number of women involved in international migrations has dramatically increased in the last 20 years. She analyses the main patterns of female migration and the challenges and specificities associated with the increasing presence of women in the receiving countries. She then shows how this growth in female migration is associated with development by drawing examples from recent literature and especially from South Asian contexts.
The ownership and financial strategies of companies providing care for children or older people h... more The ownership and financial strategies of companies providing care for children or older people have become an increasingly salient concern, in both research and policy, because of their implications for the quality and availability of care services, as well as working conditions. However, analysis has tended to be sector specific. This article provides the first comparison of ownership, business models and workforces across childcare and adult social care in the United Kingdom. It reveals growing convergence in terms of the dominance of large companies and their financial strategies, which can reward investors while undermining access to care and worsening working conditions for large, low-paid workforces. We conceptualise these developments in terms of corporatisation and the related process of financialisation. They are, we argue, underpinned by the political economy of low wages for care work, which we explain using feminist social reproduction theory-highlighting the devaluation of feminised and racialised caring labour. The article identifies the need for further research to account for differences between the sectors, to map the geographies and political economies of care, and to compare these processes internationally.
The ownership and financial strategies of companies providing care for children or older people h... more The ownership and financial strategies of companies providing care for children or older people have become an increasingly salient concern, in both research and policy, because of their implications for the quality and availability of care services, as well as working conditions. However, analysis has tended to be sector specific. This article provides the first comparison of ownership, business models and workforces across childcare and adult social care in the United Kingdom. It reveals growing convergence in terms of the dominance of large companies and their financial strategies, which can reward investors while undermining access to care and worsening working conditions for large, low-paid workforces. We conceptualise these developments in terms of corporatisation and the related process of financialisation. They are, we argue, underpinned by the political economy of low wages for care work, which we explain using feminist social reproduction theory – highlighting the devaluation of feminised and racialised caring labour. The article identifies the need for further research to account for differences between the sectors, to map the geographies and political economies of care, and to compare these processes internationally.
I find the task of writing an entry on gender for a Handbook of Marxism particularly daunting. In... more I find the task of writing an entry on gender for a Handbook of Marxism particularly daunting. In one of the rare entries on this concept, which had been originally planned for the Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus (HKWM), Donna Haraway (2001) writes that what began as a five-pages long 'keyword' text ended up taking many more pages and six years of work. That was not encouraging. For Haraway, one of the difficulties of writing about gender within a Marxist framework was due to its fundamental acceptance of the nature/culture binary which, she argues, prevented traditional Marxists from developing gender into a political category. I slowly realised that what I found so baffling in the process of working on this chapter was not only due to some of the epistemic difficulties that Haraway identified, or to the paucity of examples on which I could draw, but also to the widespread conflation within much Marxist and socialist feminist writing of the concept of gender with that of women's oppression. Of course, these concepts have in many ways the same history, at least to a point, but more recent developments in both feminist and Marxist theory, as well as in capitalist social relations, have increasingly shown the need to disentangle them, not least because of the pathbreaking analyses of queer and transgender Marxists who have pushed for a more consistent disambiguation of gender and (female) sex.
The COVID-19 crisis is causing working class people lots of pain and suffering. Beyond the deaths... more The COVID-19 crisis is causing working class people lots of pain and suffering. Beyond the deaths of loved ones, unemployment and income insecurity are creating an uncertain future. But the crisis is also leading to some quite contradictory (and potentially interesting) outcomes in the world of work. Right in front of our eyes, the COVID-19 crisis is dissolving the foundations upon which the traditional division of labor between intellectual and manual labor was based. In particular, this crisis is interrogating the legitimacy of that skills-hierarchy that places at the bottom all those skills and jobs that are necessary for the reproduction of life and society.
The #MeToo movement has been tremendously important in debunking the myth of the man of colour as... more The #MeToo movement has been tremendously important in debunking the myth of the man of colour as sexual predator.
The burkini bans have ignited fierce debate in France and worldwide, while opinion polls suggeste... more The burkini bans have ignited fierce debate in France and worldwide, while opinion polls suggested most French people backed the bans for reasons of secularism, or laïcité. Sara R. Farris, Senior Lecture in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, examines the fundamentalism of laïcité.
