Reproductive Labor and Innovation

Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype

Jennifer Denbow (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

240 Seiten

2024
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-2678-5 (ISBN)

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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.

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.

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

Erscheinungsdatum	11.09.2024
Zusatzinfo	3 illustrations
Verlagsort	North Carolina
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	567 g
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-10	1-4780-2678-2 / 1478026782
ISBN-13	978-1-4780-2678-5 / 9781478026785
Zustand	Neuware