Care and Capitalism in the Twentieth Century

Care and Capitalism in the Twentieth Century offers an account of the emergence of “care” as a feminist concept in the neoliberal decade of the 1980s and its longer historical development to the present day. The volume brings together historians, legal scholars, and sociologists to grapple with actors unfamiliar to conventional capitalist histories, from young Puerto Rican domestic workers and African feminist development economists to childcare workers in the early People’s Republic of China and US labor organizers bargaining for “work and family.” Together, the contributors supply a missing history and genealogy that understands care as a fundamental human activity both within and beyond capitalism’s terms.