When Puar identifies the political economic logic of homonationalism in the neoliberal reconfigur... more When Puar identifies the political economic logic of homonationalism in the neoliberal reconfiguration of gay spaces as consumption niches (something we find also in the work of Sirma Bilge), I believe she is highlighting something profoundly important about the economic conditions of possibility for homonationalism. However, I also believe these terms may not go far enough. To explain how the “gay rights industrial complex” can serve the interest of far-right, racist formations—which are deeply homophobic and mostly hostile to gay rights at the legislative level—one also has to explain the shifts that have occurred in the economic restructuring of labor under neoliberalism. Is the possibility for gays and lesbians to become political leaders of homophobic, racist parties also linked to shifts in the imageries concerning masculinity and femininity brought about by the collapse of Fordism? If Taylorism and Fordism promoted a strong image of masculinity associated with the industrial worker, what has neoliberalism done to gender roles and stereotypes within new post-industrial landscapes? And how might these shape, in turn, the sexual imaginaries of global neoliberalism? These are questions that, in my view, continue to invest homonationalism. Puar is very right when she argues that homonationalism is an “analytics of power” and an “ongoing process.” Perhaps following in the footsteps of Kevin Floyd’s reconstruction of queer life under different stages of capitalism, we might best continue Puar’s work on homonationalism by deepening the analysis of the underlying material dynamics that make such a phenomenon so widespread today.
Recent developments in western Europe show that for-profit companies of different sizes, includin... more Recent developments in western Europe show that for-profit companies of different sizes, including large multinational firms, are increasingly investing in care and buying significant shares within the ongoing privatization of national health and care systems. Reflecting upon these developments, this article argues that the current reconfiguration of care is driven not only by processes of commodification and marketization but also by complex mechanisms of “corporatization.” To substantiate this argument, we undertake an overview of the transformations in elder and childcare in some European countries and provide a “typology of care” in order to clarify our concept of care corporatization.
The purpose of this article is to remedy the lack of explanatory endeavours concerning the positi... more The purpose of this article is to remedy the lack of explanatory endeavours concerning the positive performance of female migrant workers during the recent economic crisis in Western Europe. This phenomenon both interrogates the established association between economic downturns and their negative impact on migrant labour in low-skilled jobs and enriches the theory of the reserve army of labour, which has been applied to understanding the fragile status of migrant workers in Western economies. Secondary analysis of Labor Force Survey (LFS) and OECD data concerning the impact of the crisis on migrant labour shows that women employed in the care-domestic sector have been affected significantly less than men employed in manufacture and constructions. To explain this evidence, the article proposes a theoretical framework that draws on key concepts and debates in different strands of sociology: the increasing demand for paid care-domestic work due to the ageing population and the growth of native-born women's rates of activity; the commodification of care and the state management of migration; the affectivity and spatial fixity of care-domestic labour. All these factors contribute to configure female migrant labour, mostly employed in the reproductive sector, as a 'regular' rather than a reserve army of labour.
This publication has been co-financed by the European Commission under its DAPHNE III Programme, ... more This publication has been co-financed by the European Commission under its DAPHNE III Programme, which supports actions to combat all types of violence against children, young people and women in Europe and all aspects of this phenomenon (violence in the family, violence in schools and other establishments, violence at work, commercial sexual exploitation, genital mutation, health repercussions, trafficking in human beings, rehabilitation of perpetrators etc.).
This article provides a theoretical framework for analysing discrimination against second-generat... more This article provides a theoretical framework for analysing discrimination against second-generation immigrant girls in education and the labour market by proposing an intersectional approach. Drawing upon selected elements of the findings of our Neskak Gora Project - a qualitative research conducted between 2009 and 2011 in Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK and funded by the EC Daphne III Programme - we show that the intersection of class, gender and ‘race’/ethnicity, which is at play at the structural, institutional and discursive levels of systems of intersectional discrimination, works in variable ways. While gendered educational structures seem partly to benefit female immigrant youth at school, gendered disadvantages are experienced particularly in the transition to the labour market. This highlights the necessary acknowledgement of the ‘discontinuity’ of axes of inequality that are manifested in different ways, according to specific contexts, institutional settings and moments of the individual’s life cycle.
