Papers by Marnie Holborow
Rebel News, 2024
This article describes the deep inadequacies of modern childcare under neoliberal capitalism. Foc... more This article describes the deep inadequacies of modern childcare under neoliberal capitalism. Focussing on childcare provision in the Republic of Ireland, it is argued that a publicly funded state-led solution to is required lift families, parents and women from the inequalities that the present privatised system perpetuate.
Monthly Review, 2024
This piece challenges the dismissal of Engels by many Marxist
feminists and reevaluates his cont... more This piece challenges the dismissal of Engels by many Marxist
feminists and reevaluates his contribution to understanding gender oppression in capitalism. It argues that there is much we can draw on today from Engels’ works to locate the role - economic and ideological - that individual homes play for capitalism and their relation to the question of gender and social agency. Engels' location of women’s subordination in the rise of class society, and the wider role that individual households play in different modes of production, provide, one of the first historical materialist, non-essentialist explanations of gender oppression. Furthermore, Engels’ insights into the effects on traditional views of the family of industrialisation and the mass entry of women into paid work have specific relevance for explaining the diversity and changing nature of household composition that we are seeing today. Engels’ writings are not without flaws, but his conclusion, written when many identified capitalism with progress, that women’s oppression was systemic to capitalism, that gender roles were socially constructed and that only a social revolution could uproot capitalism's dependence on the social unit of the family, remain strikingly prescient. The piece is based on a chapter of a recently published book, published book Homes in Crisis Capitalism (Bloomsbury 2024).
Homes in Crisis Capitalism - Gender, work and revolution, 2024
Homes in Crisis Capitalism explores the core social reproduction role that individual households ... more Homes in Crisis Capitalism explores the core social reproduction role that individual households fulfil in our societies, and the class and racial effects of this on gender inequality and discrimination. Women now make up nearly half of the paid workforce globally, yet prevailing neoliberal social policy continues to rule out adequate state provision of child- and elder-care, choosing instead to rely on marketized services to fill the gap. It is mainly women who carry out this little valued care work, either in a non-paid or paid capacity, and gender inequality is entrenched across society. Official gender parity policies, often expressed in terms of equality of opportunity, have done little to ease the double burden of domestic and care work for the vast majority of women. Competitive labour markets discriminate against those expected to be the primary caregivers of children, the sick and disabled and older people. In addition, the presence across many societies of an acute housing crisis and soaring inflation have put added pressures on home life. A social reproduction crisis has developed, and it is working class women and women of colour who are paying the price.
Holborow analyses homes in crisis capitalism through a Marxist lens of capitalist social reproduction. This book charts the interwoven social and political effects and outcomes of work and care provided in the home, and makes the case for a radical break with capitalism to give social reproduction the material resources and social recognition it deserves.
Rebel News https://www.rebelnews.ie/2023/08/18/women-in-the-home-the-family-in-capitalism/, 2023
/women-in-the-home-the-familyin-capitalism/ The status of women in Irish society has changed dram... more /women-in-the-home-the-familyin-capitalism/ The status of women in Irish society has changed dramatically in recent decades. Modern Ireland is a different place to the one that Eamon De Valera and Archbishop John Charles McQuaid presided over when the constitution was adopted in 1937. Marnie Holborow argues that the upcoming referendum on "women in the home" provides an opportunity to challenge misogynistic ideas but we will need to go much further.
Irish Marxist Review, 2023
London Review of Education, 2013
of the modern social imaginary' (Hamilton) and the concept of literacy as 'unbidden' (Howard). Li... more of the modern social imaginary' (Hamilton) and the concept of literacy as 'unbidden' (Howard). Literacy and the Practice of Writing in the 19th Century and Literacy and the Politics of Representation are of course very different books, just as the careers of these two matriarchs of adult literacy studies, Howard and Hamilton, have been very different. Literacy and the Practice of Writing in the 19th Century is a historical study, making use of-breathing life into-extraordinarily rich primary sources. It is also concerned with writing in particular, not reading. Literacy and the Politics of Representation addresses literacy as both reading and writing and is more of a sociological study, or analysis, of present-day representations of literacy. It may also be that readers will approach these two books differently, greedily moving back and forth between Hamilton's chapters while working their way through Howard's book more slowly and steadily, from the first page to the last. Yet for all their obvious differences, both books end up telling us what literacy means, has meant and can mean to different people, in different ways. The pages of each book are full of ghost voices, spiriting up and away. Everyone should read both of these books, for this reason as for so many others. To give just one example: on page 302 of Literacy and the Practice of Writing in the 19th Century is a facsimile of a page from the diary of a man called John Ward. It was written on April the 10th, 1864 in careful, beautiful handwriting, and then, somehow, ended up on a 'rubbish heap' from which it was later 'rescued' by a person 'feeding a furnace'. Ward writes that it has been a hard time for his mill, because the 'American war' and 'I have not earned a shilling a day this last month and there are many like me my clothes and bedding is wearing out very fast and I have no means of getting any more …' I read this and John Ward was standing in front of me. I started worrying about how to help him; I found it-and find it now-a genuine mental effort to understand that this man is now long gone. His words are not; his literacy is not.
Irish Marxist Review, Sep 15, 2013
Irish Marxist Review, 2018
Women and CapitalismEdited by Tithi Bhattacharya (Foreword by Lise Vogel),Social Reproduction The... more Women and CapitalismEdited by Tithi Bhattacharya (Foreword by Lise Vogel),Social Reproduction Theory:Remapping Class, RecenteringOppression’Pluto Press, £18.99
Irish Marxist Review (ISSN 2009-647X), 2022
Capitalism depends on individual households to keep the system ticking over, but their compositio... more Capitalism depends on individual households to keep the system ticking over, but their composition, functions and gender stereotypes are also destabilised by capitalist developments. More women in paid work calls into question the capitalist model of the home and presents new opportunities for taking on gender oppression.
