Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy: Latin America and India (Gender, Development and Social Change) 3030715302, 9783030715304

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GENDER, DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL CHANGE SERIES EDITOR: WENDY HARCOURT

Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy Latin America and India

Edited by Christine Verschuur Isabelle Guérin Isabelle Hillenkamp

Gender, Development and Social Change

Series Editor Wendy Harcourt, The International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Hague, The Netherlands

The Gender, Development and Social Change series brings together pathbreaking writing from gender scholars and activist researchers who are engaged in development as a process of transformation and change. The series pinpoints where gender and development analysis and practice are creating major ‘change moments’. Multidisciplinary in scope, it features some of the most important and innovative gender perspectives on development knowledge, policy and social change. The distinctive feature of the series is its dual nature: to publish both scholarly research on key issues informing the gender and development agenda as well as featuring young scholars and activists’ accounts of how gender analysis and practice is shaping political and social development processes. The authors aim to capture innovative thinking on a range of hot spot gender and development debates from women’s lives on the margins to high level global politics. Each book pivots around a key ‘social change’ moment or process conceptually envisaged from an intersectional, gender and rights based approach to development.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14999

Christine Verschuur · Isabelle Guérin · Isabelle Hillenkamp Editors

Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy Latin America and India

Editors Christine Verschuur Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva, Switzerland Isabelle Hillenkamp French Institute of Research for Development (IRD) Centre for Social Science Studies on African, American and Asian Worlds (CESSMA) Paris, France

Isabelle Guérin French Institute of Research for Development (IRD) Centre for Social Science Studies on African, American and Asian Worlds (CESSMA) Paris, France

ISSN 2730-7328 ISSN 2730-7336 (electronic) Gender, Development and Social Change ISBN 978-3-030-71530-4 ISBN 978-3-030-71531-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Series Editor’s Preface

The Gender, Development and Social Change series brings together pathbreaking writing from gender scholars and activist researchers who are engaged in development as a process of transformation and change. The series pinpoints where gender and development analysis and practice are creating major ‘change moments’. Very much in the spirit of the series, I am very pleased that Christine Verschuur and her colleagues have chosen to publish once again their groundbreaking research in the series. Their edited volume on Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy. Latin America and India brings together feminist theorizing with the detailed and engaged studies of the experience of solidarity economies. It points to how women play a major role in solidarity economies with a series of fascinating case studies from Latin America and India that illustrate how democracy, sustainability and the economy operate in solidarity politics. In a most timely fashion, the book helps us to consider how we can learn from the pandemic moment to collectively imagine ways of living where social reproduction—time for community, relationship building and care for each other—is key. In innovative and exciting studies and debates, the book shows how social and solidarity economy initiatives that put social reproduction at the centre are able to resist the violence of capitalism. The chapters give a grounded understanding of how to move beyond capitalist logic by bringing together empirical with theoretical debates on social reproduction and how it is

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key to transformative economic, social, environmental and political practice. The book contributes to an increasingly lively and important debate on the meaning of work and social reproduction in solidarity economies. In short, it is a wonderful addition to the series. The Hague, The Netherlands September 2020

Wendy Harcourt

Contents

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Introduction Christine Verschuur, Isabelle Guérin, Isabelle Hillenkamp, and Filipe Calvão, Ivonne Farah, Marisa Fournier, K. Kalpana, Santosh Kumar, Jean-Louis Laville, Yira Lazala, Erika Loritz, Rajib Nandi, Miriam Nobre, Gabriela Ruesgas, Fernanda Sostres, Kaveri Thara, G. Venkatasubramanian

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Social Reproduction: A Key Issue for Feminist Solidarity Economy Isabelle Guérin, Isabelle Hillenkamp, and Christine Verschuur

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Solidarity Economy Under a Feminist Lens: A Critical and Possibilist Analysis Isabelle Guérin, Isabelle Hillenkamp, and Christine Verschuur Forging Solidarities: Women Workers in the Informal Sector in Tamil Nadu K. Kalpana

