Papers by Alessandra Mezzadri
Dialogues in Human Geography
This conversation brings together feminist scholars from various backgrounds and epistemological ... more This conversation brings together feminist scholars from various backgrounds and epistemological traditions around a central topic in feminist debates that is today more relevant than ever, social reproduction. It begins by examining social reproduction as a concept and its entanglements with the dynamics of global capitalism from human geography and feminist international political economy perspectives. We ask, what does the lens of social reproduction bring to light? We discuss how social reproduction is a fundamentally political concept that bridges classic labour struggles with demands around housing, service provision and the reproduction of life in general. As a concept, it makes visible the systems of life that support the labour process, both daily and intergenerationally, in sites of production along global supply chains, from the garment industry, to mining and agriculture. Nevertheless, there is a need to consider how gendered dichotomies of productive and reproductive th...
Anthem Press, Feb 5, 2021
Macmillan Education, Apr 14, 2020
In April this year, the UK multi-channel retail brand Missguided advertised the sale of a £1 biki... more In April this year, the UK multi-channel retail brand Missguided advertised the sale of a £1 bikini. It was advertised as a one-off special deal to celebrate ten years of empowering women to look and feel good “without breaking the bank”. The publicity stunt backfired spectacularly. While many customers bought the product – the retailer sold 1,000 pieces a day – at the same time, many journalists, and other influencers, including a rising group of ethical fashionistas, condemned the saleas morally reprehensible, socially unacceptable and environmentally destructive. All true, clearly
Handbook on Social Structure of Accumulation Theory, 2021
Journal of South Asian Development, Sep 25, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic has escalated processes of labour transition from industrial work to the in... more The COVID-19 pandemic has escalated processes of labour transition from industrial work to the informal economy, which have always characterised the life of the working poor. This paper explores this kind of reverse transition, i.e. when the Lewisian dream of having an industrial job comes to an end and workers are forced into a reverse migration. Specifically, the paper focuses on the post-industrial experiences of former Indian garment workers leaving the National Capital Region (NCR) and moving back to Bihar. Emphasis is placed on workers' reasons for leaving the industry and their current employment and reproductive strategies. Findings are based on a sample of 50 former workers, identified in urban industrial hamlets and traced back to their place of origin. Respondents' experiences are analysed based on semi-quantitative questionnaires and life histories. Findings reveal that upon leaving the factory, workers find alternative informal employment through caste or social networks whilst using land as safety net. They suggest that farming and informal work are not alternative but rather complementary income and work strategies. By adopting a lifecycle approach to studying labour transitions across formal and informal employment domains, this analysis contributes to policy debates on decent work.
Development and Change
This article proposes a reading of the COVID-19 crisis through a social reproduction lens, with a... more This article proposes a reading of the COVID-19 crisis through a social reproduction lens, with a focus on the restructuring of reproductive sectors, the world of work and the generation of differentiated surplus populations, and considers the implications of this reading for global development debates on inequality and informal labour. Learning from the pandemic and the social reproduction of the surplus populations it generated, the analysis argues that debates on inequality should be re-centred on its existential nature and its embeddedness in social oppression, and that labour relations should be considered as key reproducers of inequality. It also argues that informal labour should be increasingly understood as playing the reproductive role of 'global housework' in contemporary capitalism.
Unmaking the Global Sweatshop
Organization
This article portrays the COVID-19 pandemic as a planetary crisis of capitalist life and analyses... more This article portrays the COVID-19 pandemic as a planetary crisis of capitalist life and analyses it through the feminist political economy lens of social reproduction. Celebrating the plurality and distinctiveness of social reproduction theorisations, the article deploys three approaches to map the contours of the present conjuncture; namely Social Reproduction Theory, Early Social Reproduction Analyses and Raced Social Reproduction approaches. These provide key complementary insights over the planetary crisis and reorganisation of life, work and death triggered by the pandemic. Through the compounded insights of social reproduction theorisations, the article argues that the pandemic does not represent a crisis of neoliberalism. Rather, it represents its outcome, and deepening of its logics, an argument which is substantiated by exploring the impact of COVID-19 on the reproductive architecture of neoliberal capitalism; on the world of work; and on racialised processes manufacturing...
A Research Agenda for Critical Political Economy, 2020
This chapter argues that field-based research can provide key novel insights into the limitations... more This chapter argues that field-based research can provide key novel insights into the limitations of mainstream economic theories. The analysis provides a critique of comparative advantage and neoclassical trade models based on insights coming from years of field-based research on garment sweatshops in India. Field-based evidence deconstructs the assumptions and conclusions of classical and neoclassical theories of comparative advantage by touching upon issues of wage formation, productivity and convergence, and by illustrating the relevance of complex processes of social differentiation at work across labour markets embedded in multiple power relations. The chapter concludes that ‘sweatshop economics’ can powerfully contribute to debates on trade and inequality, particularly by re-centring the analysis of the implications of processes of exchange around labour. Notably, in building its case, the narrative draws from insights from economics, sociology, human geography and development studies and also shows how the study of production, exchange and inequality must transcend rigid divisions between the global, the national and the local.
Anthem Press, Feb 5, 2021
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Papers by Alessandra Mezzadri
See the book launch at SOAS here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPPyhchfRdQ