CANCELLED - Crisis of care? On the social-reproductive contradictions of financialized capitalism
Media@缅北强奸 regrets to announce the CANCELLATION of the talk by Professor Nancy Fraser, on Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 6 p.m., due to illness. We hope to reschedule for another date.
Media @缅北强奸 () welcomes , Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the New School for Social Research in New York.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be followed by Q&A.
About the speaker
Nancy Fraser is Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the New School for Social Research in New York. She also holds an international research chair in 鈥淕lobal Justice鈥� at the Coll猫ge d鈥櫭﹖udes mondiales in Paris and a 鈥淧rofessorship II鈥� at the Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo.
A specialist in critical social theory and political philosophy, Fraser is the author of Domination et anticipation : pour un renouveau de la critique, with Luc Boltanski (2014); Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: Nancy Fraser debates her Critics (2014); Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (2013); Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space for a Globalizing World (2008); Adding Insult to Injury: Nancy Fraser Debates her Critics (2008); Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, with Axel Honneth (2003); Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the "Postsocialist" Condition (1997); and Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (1989). Her current research centers on the themes of crisis, critique and capitalism.
Abstract
Many observers posit that we are living through a 鈥渃risis of democracy.鈥� But what exactly is in crisis here? Are our current care deficits rooted primarily in an 鈥渋mbalance of family and work,鈥� and can they be solved by reforming the latter? Or are we facing a broader, more far-reaching crisis, of which the 鈥渃risis of care鈥� constitutes but one strand, inextricably interwoven with others? And in that case, what is the true object of the crisis, and what are its deep-structural sources?
I argue that our present dysfunctions of care are best understood as expressions, under historically specific contemporary conditions, of a general tendency to social-reproductive crisis that is intrinsic to capitalist societies. I elaborate this thesis in three steps. First, I propose a general account of 鈥渢he social-reproductive contradiction of capitalism鈥� as such, without reference to any particular historical form. Then, I sketch the unfolding of this contradiction in two previous historical forms of capitalist society: the liberal competitive capitalism of the 19th century, and the state-managed form of the 20th. Finally, I sketch an account of our current crisis of care as the expressions of capitalism鈥檚 social-reproductive contradiction in its present, financialized phase.