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Resisting the Destruction of Social Reproduction: Dalit women’s Struggle in South India Isabelle Guérin, Santosh Kumar, and G. Venkatasubramanian

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Local Transformations in Batallas (Bolivia) and the “Inexhaustible” Capacity of Women to Sustain Life Ivonne Farah, Isabelle Hillenkamp, Gabriela Ruesgas, and Fernanda Sostres Solidarity at the Crossroads: Struggles and Transformations of Domestic Workers in Kerala Rajib Nandi

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Argentina: Collectivizing Care, Reinventing Work and Solidarity Marisa Fournier and Erika Loritz

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Alternative Market Systems: Mutual Dependence for Collective Welfare in a Fish Market in Udupi Kaveri Thara

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Agroecology and Feminism in Vale Do Ribeira (Brazil): Towards More Sustainable Forms of Reproducing Life Isabelle Hillenkamp and Miriam Nobre

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Concluding Thoughts: Connecting Women’s Struggles. Reorganizing Social Reproduction, Democratizing Solidarity Economy, Reframing Value Isabelle Guérin, Isabelle Hillenkamp, and Christine Verschuur

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Afterword: The Cross-Fertilization Between Feminism and the Solidarity Economy Jean-Louis Laville

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Author Index

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Subject Index

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Notes on Contributors

Ivonne Farah is an Economist, with a Master Degree in Sociology at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences—Mexico—and an unfinished Ph.D. Degree in Economics at UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico), obtaining her Ph.D. Honoris Causa at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA, Bolivia) (February 2020). She has served in public service as Director of social policy and Deputy Secretary for gender affairs in Bolivia. She has mainly been involved in teaching and research at UMSA since 1980. From 1997, she developed her academic duties in the Multidisciplinary Post-graduate Course in Development Sciences (CIDES-UMSA), teaching several courses, coordinating the Master’s Degree in Social Development and the Social Development Area, and directing the institution from 2006 to 2012. Her research and publications are related to theories and policies of inequality and social exclusion, poverty, employment, social development, gender equity policies, welfare regimes, care economy and alternative economies. Between 2012 and 2019, she coordinated the AndESS Program at CIDES-UMSA “Bolivia: Strengthening Movements and Public Policies of Solidarity Economy with Gender Equity”, which fostered training, research and productive initiatives in solidarity with women in municipalities of the department of La Paz, Bolivia. Marisa Fournier is a Socio-economist and Researcher at the Instituto del Conurbano (ICO) of the Universidad Nacional General Sarmiento (UNGS), Argentina. Her research focuses on solidarity economy and ix

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feminist issues, mainly in community organizations of care for girls, boys and young people. She is the Director of the degree on Gender, Policies and Participation (UNGS) and coordinates the Metropolitan CPRES of the University Gender Network (RUGE) of the National Interuniversity Council. One of her main contributions is the sustained and systematic articulation between research, teaching and intervention. She works with approaches that link participatory research and feminist pedagogy. Filipe Calvão is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Together with Christine Verschuur, he was co-coordinator of the research that led to this book. Isabelle Guérin is a Socio-economist and Senior Research Fellow at the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD), Centre for Social Science Studies on African, American and Asian Worlds (CESSMA). Her current work focuses on the financialization of domestic economies. It considers how financialization engenders new forms of inequalities and domination, but also alternative and solidarity-based initiatives. Her work most often draws on her own field-based original data in a combination of ethnography and statistical analyses. At the crossroad of various disciplines, she regularly publishes in the fields of development studies, anthropology, political economics and geography. In 2019–2020, she was a member of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton). Her last book is an edited volume with Florent Bédécarrats and François Roubaud, Randomized Control Trials in the Field of Development (Oxford University Press, 2020). Kaveri Haritas is an Associate Professor at the Jindal School of Government & Public Policy, OP Jindal Global University, India. She holds a PhD in Development Studies from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva. Her research focuses on gender and urban poverty, at the intersection of urban anthropology, economics and law. Kaveri Thara is the pen name of Kaveri I. Haritas. Isabelle Hillenkamp is a Socio-economist and Research Fellow at the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD), Centre for Social Science Studies on African, American and Asian Worlds (CESSMA). Based on qualitative surveys, her research focuses on the popular and solidarity economy from a gender perspective, careful of the links between economic practices and power relations. She has conducted research in

