| Reading Guide for Week 3 | |
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Once we have fully assembled a conceptual grounding in the construction of notions of “capitalism,” the “economy,” and the “free market” — and all their blindspots, distortions, et cetera (ideologically purposeful and otherwise) — therafter we can transport ourselves to the long 19th century. One major difference between capitalist life in 19th-century America versus the 21st century is that people living in the United States made things — almost every material thing in their everyday lives — that you, in this day and age, purchase, already pre-made. The material and intellectual intensity of that — of making — may be hard to grasp, so it behooves us to start with your imagination of what capitalist life might have been like in 19th-century America. Each week we will investigate crucial elements of capitalist life that will then be both eerily familiar as well as eerily unfamiliar to you. And we will investigate how you might try to make things that you need, not necessarily to survive, but to live. Thursday In her essay, Nancy Folbre examines how political/economic imaginaries have created certain kinds of externalities — i.e., matters deemed outside the “economy.” For instance, unpaid work of caring for the young and the old. Never mind ordinary housework, like cooking and cleaning, which even in modern double-income households in the United States and other “advanced” countries typically entails a “second shift” for women much more so than for men. In other words, gender dynamics in culture affected and affect economic imaginaries, and economic imaginaries affected and affect gender dynamics in culture — neither historically in favor of women. And yet the “economy” is supposed to be some kind of “natural” structure, supposedly apart from culture, or politics, or any caused power inequities. People might challenge, say, tax policies, but they are not supposed to challenge “the economy.” Perhaps (?) the early 21st century can become a moment precisely for some/many to question and challenge what constitutes an “economy” on a fundamental level — just as some women activists tried to question and challenge what did and what did not count as “economic” in the latter 19th century. |