Sara R. Farris examines the demands for women's rights from an unlikely collection of right-wing ... more Sara R. Farris examines the demands for women's rights from an unlikely collection of right-wing nationalist political parties, neoliberals, and some feminist theorists and policy makers. Focusing on contemporary France, Italy, and the Netherlands, Farris labels this exploitation and co-optation of feminist themes by anti-Islam and xenophobic campaigns as “femonationalism.” She shows that by characterizing Muslim males as dangerous to western societies and as oppressors of women, and by emphasizing the need to rescue Muslim and migrant women, these groups use gender equality to justify their racist rhetoric and policies. This practice also serves an economic function. Farris analyzes how neoliberal civic integration policies and feminist groups funnel Muslim and non-western migrant women into the segregating domestic and caregiving industries, all the while claiming to promote their emancipation. In the Name of Women's Rights documents the links between racism, feminism, and the ways in which non-western women are instrumentalized for a variety of political and economic purposes.
Recent developments in western Europe show that for-profit companies of different sizes, includin... more Recent developments in western Europe show that for-profit companies of different sizes, including large multinational firms, are increasingly investing in care and buying significant shares within the ongoing privatization of national health and care systems. Reflecting upon these developments, this article argues that the current reconfiguration of care is driven not only by processes of commodifica-tion and marketization but also by complex mechanisms of " corporatization. " To substantiate this argument, we undertake an overview of the transformations in elder and childcare in some European countries and provide a " typology of care " in order to clarify our concept of care corporatization.
La tétralogie d’Elena Ferrante fait partie des plus grands succès littéraires étrangers de ces de... more La tétralogie d’Elena Ferrante fait partie des plus grands succès littéraires étrangers de ces dernières années. En mêlant l’intimité du récit de vie de deux femmes dans la société napolitaine de l’après-guerre à la grande histoire politique italienne, elle a su donner une épaisseur au drame de la fin du XXe siècle. Sara Farris donne ici une lecture de la saga comme récit de la conscience malheureuse de l’intelligentsia soixantehuitarde. En retournant le diagnostic sombre d’Adorno sur la vie mutilée, Farris souligne les accents existentiels et politiques de l’écriture de Ferrante. Elle montre combien la littérature est en mesure de donner la parole aux désirs ambigus et aux fantasmes contradictoires qui nouent les subjectivités à leur époque. L’entremêlement des récits rend palpable le caractère irréductible de nos défaillances et de nos désenchantements dans la construction d’un avenir meilleur, et l’importance de la nostalgie dans l’imaginaire d’un futur utopique.
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Papers by Sara R. Farris
possibility for gays and lesbians to become political leaders of homophobic, racist parties also linked to shifts in the imageries concerning masculinity and femininity brought about by the collapse of Fordism? If Taylorism and Fordism promoted a strong image of
masculinity associated with the industrial worker, what has neoliberalism done to gender roles and stereotypes within new post-industrial landscapes? And how might these shape, in turn, the sexual imaginaries of global neoliberalism? These are questions that, in my view, continue to invest homonationalism. Puar is very right when she argues
that homonationalism is an “analytics of power” and an “ongoing process.” Perhaps following in the footsteps of Kevin Floyd’s reconstruction of queer life under different stages of capitalism, we might best continue Puar’s work on homonationalism by
deepening the analysis of the underlying material dynamics that make such a phenomenon so widespread today.
research conducted between 2009 and 2011 in Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK and funded by the EC Daphne III Programme - we show that the intersection of class, gender and ‘race’/ethnicity, which is at play at the structural, institutional and discursive levels of systems of intersectional discrimination, works in variable ways.
While gendered educational structures seem partly to benefit female immigrant youth at school, gendered disadvantages are experienced particularly in the transition to the labour market. This highlights the necessary acknowledgement of the ‘discontinuity’ of axes of inequality that are manifested in different ways, according to specific contexts, institutional settings and moments of the individual’s life cycle.