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Mexico, Bolivia and Brazil. She publishes in Spanish, Portuguese, French and English in journals such as Outra economia, Ciências Sociais, Revista de Antropologia Social, Umbrales, Revue française de socioéconomie and Development and Change. K. Kalpana is Associate Professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. Her research lies in the domain of gender and development. Her academic publications are in the intersecting fields of gender, poverty, microcredit, women’s work in the informal sector and women’s trade unions and collective action. Her book ‘Women, Microfinance and the State in Neoliberal India’ was published by Routledge in 2017. She was a member of the National Executive Committee of the Indian Association for Women’s Studies (IAWS) for the period 2014 to 2017. She participates actively in workshops and campaigns for gender equality, labour rights and human rights organized by women’s movements, trade unions and rural development NGOs in Tamil Nadu. Santosh Kumar is both a Researcher and a Social Worker. He has been involved in the NGO world in South India and abroad for thirty years. Concerned by the gap between research and action, he has gradually turned to research, specializing in gender, debt and collective action issues. He has been working closely with the French Institute of Pondicherry for 25 years, while continuing to be involved as a volunteer in various civil society associations. He has also created a school of dance and art. Jean-Louis Laville is Professor at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM, Paris) and Director of the Research Programme: “Plural democracy and economy” at the Collège d’études mondiales— FMSH, Paris. His research focuses on the relations between economy and democracy through various perspectives, in particular through the lens of social and solidarity economy. He publishes in English, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. Latest publications: Civil Society, Third Sector and Social Enterprise (Routledge), Theory of Social Enterprise and pluralism (Routledge). Yira Lazala is a sociologist who defended her PhD thesis at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) in 2020. She currently works at the Gender Secretariat of the Bogotá City

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Council and collaborates with the University of Nariño. She was a research assistant in the project that led to this book. Erika Loritz is a Sociologist, holding a Master’s Degree in Solidarity Economy, Universidad General Sarmiento, Argentina. She works as an Assistant Researcher at the Instituto del Conurbano (ICO) of the Universidad Nacional General Sarmiento. Her research focuses on solidarity economy and education, feminism and community organizations. She lived in Bolivia several years where she wrote her thesis “Community and market”, a study of the economy of an indigenous municipality of Bolivia. Rajib Nandi is a Research Fellow and Office-in-Charge at the Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi, India, with 20 years of experience in research and evaluation. He has an M.Phil degree in Applied Economics from Centre for Development Studies and a doctoral degree in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His areas of work cover gender and development, solidarity economy, new media and digital technologies, social movements, programme evaluations and evaluative studies. He is a founder and core group member of the Evaluation Community of India. Presently, he is a Board member of the Community of Evaluators—South Asia. He co-edited a book entitled Voices and Values: The Politics of Feminist Evaluation in 2018. Miriam Nobre is an agronomist and works for Sempreviva Organização Feminista (SOF), an NGO based in São Paulo, Brazil, with popular education and, as an analyst, on themes of feminist economics, agro-ecology and economic solidarity since 1993. She is a feminist activist and former coordinator of World March of Women International Secretariat, an international feminist movement that connects grass-roots women and individuals with the objective of eliminating the root causes of poverty and violence against women. Since 2015, she coordinates SOF’s work in Vale do Ribeira with peasants and quilombolas women in agro-ecological practices, solidarity markets and feminist organization. Gabriela Ruesgas is an Economist. She holds a Master’s Degree in Planning and Political Economy of Development and is currently working on her doctoral thesis for the Multidisciplinary Program in Development Sciences, both at CIDES-UMSA (Universidad Mayor de San Andrés), Bolivia. She teaches Development of Capitalism and Gender Sociology in the Department of Sociology of the UMSA. Her research focuses on agrarian transformation, gender and feminist theory issues.

