Why read Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale?

Book cover of Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour

Book description

'It is my thesis that this general production of life, or subsistence production - mainly performed through the non-wage labour of women and other non-wage labourers as slaves, contract workers and peasants in the colonies - constitutes the perennial basis upon which "capitalist productive labour" can be built up and…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Shirin M. Rai

Author

I really learnt a lot from this book! It is an important contribution to the debates about women’s labour, accumulation of capital, and extraction of resources from the global south.

It traces the social origins of the sexual division of labour, which Mies called 'housewifization' (not my favourite word, but it captures something about the way in which the term housewife hides women’s labour!). Layering this with the history of colonialism and the new international division of labour, Mies is able to locate the history of capitalism not only in the roots of colonialism but also in the gendered division…

From Shirin's list on social reproduction and the costs of maintenance of life.