Programme Contested Social and Ecological Reproduction
23rd September 2022 at the Victor-Klemperer-Saal, Weberplatz 5 in Dresden and digitally all around the world.
The event is open to the public. Because of the still on-going pandemic, the conference will take place at Klemperer-Saal in Dresden as well as online. If you would like to participate virtually, please write to constanze.stutz@tu-dresden.de.
Friday, 23rd September 2022
1 p.m
An introduction
Antonia Kupfer, Constanze Stutz (TU Dresden)
1.30 - 3 p.m
I. Panel: Umkämpfte (Ver-)Sorgung
Soziale Reproduktion in der Krise. Sorge-Kämpfe in Krankenhäuser und Kitas.
Julia Dück, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung
Soziale Reproduktion, Care und Krisen der Reproduktion haben Konjunktur. Immer wieder steht der Bereich des Reproduktiven in den letzten Jahren im Zentrum feministischer Auseinandersetzungen. Mängel, Lücken und ein Notstand der Versorgung etwa für Kranke oder Alte steht dabei ebenso im Fokus wie Erschöpfungen und Überlastung der Sorgearbeitenden. Zugleich nehmen Sorgekämpfe im Bereich bezahlter Sorge zu. Vermehrt organisieren sich Beschäftigte etwa in der Pflege oder den Kitas, welche die Geringbewertung und Ausbeutung, aber auch Unterbesetzung, Überlastung und die Qualität von Care im Kontext neoliberaler Politik und Ökonomisierung kritisieren.
Frauen*streiks zwischen Gewerkschaften und feministischer Bewegung
Ingrid Artus, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg
Frauen*, die streiken, um ihre Rechte und Interessen durchzusetzen, wurden und werden in der androzentrischen Geschichtsschreibung häufig „übersehen“; sie sind historisch jedoch nichts Neues. Neu ist die deutliche Zunahme feminisierter Arbeitskämpfe, ihre gesteigerte Sichtbarkeit und Aufwertung im Rahmen gewerkschaftlicher Organisierungsansätze; zudem avanciert in jüngster Zeit die Idee des „Frauen*streiks“ auch zum Machtmittel internationaler feministischer Bewegungen und sprengt damit den Rahmen ausschließlich erwerbsarbeitszentrierter Kämpfe. Die Verknüpfung gewerkschaftlicher Arbeitskämpfe in feminisierten Branchen mit der bundesweiten bzw. weltweiten Frauenstreikbewegung wäre wichtig – ist aber nicht ganz einfach, wie sich auch am Beispiel der letzten Tarifrunde in den Sozial- und Erziehungsdiensten zeigte. Der Vortrag diskutiert die besonderen Logiken von Arbeitskämpfen in feminisierten Dienstleistungsberufen, differente Frauen*streikbegriffe und das schwierige Verhältnis gewerkschaftlich organisierter Frauen*streiks und feministischer Bewegungsaktivist*innen - als Beitrag für einen wechselseitigen Dialog.
BREAK (30 min)
3 .30 - 5 p.m
II. Panel: (Dis)Localization
Housing, Home, Displacement: Understanding the financialization of rental housing through the lens of (struggles for) social reproduction: Everyday alienation, precarisation and resistance to financialized housing governance in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Tabea Latocha, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
From once having served as good-quality below-market housing, social rental units in Germany have become the new frontier of financialization, today serving the needs of institutional investors rather than those of low-income tenants. In my contribution to the Symposium „Contested Social and Ecological Reproduction”, I will first trace back the historio-political roots of rental housing financialization in Germany. Then, I will discuss how a critical-feminist approach to housing financialization through the lens of (struggles for) social reproduction can help to better understand the process of financialization and to contest it in ›situated solidarity‹ with marginalized communities. Focusing on how tenants experience and grapple with the changing governance of their homes, I ›demystify‹ how the abstract dynamics of global property markets (macro-level) have reshaped rent relations, everyday experiences of home and renters’ struggles to stay put in a neoliberalized urban context (micro-level).