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Fernanda Sostres is a Sociologist. She has worked as an Associate Researcher at the Postgraduate Course in Development Sciences (CIDESUniversidad Mayor de San Andrés, Bolivia), and at the Institute of Research, Social Interaction and Postgraduate Course of the Social Work Department, Faculty of Social Sciences (UMSA, Bolivia). She has been involved in various research programmes, including gender studies. G. Venkatasubramanian holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Pondicherry. He works as a Sociologist in the Department of Social Sciences at the French Institute of Pondicherry (India). Over the last 25 years, he has been working on a large range of issues in the fields of rural geography, rural–urban linkages, migration, livelihood, labour, finance, environment, gender and caste relations. He has published numerous articles and book chapters and plays a key role as an interface between the research world, civil society and decision-makers. Christine Verschuur is an Anthropologist and a Faculty member at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies—Geneva (previously the Institut universitaire d’études du développement- IUED) since 1996, in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology / Gender Centre. She headed the Gender and Development Programme until 2018 and has directed the book seriesCahiers Genre et Développement (Paris : L’Harmattan). Working from decolonial feminist perspectives, her research interests focus on social reproduction, agro-ecology and peasant organizations, and solidarity economy. She has also covered urban women’s social movements, gender experts and gender expertise. She published a previous book with Palgrave, co-edited with Isabelle Guérin and Hélène Guétat-Bernard, entitled Under Development: Gender (2014). Most recently, she edited a volume rethinking feminist knowledge from the South, Savoirs féministes au Sud. Expertes en genre et tournant décolonial (2019). She was the principal investigator and coordinator of the research project ‘Feminist analysis of social and solidarity economy practices: views from Latin America and India’ (2015–2018) funded by SNIS (Swiss Network of International Studies), that resulted in the present book.

List of Figures

Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 7.1

Occupations per gender (Source Authors’ survey, 2018) Places of occupation per gender and generation (Source Authors’ survey, 2018) Structure of SEWA

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction Christine Verschuur, Isabelle Guérin, Isabelle Hillenkamp, and Filipe Calvão, Ivonne Farah, Marisa Fournier, K. Kalpana, Santosh Kumar, Jean-Louis Laville, Yira Lazala, Erika Loritz, Rajib Nandi, Miriam Nobre, Gabriela Ruesgas, Fernanda Sostres, Kaveri Thara, G. Venkatasubramanian

In the context of the crisis of social reproduction, impoverishment and growing inequalities, subsequent to the neo-liberal financialized capitalist system, solidarity economy initiatives are emerging and bubbling up, at different levels. They are acting for change and constituting paths of resistance to capitalism and to its destructive consequences.

C. Verschuur (B) · I. Guérin · I. Hillenkamp · Filipe Calvão, Ivonne Farah, Marisa Fournier, K. Kalpana, Santosh Kumar, Jean-Louis Laville, Yira Lazala, Erika Loritz, Rajib Nandi, Miriam Nobre, Gabriela Ruesgas, Fernanda Sostres, Kaveri Thara, G. Venkatasubramanian Anthropology—Sociology and Gender Center, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1_1

