In the 1970s and 1980s, in good part in response to the conditions of neoliberal economies, ‘care’ and ‘social reproduction’ emerged as feminist categories of analysis. Black feminist thought, social reproduction theory (which explored how production relies on domestic labour), feminist psychology and ethics, and feminist economics powered the initial theoretical thinking. Resurgent interest in combination with the covid pandemic has turned parts of the vocabulary mainstream. Coinages such as ‘care crisis’ are ubiquitous; hidden forms of unpaid and paid work are more visible; and trans, queer and other activists, especially those working in mutual aid, radicalize care. At the same time, we lack a full history of care, historians having been slower on the uptake. This is a field in the making.
This paper makes an exploration of the theory and the history of care. Otherwise put, the paper tracks the feminist concepts of care and social reproduction, and explores what we can learn about the longer and intersectional history of care in practice. Whilst the paper builds in particular on thinking from or about Britain and North America since the seventeenth century, where commentary and research are most sustained, in most weeks there is scope to explore earlier, alternative and comparative perspectives and contexts. Care and social reproduction are valuable categories of enquiry across all times and places; they promise to open out new historical and theoretical inquiries for intersectional historians of women and gender, queer approaches, and for theoretical and multidisciplinary research.
