Life’s Work

Life's Work is a study of the shifting spaces and material practices of social reproduction in the global era. The volume blurs the heavily drawn boundaries between production and reproduction, showing through case studies of migration, education and domesticity how the practices of everyday life challenge these categorical distinctions. In particular, the authors focus on the actual spaces in which social reproduction occurs, addressing how these spaces are directly implicated in changing conceptions of subjectivity, national identity and modernity, as well as how they are inextricably linked to economic production in both theoretical and practical terms.

Notes on Contributors. Life's Work: An Introductionm Review and Critique. Katharyne Mitchell, Sallie A Marston and Cindi Katz. Part I: Education and the Making of the Modern (Trans)national Subject. 1. Imagined Country: National Environmental Ideologies in School Geography Textbooks: John Morgan. 2. Indigenous Professionalization: Transnational Social Reproduction in the Andes. Nina Laurie, Robert Andolina and Sarah Radcliffe. 3. Producing the Future: Getting To Be British. Jean Lave. Part II: Domesticity and Other Homely Spaces of Modernity. 1. Domesticating Birth in the Hospital: "Family-Centered" Birth and the Emergence of "Homelike" Birthing Rooms. Maria Fannin. 2. Adolescent Latina Bodyspaces: Making Homegirls, Homebodies and Homeplaces. Melissa Hyams. 3. Of Fictional Cities and "Diasporic" Aesthetics. Rosemary Marangoly George. Part III: Modern Migrants/Flexible Citizens: Cultural Constructions of Belonging and Alienation. 1. Valuing Childcare: Troubles in Suburbia. Geraldine Pratt. 2. Toque una Ranchera, Por Favor. Altha J Cravey. 3. Human Smuggling, the Transnational Imaginary, and Everyday Geographies of the Nation-State. Alison Mountz. Index.