Gendered states of punishment and welfare : feminist political economy, primitive accumulation and the law / by Adrienne Roberts.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Roberts, Adrienne, 1980- author.

Series:

Routledge/RIPE studies in global political economy

RIPE series in global political economy

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Feminist economics.

Economics--Sociological aspects.

Economics.

Capitalism--Social aspects.

Capitalism.

Crime--Sociological aspects.

Crime.

Physical Description:

x, 203 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017.

Summary:

This book presents a feminist historical materialist analysis of the ways in which the law, and policing and penal regimes have overlapped with social policies to coercively discipline the poor and marginalized sectors of the population throughout the history of capitalism. Roberts argues that capitalism has always been underpinned by the use of state power to discursively construct and materially manage those sectors of the population who are most resistant to and marginalized by the instantiation and deepening of capitalism. The book reveals that the law, in conjunction with social welfare regimes, has operated in ways that are highly gendered, as gender - along with race - has been a key axis along which difference has been constructed and regulated. It offers an important theoretical and empirical contribution that disrupts the tendency for mainstream and critical work within IPE to view capitalism primarily as an economic relation. Roberts also provides a feminist critique of the failure of mainstream and critical scholars to analyse the gendered nature of capitalist social relations of production and social reproduction. Exploring a range of issues related to the nature of the capitalist state, the creation and protection of private property, the governance of poverty, the structural compulsions underpinning waged work and the place of women in paid and unpaid labour, this book is of great use to students and scholars of IPE, gender studies, social work, law, sociology, criminology, global development studies, political science and history. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The making of global capitalism: a feminist historical materialist analysis 20

Premise 1 The law as primitive accumulation 21

Premise 2 Primitive accumulation as a gendered process 26

Premise 3 The law as part of the gendered social ontology of capitalism 35

2 The law, private property and the gendered poor in the transition to capitalism 45

Poverty, Poor Laws and the 'Bloody Legislation' 46

The legal regulation of gender 55

The early capitalist gender order 60

3 The liberal governance of criminality and the myths of laissez-faire 71

The rise of 'liberal' governance: the crowd, legitimacy and the problem of poverty 73

The (gendered) ideology of liberal political economy 76

Disciplining and responsibilizing the poor and criminalized population: the new Poor Laws, prisons and the police 82

The gendered dimensions of nineteenth-century governance 90

4 The 'modern' governance of poverty and criminality: penal-welfare paternalism 98

The rise of penal-welfare paternalism: monopoly capitalism, organized labour and the breakdown of laissez-faire 99

Theorizing penal-welfare paternalism 106

Reproducing class, gender and race through the paternal penal-welfare state 114

5 Governing social marginality in an era of disciplinary neoliberalism 127

The neoliberal governance of criminality 129

Looking beyond incarceration rates: institutional changes in the law and policing 136

Neoliberal configurations of power and production 141

On-going primitive accumulation and the criminalization of homelessness 144

6 Producing gendered precariousness and criminalized women 160

Gendered precariousness and the neoliberal restructuring of production 161

The neoliberal 'reprivatization' of social reproduction 165

Gendered precariousness and the criminalization of women 175.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781138678422

1138678422

OCLC:

960086245