 Social reproduction and surplus populations of the agrarian southLyn Ossome Chapter 3 in Handbook on Politics and Society, 2025, pp 51-67 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: Surplus labour populations – those whose condition of reproduction can no longer be guaranteed through capitalist production – stand most critically at the conjuncture between feminist liberation politics and agrarian questions of gendered labour. This chapter grapples with the relationship between feminist politics and agrarian relations in Africa through three broad claims and interventions. The first relates to the condition of those people whom capital no longer requires and is expelling en masse amidst rapid de-industrialization: how do we understand the conditions of survival and sustenance of immiserated populations for whom wages and state support are inadequate or wholly absent? The second relates to the reproduction of care, which, even in the absence of state support and wages, must still be guaranteed in order to govern: that is, whether social reproduction constitutes a basis for political legitimacy. Third, what is the basis for survival when the state and market abdicate their social reproductive responsibility? I argue that common lands and nature have renewed relevance for those expelled from capitalist relations of production. Keywords: Gender; Social reproduction; State; Surplus populations; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:21980_4 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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