Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype

by Jennifer Denbow

Overview

In Reproductive Labor and Innovation, Jennifer Denbow examines how the push toward technoscientific innovation in contemporary American life often comes at the expense of the care work and reproductive labor that is necessary for society to function. Noting that the gutting of social welfare programs has shifted the burden of solving problems to individuals, Denbow argues that the aggrandizement of innovation and the degradation of reproductive labor are intertwined facets of neoliberalism. She shows that the construction of innovation as a panacea to social ills justifies the accumulation of wealth for corporate innovators and the impoverishment of those feminized and racialized people who do the bulk of reproductive labor. Moreover, even innovative technology aimed at reproduction—such as digital care work platforms and noninvasive prenatal testing—obscure structural injustices and further devalue reproductive labor. By drawing connections between innovation discourse, the rise of neoliberalism, financialized capitalism, and the social and political degradation of reproductive labor, Denbow illustrates what needs to be done to destabilize the overvaluation of innovation and to offer collective support for reproduction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478060024
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	09/27/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Jennifer Denbow is Associate Professor of Political Science at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and the author of Governed through Choice: Autonomy, Technology, and the Politics of Reproduction.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  vii
Introduction. Othering Reproduction: Neoliberalism and the Innovation/Reproduction Binary  1
1. Contextualizing the Aggrandizement of Innovation: Coloniality, Labor, and Capacity  28
2. Children as Human Capital, Reproductive Labor, and the Logic of Self-Entrepreneurialism  56
3. Investing in the Curative Imaginary: Biotechnology, Disability, and Reproductive Failures  83
4. Neoliberal Eugenics as the Fertility Frontier of Biocapital: Optimizing Baby-Making in Catastrophic Times  110
Epilogue. Pandemic Politics and the Repoliticization of Reproductive Labor  138
Notes  151
Bibliography  185
Index  213
 

Editorial Reviews

Provocatively excavating the inverse yet constitutive relationship between innovation and care work in the United States, Jennifer Denbow makes a compelling and urgent case for unpacking the ideological operation of neoliberalism’s innovation-speak while pointing to the ways we can think about and value care work otherwise. This is a timely and important intervention.

The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism - Catherine Rottenberg

How are property law and legislation protecting ‘innovation’ entangled with reproductive justice? Drawing on an impressive range of feminist, disability, and other social theory, this book explains how the US cultural investment in technofixes has been expanding at the cost of social support and care. Any reader who wants to understand the relationship between neoliberal technosolutionism and its impact on social welfare should read this book.

Reimagining Reproduction: Surrogacy, Labor, and Technologies of Human Reproduction - Kalindi Vora