"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 likegene 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 techno-scientific 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.
Arvustused
Provocatively excavating the inverse yet constitutive relationship between innovation and care work in the United States, Jennifer Denbow makes a compelling and urgent case for unpacking the ideological operation of neoliberalisms innovation-speak while pointing to the ways we can think about and value care work otherwise. This is a timely and important intervention. - Catherine Rottenberg, author of (The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism) How are property law and legislation protecting innovation entangled with reproductive justice? Drawing on an impressive range of feminist, disability, and other social theory, this book explains how the US cultural investment in technofixes has been expanding at the cost of social support and care. Any reader who wants to understand the relationship between neoliberal technosolutionism and its impact on social welfare should read this book. - Kalindi Vora, author of (Reimagining Reproduction: Surrogacy, Labor, and Technologies of Human Reproduction)
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction. Othering Reproduction: Neoliberalism and the
Innovation/Reproduction Binary 1
1. Contextualizing the Aggrandizement of Innovation: Coloniality, Labor, and
Capacity 28
2. Children as Human Capital, Reproductive Labor, and the Logic of
Self-Entrepreneurialism 56
3. Investing in the Curative Imaginary: Biotechnology, Disability, and
Reproductive Failures 83
4. Neoliberal Eugenics as the Fertility Frontier of Biocapital: Optimizing
Baby-Making in Catastrophic Times 110
Epilogue. Pandemic Politics and the Repoliticization of Reproductive Labor
138
Notes 151
Bibliography 185
Index 213
Jennifer Denbow is Associate Professor of Political Science at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and the author of Governed through Choice: Autonomy, Technology, and the Politics of Reproduction.
