Mirjam Müller
The aim of this talk is to develop a materialist account of oppression grounded in social reproduction theory. I argue that social reproduction is characterised by a specific tension between the aim of life-making and the imperative of capital accumulation. Depending on how social reproduction is related to processes of capital accumulation - whether it is integrated directly as a source of profit, whether it is a pre-condition of capital accumulation, or whether it is pushed towards the margins of the formal economy - the tension takes different shapes. Oppression results as the historically specific response to these tensions.
