Cambridge Reading Group on Reproduction - October

October's meeting will be led by Professor Samita Sen, Faculty of History. Discussing Children, Childhood and Capitalism

RSVP for October's Reading Group

Text to be discussed: 
Ferguson, S. 2017. Children, Childhood and Capitalism. In Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping
Class, Recentering Oppression, ed. Tithi Bhattacharya. London: Pluto, pp. 112-30 (Chapter 6) 

Introduction to the reading by Samita Sen 

The essay explores the dynamic and contested relationship between capitalism and childhood.  It maps the contradictions of the relations of social reproduction within which childhood is historically constructed.

Rather than starting from consumption, as is more usual these days, the essay explores the relationship between childhood and labour. There have been historical and contemporary accounts of child labour, that is, situations in which children are directly engaged in labouring relations.

This essay addresses the child as future labour. It underlines the tension between the social reproduction of children and childhoods and the expansion of capitalism. It illuminates some of the ambiguities embedded in the figure of the child within capitalism, asking also whether there are radical political possibilities in imaginaries of childhood.

More about the Cambridge Reading Group on Reproduction

Cambridge Reproduction invites all Cambridge researches to attend a twice-termly Reading Group on Reproduction in which we’ll help each other engage with classics and new work in a wide range of disciplines.