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This book presents thoughts and practices in the field of solidarity economy. It is particularly innovative by demonstrating how a feminist analysis renews the perspectives in this field. Indeed, although there has been a growing interest in the field of solidarity economy by both academics and politicians, it has remained so far gender-blind, even though these practices are highly gendered and women play a major role in them. Solidarity practices privilege the quest for solidarity (among producers, between producers and consumers, in their territories and environment) over individual (or group) profit and rent seeking behaviour, now and for the future generations. These practices intend to articulate democracy, sustainability and the economy. They shed light on different ways of doing economy, constructing innovative social relations and of doing politics, reimagining decision-making processes, sometimes contesting development institutions and public policies. These are critical issues at a moment of growing consciousness of ecological, social and democratic crisis worldwide, subsequent to the financialization and dehumanization of capitalism as well as of its severe fragility, as the coronavirus pandemic and profound present global crisis is highlighting. The book offers timely contributions to the thinking on resistance and alternatives to the economic (mal)functioning, not only by shedding light on innovative forms of production, consumption, exchange and financing and on women’s struggles for their rights in these endeavours, but, and this crucial in these times of deep turmoil, also by focusing on the reframing of work and social reproduction. Through a series of concrete analyses of women’s and/or feminist organizations and practices in Latin America and India by scholars and activists working in these countries, this book brings new and valuable insights to the thoughts on these critical issues and rays of hope on possible spaces for change. Grounded in research with grass-roots women’s organizations on solidarity practices that are often part often part of broader social, environmental and political movements, and addressing them from a feminist perspective, this book contributes to the empirical and theoretical debates on social reproduction, demonstrating that it is a key issue to the transformation of a patriarchal and unequal global capitalist system. When based on solidarity-driven relationships and democratic practices that consider gender, class and race power relations, solidarity economy has the potential to put the enlarged reproduction of life at the centre.

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Solidarity economy makes it possible to contribute to the transformation of this system through the reorganization of social reproduction. This requires that it be based on relationships based on solidarity—and not on inequalities, submission and exploitation. It also requires it to build democratic practices that question gender, class and race relations and integrate the political objectives of gender equality and more equitable and inclusive power relations. When based on solidarity relations and feminist and inclusive democratic practices, solidarity economy has the potential to put the enlarged reproduction of life at the centre. This book presents the results of a collective feminist research project, “Feminist analysis of social and solidarity practices: views from Latin America and India” (2015–2018), coordinated by Christine Verschuur, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, co-coordinated by Filipe Calvão (Graduate Institute), funded by the Swiss Network of International Studies (SNIS). Our deepest thanks go to the women in the solidarity economy initiatives with whom we worked together during this research process and to the many other people from the multiple organizations involved. This book would not have been possible without the theoretical and empirical contributions of all the researchers of this network, expressed and enriched in the many meetings and exchanges throughout the research. The members of the network who have been particularly involved in the field research work and writing are, besides Christine Verschuur, Isabelle Guérin and Isabelle Hillenkamp: Ivonne Farah, Kaveri Haritas, Santosh Kumar, Marisa Lis Fournier, K. Kalpana, Erika Loritz, Rajib Nandi, Miriam Nobre, Gabriela Ruesgas, Sheyla Saori, Fernanda Sostres and Govindan Venkatasubramanian. Filipe Calvão contributed significantly to the various analysis workshops and to the revision of the quality of the texts. We want to warmly thank Yira Lazala, research assistant and Laïs Meneguello, assistant for the video production (both at the Graduate Institute, Geneva), as well as Valeria Esquivel and Ibrahim Saïd (UNRISD), Jean-Louis Laville (Conservatoire national des Arts et Métiers, CNAM-Paris) and Fernanda Wanderley (CIDES-Bolivia), all of them for their important contributions during the course of the project. Our deep thanks go also to Barbara Harris-White (Oxford University) and Lourdes Benería (Cornell University), whose seminal writings in feminist economics and intellectual, critical and friendly encouragement have inspired us so much.