The publication of this book is timely for two reasons: (a) the financial meltdown of 2008 seems ... more The publication of this book is timely for two reasons: (a) the financial meltdown of 2008 seems to have delivered a blow to the dominant ideology of neoliberalism, and the authors explain, ‘the wondrous workings of the market … all seemed like dangerous decadence in the cold light of market failure ’ (p. 33); (b) the book is, following Rampton (1997), based on the tacit assumption that applied linguistics is not just about language teaching, but about real-world problems in which language is a central issue. Apart from the Introduction, the book is divided into six main chapters, five of which are sole-authored chapters and one of which is a two-authored chapter. In their Introduction to the volume, Block, Gray and Holborow claim that their concerns in writ-ing Neoliberalism and Applied Linguistics were above and beyond ‘the use of social theory to the real-world activities of the ELT industry and UK ELT in particular ’ (p. 8).
Language Sciences, 2018
Language commodification, a term now current in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, des... more Language commodification, a term now current in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, describes how language has become reconfigured for market purposes and treated as an economic resource. One aspect of this is the commodification of workers' language skills for use in sales and service work. This article explores, through a Marxist lens, the nature and extent of language commodification in work situations from three perspectives: firstly, as a component of the commodity of labour power in the exploitative labour process; secondly, from an ideological perspective, the influence of the dominant neoliberal narrative of commodification which marketizes everything; and thirdly, the active social agent dimension of 'language workers' who resist, in various ways, attempts at commodification of their language.
Language and Intercultural Communication, 2018
Languages and language skills are commonly tagged as a marketable asset, or 'human capital'. The ... more Languages and language skills are commonly tagged as a marketable asset, or 'human capital'. The article analyses the implications and social effects of Human Capital Theory. I show that the possession of language skills does not necessarily increase employment prospects, and certainly not in the way envisaged by neoliberal policy-makers in the European Union. Wider, systemic social inequalities come into play. Taking the Irish context as an example, and amid dwindling public funding for education, I argue that human capital theory functions ideologically as a strategy of displacement to shift responsibility for employment outcomes from the social to the individual.
Language and Intercultural Communication, 2018
Applied Linguistics Review, 2013
Neoliberalism and neoliberal ideology has only recently begun to gain attention within applied li... more Neoliberalism and neoliberal ideology has only recently begun to gain attention within applied linguistics. This paper seeks to contribute to this development with a focus on neoliberal keywords in official texts. The ideological content of these keywords can best be understood within the political project of neoliberalism and within the political economy of contemporary capitalism. Studies which have highlighted the marketization of institutional discourse have analysed this phenomenon from a discourse-based perspective, rather than seeing neoliberal ideology in language as a contradictory manifestation of wider social relations in periods of social crises. The appearance of ideology in language, this paper holds, is unstable, unfinished, unpredictable and dependent for meaning on what Dell Hymes characterised as the “persistent” social context. The ideology of neoliberalism, for all its apparent hegemony, is not guaranteed full consent, and this applies also to its presence in lan...
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Papers by Marnie Holborow
feminists and reevaluates his contribution to understanding gender oppression in capitalism. It argues that there is much we can draw on today from Engels’ works to locate the role - economic and ideological - that individual homes play for capitalism and their relation to the question of gender and social agency. Engels' location of women’s subordination in the rise of class society, and the wider role that individual households play in different modes of production, provide, one of the first historical materialist, non-essentialist explanations of gender oppression. Furthermore, Engels’ insights into the effects on traditional views of the family of industrialisation and the mass entry of women into paid work have specific relevance for explaining the diversity and changing nature of household composition that we are seeing today. Engels’ writings are not without flaws, but his conclusion, written when many identified capitalism with progress, that women’s oppression was systemic to capitalism, that gender roles were socially constructed and that only a social revolution could uproot capitalism's dependence on the social unit of the family, remain strikingly prescient. The piece is based on a chapter of a recently published book, published book Homes in Crisis Capitalism (Bloomsbury 2024).
Holborow analyses homes in crisis capitalism through a Marxist lens of capitalist social reproduction. This book charts the interwoven social and political effects and outcomes of work and care provided in the home, and makes the case for a radical break with capitalism to give social reproduction the material resources and social recognition it deserves.
feminists and reevaluates his contribution to understanding gender oppression in capitalism. It argues that there is much we can draw on today from Engels’ works to locate the role - economic and ideological - that individual homes play for capitalism and their relation to the question of gender and social agency. Engels' location of women’s subordination in the rise of class society, and the wider role that individual households play in different modes of production, provide, one of the first historical materialist, non-essentialist explanations of gender oppression. Furthermore, Engels’ insights into the effects on traditional views of the family of industrialisation and the mass entry of women into paid work have specific relevance for explaining the diversity and changing nature of household composition that we are seeing today. Engels’ writings are not without flaws, but his conclusion, written when many identified capitalism with progress, that women’s oppression was systemic to capitalism, that gender roles were socially constructed and that only a social revolution could uproot capitalism's dependence on the social unit of the family, remain strikingly prescient. The piece is based on a chapter of a recently published book, published book Homes in Crisis Capitalism (Bloomsbury 2024).
Holborow analyses homes in crisis capitalism through a Marxist lens of capitalist social reproduction. This book charts the interwoven social and political effects and outcomes of work and care provided in the home, and makes the case for a radical break with capitalism to give social reproduction the material resources and social recognition it deserves.