The other side of the knowledge economy: 'reproductive'employment and affective labours in Oxford

Abstract

A marked feature of current narratives about economic change is their epochal or trans- formative character. An older rhetoric about the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism has been replaced by a widely accepted story about the 'new' knowledge economy, as well as a less-dominant narrative about new forms of affective or immaterial labour. In both cases, as with post-Fordist claims, the significance of women's changing labour-market participation patterns has been down-played. Each of the new transformation stories bases its claims on a productionist analysis, rather than on the different forms that the necessary labour of reproduction now takes. Here we critically assess the epochal narrative..