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Last but not least, we want to thank the Gender Centre of the Graduate Institute (in particular Emmanuelle Chauvet and Ruth Harding, for their administrative support), l’Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) and the Swiss agency for development cooperation for their financial support. Besides the Graduate Institute, IRD-CESSMA (Paris) and UNRISD (Geneva), we want to thank the several institutions where the researchers are affiliated to: Universidad Mayor San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia; Universidad General Sarmiento, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Sempreviva Organização Feminista (SOF), São Paolo, Brazil; the French Institute of Pondichery (FIP), the Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST)-Delhi, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras and O.P. Jindal Global University, in India. The concrete analyses of concrete situations and processes, intersecting critical feminist theories and a substantive approach to economics, have contributed to lively conceptual debates within the network of researchers, based in the Global South and Europe, either in the field or in workshops or other forms of exchange and writing. This collective process and comparative analysis fed the theoretical discussions at the heart of the book and the results of this research with the network. Collective writing often characterizes feminist work but is not easy. We have chosen to proceed in this way, referring to the people most involved in each chapter, while acknowledging the substantial theoretical and political contributions of each to the whole. All the chapters effectively address the discussion, informed by local feminist practices and thoughts, of the redefinition of the meaning of work and social reproduction in the collective experiences of working women, but also of power. The book is structured as follows. As the question of the organization of social reproduction is key to understanding the transformative potential of solidarity economy, it was fundamental to start by discussing this concept. Inevitably, elements of this question, dealt with theoretically in the first chapter, come back in the second conceptual chapter—the feminist analysis of the solidarity economy—informed by the contributions of the various initiatives studied, and also run through all the chapters. By revisiting the discussions on social reproduction and the solidarity economy through a feminist framework, our aim is to weave them together, even if we make each of them explicit beforehand. The main objective of the first chapter is therefore to clarify the theoretical bases of the debate on social reproduction. It seeks to show how a feminist analysis of social reproduction renews its understanding. It

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argues that social reproduction is a powerful concept for understanding the possibilities of social change. It also clarifies the theoretical differences between care and social reproduction and addresses the issue of the politicization of social reproduction, illustrated in each of the other chapters. This chapter also briefly discusses the feminist epistemologies and decolonial perspective that inspired this research on solidarity economy practices in the Global South. The main objective of Chapter 2 is to lay the theoretical foundations to a feminist approach of solidarity economy from a critical and “possibilist” perspective. This will contribute to inform the discussion on the field of study called solidarity economy that is less used in some countries, especially in the Anglosphere and in Asia. The theoretical discussion in Chapter 2 also revisits some debates on solidarity economy and feminist studies, two fields that have tended to pay too little attention to each other and not acknowledge enough each one’s theoretical inputs (see also the afterword). Chapters 3 to 9 concern the case studies, situated in countries have quite vibrant solidarity economy initiatives—even if sometime not labelled as such—and strong feminist or women’s movements. The concrete analyses of concrete situations and processes, intersecting feminist critical theories and a substantive approach of the economy, contributed to lively conceptual debates among the network of researchers, either in the field, in workshops or other forms of exchange. This collective process and comparative analysis fed the theoretical discussions at the heart of the book. These chapters present and discuss the reframing of the meaning of work and social reproduction in collective experiences of women workers, either as construction workers (Chapter 3, Tamil Nadu, India), as urban care-workers, either home-based (Chapter 6, Kerala, India) or community-centre based (Chapter 7, Buenos Aires, Argentina), in bakery, greenhouses or handicraft organizations (Chapter 5, Batallas, Bolivia), as fish sellers (Chapter 8, Udupi, India) or as peasants in environmental care and agroecology (Chapter 4, Changalpet, Tamil Nadu; chapter 9, Vale do Ribeira, Brazil). These chapters have not been organized according to a geographical logic but according to the specific issues addressed, which echo to one another across continents. This allows us to insist on common structural aspects, beyond contextual differences. To conclude, in Chapter 10, the book draws cross-sectional analysis from the case studies on how integrating a feminist perspective of solidarity economy practices contributes to the renewal of public action and

