Care in the Plexus of the Contradictions Between Production and Social Reproduction: Reflections from Argentina

In this talk, I will draw on the Marxist approach to Social Reproduction Theory to point out three fundamental concerns for the discussion of care today. First, it is not possible to think of either care or social reproduction struggles separately from what happens in the sphere of production of goods and services. In this sense, I start by considering that production (of goods and services) and reproduction (of life and labor power) are a differentiated unit in capitalist societies. Second, the current crisis of social reproduction forces us to look at the terrains in which this differentiated unity manifests its contradictions and configures potential nodes of struggles for the reproduction of the working class. In this sense, I differentiate three types of struggles for social reproduction: a) struggles of institutionalized social reproduction, which refers to those conflicts and strikes that take place in institutions (public or private) of social reproduction such as hospitals, schools and homes for the elderly; b) struggles involving women workers in unpaid social reproduction work, particularly women’s work in the household and communities, which have been highlighted, in particular, by the International Women’s Strike that has been taking place since 2017, worldwide; c) struggles whose demands are directly related to the possibility of the reproduction of life:  housing, the increase in the prices of basic goods, public transport, and access to services such as water, electricity, sewage and gas, but also (and this is very important), against police and institutional violence on certain populations, insecurity in working-class neighbourhoods, dispossession through debt, and expropriation of natural resources from local communities.

Finally, I would like to place on the agenda for discussion the risks of romanticizing notions such as “popular economy” or “construction of the commons” which, arising from militant and collective experiences in the so-called Global South, are often shorn of their deep contradictions, fostering the illusion of a reproduction of life that can avoid the “laws” of capitalism despite being at the heart of its cannibalism. 

Speaker Bio

Paula Varela is Associate Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and Senior Researcher at the Center for Labor Studies and Research of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (CEIL-CONICET). She received her Ph.D. from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and subsequently studied at UNICAMP (Brazil) and Indiana University (US). She is the director of the Colectivo de Investigación de las Trabajadoras y los Trabajadores en la Argentina actual (CITTA)  at the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute (IEALC-UBA).  She specializes in labor studies, gender and Social Reproduction Theory. She works on the relation between capitalism to class formation, gender oppression, social reproduction crisis and labor and feminist movements. Varela’s recent books are ¿Hacia dónde va el trabajo? Informalidad, digitalización y reproducción social en América Latina (CITTA-CEIL, 2024); Mujeres trabajadoras: puente entra la producción y la reproducción social (CEIL, 2020). 

Publications

Long Live the Women's Committee by Cinzia Arruzza & Paula Varela

Social Reproduction in Dispute by Paula Varela (2021)