Synopses & Reviews
Home Front examines the gendered exploitation of labor in the household from a postmodern Marxian perspective. The authors of this volume use the anti-foundationalist Marxian economic theories first formulated by Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff to explore power, domination, and exploitation in the modern household.
Synopsis
What is social class? How does social class interact with patriarchy and masculine domination to give shape to contemporary societies? What does Marxian economic theory add to the analysis of gendered domination and feminist critiques of power? These are some of the questions addressed by Home/Front. The authors of this volume of interdisciplinary scholarship use the anti-foundationalist Marxian economic theories first formulated by Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff to answer these questions and explore power, domination, and exploitation in the modern household.
Home/Front is divided into two parts. Part I examines the Marxian theory of the household first formulated by the Lacanian analyst Harriet Fraad and the Marxist economists Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff. In Part II a select group of leading contemporary scholars apply an inter-disciplinary approach to issues of great importance addresses by the Marxian theory of the household. These topics include examinations of the multiple sources, both psychological and economic; cross cultural comparisons of the definition of 'home'; the effect of remittances on immigrant and non-immigrant households; the increasingly isolated character of household life in the United States; and the examination of the effects of patriarchy on the American labour movement.
This book offers an approach to Marxism that is relevant to the politics of everyday life and contemporary crises. It is indispensable reading for all interested in Economic Theory, Sociology Theory, Gender Theory and Women's Studies.
About the Author
GRAHAM CASSANO is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Oakland University. He studies social inequality, symbolic exploitation, and the representation of political economy in the mass media. His essays have appeared in a number of interdisciplinary critical journals, including Critical Sociology, Rethinking Marxism, The Journal of Economic Issues, and Left History.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements * Introduction: Method(s), Narrative, and Scientific Truth--
G.Cassano * PART I: THE OVERDETERMINATION OF HOUSEHOLD CLASS STRUGGLES * For every knight in shining armor, there's a castle waiting to be cleaned: A Marxist-Feminist analysis of the household--
H.Fraad,S.Resnick&
R.Wolff * Connecting Sex to Class--
S.Resnick &--
R.Wolff * The Class Analysis of Households Extended: Children, Fathers and Family Budgets--
S.Resnick &--
R.Wolff * Starving and Hungry: Anorexia Nervosa and the Female Body Politic; H.Fraad * Toiling in the Field of Emotion--H.Fraad * PART II: ILLUSTRATIONS, REVISIONS AND EXTENSIONS * Contested Constructions of the Migrant Home: Gender, Class and Belonging in the Anatolian-German Community--E.Erdem * Economic Effects of Remittances on Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Household--M.Safri * A Class Analysis of Single-Occupied Households--S.Gabriel * The Class-Gender Nexus in the American Economy and in Attempts to Rebuild the Labor Movement--M.Hillard&--R.McIntyre * Hunkies, Gasbags and Reds: The Construction and Deconstruction of Labors Hegemonic Masculinities in Black Fury (1935) and Riff Raff (1936); G.Cassano * Afterword--A.R.Hochschild * Appendix: Original Introduction to Bringing It All Back Home: Class, Gender &--Power in the Modern Household--G.Spivak * Contributors * Bibliography * Notes