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policies for the reproduction and maintenance of life. The afterword rebounds on the results presented before, engages in further considerations on how the cross-fertilization enriches feminist and solidarity economy theories and suggests the necessity to pursue research on these issues. Through our feminist analysis of solidarity economy, we hope to enrich these two bodies of literature, solidarity economy and critical feminist theories. Drawing on ethnographies, interdisciplinary analysis and comparison between various parts of the world, this book revisits the empirical and theoretical debates on social reproduction. In doing so, we reaffirm that social reproduction is a key issue to understand the reproduction of inequalities and the political and economic debates on gender, development and social change

CHAPTER 2

Social Reproduction: A Key Issue for Feminist Solidarity Economy Isabelle Guérin, Isabelle Hillenkamp, and Christine Verschuur

The current organization of social reproduction, based on unequal gender, class and race relations, on oppression and dispossession, is the condition for accumulation in the globalized capitalist system. It is also, increasingly, a terrain for struggles and social transformations. We define social reproduction as all the activities, social relations and institutions that are necessary for the reproduction of life, today and for future generations. This definition is enriched by the contributions of the practices and

I. Guérin (B) · I. Hillenkamp French Institute of Research for Development (IRD), Centre for Social Science Studies on African, American and Asian Worlds (CESSMA), Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] I. Hillenkamp e-mail: [email protected] C. Verschuur Anthropology - Sociology and Gender Center, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1_2

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political struggles of the most marginalized groups and thus needs to be contextualized, as the various case studies in this book show. This concept, which has emerged from various theoretical and political currents, particularly from critical Marxist feminist literature, has been enriched by the contributions of feminist movements in alter-capitalist, agro-ecological, migrant, violence against women and peace struggles, both local and transnational. Examples of these are the Chipko women’s movement in India, defending the forests (Shiva, 1993); the Zapatista women’s movement in Mexico; defending the struggle for life; or the Ni Una Menos movement, started in Argentina, against gender-based violence, whose struggle is part of a political critique of the system. The understanding of social reproduction has been renewed on the basis of the practices and political struggles of feminist or women’s movements in the Global South (Arruzza & Gawel, 2020). It includes the notions of maintenance and renewal of life, human and non-human, of bodies and territories. It emphasizes the importance of social interactions, the affective, spiritual, cultural dimensions as well as material interdependence or social relationships and institutions. Given the importance we attach to the concept of social reproduction, in relation to the critique of the global financialized capitalist system and the search for ways to transform it, we will first clarify in this chapter the theoretical and political bases of the debate. After discussing the crisis of social reproduction, we show how a feminist analysis of social reproduction allows for a renewed understanding of it, nourished by political practices and struggles. We argue that social reproduction is a powerful concept for understanding the possibilities of resistance and social change and for implementing it. This concept is central to understanding under what conditions the solidarity economy, analysed from a feminist perspective, could be a path for transformation of the global financialized capitalist system. We also clarify the theoretical differences between care and social reproduction and insist on the politicization of social reproduction, which requires collective organization and political struggles. Finally, we present the feminist epistemologies and the decolonial perspective in which the research of this network took place. This allows us to recall that the process of research is part of social change.