Migrants’ urban commoning practices of care-tizenship in Athens and Thessaloniki
Charalampos Tsavdaroglou
During the recent migrant-refugee crisis, numerous solidarity initiatives emerged in Greece and especially in Athens and Thessaloniki to support thousands of stranded newcomers arriving after the . “EU-Turkey Common Statement”. The State accommodation policy provides the majority of migrant population with residency in inappropriate camps which are mainly located in isolated old military bases and abandoned factories. The paper contrasts the State-run services to the solidarity acts of “care-tizenship” and migrants’ commoning practices, like selforganized housing projects, which claim the right to the city. Specifically, the paper is inspired by the Lefebvrian “right to the city” which embraces the rights to housing, education, work, health and challenges the concept of citizen. The presentation discusses the academic literature on critical citizenship studies and especially the so-called “care-tizenship”, meaning the grassroots commoning practices that are based on caring relationships and mutual help for social rights. Following a participatory ethnographic research, the main findings highlight that the acts of care-tizenship opened up new possibilities to challenge State migration policies, while reinventing a culture of togetherness and negotiating locals’ and migrants’ multiple identities.
BREAK (30 min)
5.30 - 7 p.m
Panel III: Usage
The dispute over political power as part of a decolonial-anti-racist turn in Colombia: Building conditions of possibility for the politics of life and "Vivir Sabroso."
Castriela Hernández-Reyes, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Undoubtedly, the 2016 peace agreement and the creation of the Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation, and Non-Repetition have enabled the Black women's movement to demand the construction of an anti-racist territorial peace and truth in Colombia. Their struggles against racial capitalism, extractivism, and dispossession of bodies, rivers, and territories (Hernández-Reyes 2021) offer a decolonial turn to understand the structural causes of the Colombian war. Additionally, they will expand and disrupt the country's political-electoral discourse and agenda in 2022. Thus, Colombian citizens would have the opportunity to elect the first Black woman vice-president. Nevertheless, the Colombian election process has made visible how everyday racism operates while putting Black women's struggles and the philosophy of what Black people call "el Vivir Sabroso" at the center of the political debate. This paper asks: To what extent do Black women's struggles for the care of life and land constitute a decolonial-anti-racist turn in the disputes for political power in Colombia? I analyze newspapers, social networks, and public forums where misogynistic and racist practices against Black women are portrayed. I show how class, gender, and racism intersect in the Colombian electoral process, building on Moya Bailey's concept of anti-black misogynoir to examine how racist, classist, and sexist discourses and representations often depict Black women as unintelligent, less educated, "primates," and supposedly socially "incompetent" to govern the country.
Postcolonial-feminist perspectives on contentious social-ecological livelihood reproductions in India: Against the ‘responsibilization’ of subalternized rural women* for climate smart energy politics
Christine Löw, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
Under the new green(washing) environmental politics livelihoods of rural subalternized women* in the Global South have been restricted, privatized, or dispossessed. In my paper, I will analyze from a postcolonial-feminist perspective the current climate smart regulations in India, focusing on the gendered talk about responsibilities of poor women* for an ecological use of natural resources. Resisting these governmental maneuvers social movements lead by women have been organizing with demands for sustainable just income-, development- and energy policies. Firstly, I will examine how ‘responsibilization’ (Wendy Brown 2015) presents a crucial element within financialized development. Thus, my paper asks how the dominant discourse delegates responsibilities for clean energy to female subjects below the poverty line (often from dalit, adivasi and/or landless communities). Secondly, I will scrutinize the contentious and contradictory statements of the Indian developmental state on its duties to provide material citizenship rights (i.e. to available, safe, and adequate access to energy). In which way is the government able to justify climate protecting projects that force subalternized women* to fuel rice cookers with liquid gas or solar energy and pay for their renewable energy sources themselves? Finally, my contribution discusses how models for social-ecological transformation and political visions are developed by these grassroot movements for a sustainable democratic and gender equal society and ecological reproduction.
7 - 8 p.m Get-Together, Snacks & Discussions
8:15 p.m conversation with Nancy Fraser
At prime time, we will have a conversation with Nancy Fraser, New School for Social Research, USA on her new book “Cannibal Capitalism. How our system is devouring democracy, care, and the planet – and what we can do about it”. In this book, Fraser claims that capitalism is not restricted to economy, but a societal order that empowers a profit-driven economy. This economy annihilates our livelihoods, so we are in profound trouble. The book offers a deep dive into the source of the horrible. One dimension is that capitalism is structurally racist, confiscating resources and capacities from subjected human beings. Another column is the subjugation of reproduction under production, leading to our care and ecological crisis. No Green New Deal will offer a solution, but an anti-systemic transition. This requires public powers that are no longer serving capital accumulation. Instead, Fraser claims for a socialism of sustainability and with democratic control over the social surplus in the 21st century.