AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, November 14-18, San Jose, CA
CFP: Reproductive Labor in Post-Soviet Contexts
This panel’s aim is to engender a discussion between scholars working on different forms of reproductive labor in post-Soviet contexts, such as domestics, wives, sex workers, surrogate mothers and ova donors. The robust body of literature on social reproduction, feminization of labor and migration, and commoditization of the female reproductive bodies, intimacies and labors, has shown how the neoliberal restructuring of the global economy since the late 1970's resulted in the emergence of the transnational feminized service industries. This panel examines these new forms of unacknowledged waged reproductive labor outsourced from Western Europe and North America to the post-Soviet countries in the Eastern Europe. Drawing on the feminist intellectual tradition that rejects the separation between the domains of production and reproduction, it invites papers that explore how the intimate labor in the post-Soviet contexts, including domestic, emotional, sexual and reproductive activities, is foundational for the accumulation of capital and value generation.
The list of topics that could be key to the discussion:
- the new sexual division of labour in the post-Fordist economy
- commodification of women's bodies, intimate relations, affective labors in the post-Soviet contexts
- institutionalized production and global exchange of affect, sex, care and reproduction
- cultures, technologies, and politics of care
- Eastern European women, migration and reproductive labor
- new forms of kinship, relatedness and sociality mediated by the market
- gift vs. commodity, love vs. money rhetorics
- Marx/Mauss opposition
If you are interested in participating in this panel, please contact by April 16:
Polina Vlasenko
pvlasenk@indiana.edu
PhD candidate, Dept. of Anthropology, Indiana University