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The Crisis of Social Reproduction: Perils and Opportunities In the context of globalized financial capitalism, we are facing a crisis of social reproduction, with increasing inequalities, dispossession and pauperization on the one side, and accumulation and prosperity on the other. It entails the devastation of the environment and of the bodies of subaltern people, the erosion of the social fabric, power concentration and political turbulence, leading to a number of authoritarian regimes. Crises, however, following their etymological meaning, also conduct to taking decisions and opening opportunities. Numerous initiatives for change in situations of a crisis of social reproduction can be found in the past, to name but some, the dynamics of associativism in the nineteenth century in Europe (Laville, 2000; Riot-Sarcey, 2016) and in North America (Mohandesi & Teitelman, 2017), of communal villages in Mozambique in the 70s (Verschuur, 1986), of the communal kitchens in Peru in the 70s (Anderson, 2015), of various forms of women’s selfhelp groups in West Africa and Europe in the 90s (Guérin, 2003), of collective childcare facilities (Fournier et al., 2013), of fair trade indigenous women’s groups in Bolivia (Charlier, 2011; Wanderley et al., 2014; Hillenkamp, 2015) or women’s groups in the informal economy in various parts of the world in the 2000s (Kabeer 2013). These practices were not only ways of mitigating a critical situation of daily survival, a consequence of the crisis of social reproduction, but also of questioning the dominant organization of the economy, power and politics, and of trying to build different and more egalitarian social relationships. Feminist historians have shown how social reproduction, whether based on wage labour or on unpaid work, was an essential but neglected component of the working-class struggle at the time of the industrial revolution. Initiated mostly by working-class women, these struggles combined everyday networks of mutual aid, associations and cooperatives with large-scale political protests (Mohandesi & Teitelman, 2017). Likewise, peasant, indigenous and rural women wageworkers, marginalized urban, migrant or domestic female workers, struggled around issues related to the crisis of social reproduction, at the same time as they strived for empowering forms of organization. Feminist peasant studies have shown how women participated in struggles around issues like land, territory, forests, water, food prices, seeds, health centres, mills or fish smokeries, as well as in constituting rural cooperative groups, communal

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or associative movements (Deere & León, 1980; Goetz, 1989; Flores, 1994; Agarwal, 1994; Mbilinyi, ; Destremau & Lautier, 2002; Federici, 2005). The crisis of social reproduction has resulted “from massive cuts in government spending for social services, the continuous currency devaluations, the wage freezes, the liberalization and privatization policies” (Federici, 1999, 52), from expropriations and privatization of land, commercialization of agriculture and damages to subsistence agriculture, the “institution of a state of endemic warfare […] and the attempts to create a world where nothing escapes the logic of profit” (id.). The struggles of “grass-roots feminists”, indigenous and third-world feminist remind us that “the discourse on equality cannot be separated by a critique of the role of international capital in the plunder and recolonization of their countries and that the struggles that women are carrying on, on a daily basis, to survive, are political struggles and feminist struggles “ (id., 63). The pervasive nature of present globalized financial capitalism and the huge power differences that it generates may make struggling for the construction of more egalitarian social relationships seem a utopia or outdated. Yet, at a time when the crisis of social reproduction has probably never been more acute (Federici, 1999; Verschuur, 2013a; Fraser, 2017), we observe myriads of initiatives that are bubbling up in all parts of the world, where people—and this is the central argument of this book—are reimagining social relationships, opening possibilities to challenge gender and power relationships and to constitute new political subjectivities. In these initiatives, people are organizing their livings along the principles of solidarity economy, reframing the meaning of work and democracy. From a theoretical point of view, we consider that the fundamental contribution of these initiatives is to question, in practice, the way in which social reproduction is and may be organized. In this sense, solidarity economy offers a ray of hope, as our colleague Kalpana (Chapter 3) argues. Solidarity economy pursues more inclusive and egalitarian principles of organizing production, consumption and exchange, not based on solefor-profit (for a full discussion, see Chapter 2). Solidarity is understood here as inclusive and egalitarian voluntary relations of interdependence (Guérin, 2003; Servet, 2007; Hillenkamp, 2013). It aims to contribute to “the democratisation of the economy based on citizens’ commitments” (Eme & Laville, 2006, 303).

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As we will see in this book, people in these solidarity initiatives not only join together and struggle to defend their livelihoods, their rights, their recognition as workers, for better social protection and healthier lives and environment. They also join to construct more inclusive and egalitarian non-capitalist and non-exploitative social relationships. They are inventing ways of communally organizing activities necessary for the reproduction of life (Hainard & Verschuur, 2005; Federici, 2010, 2012; Verschuur, 2012; Fournier et al. 2013). Their practices often embrace what we call a “cultural reinvention of politics” (Verschuur, 2008), where the voices of the subaltern can be heard and deliberative practices are encouraged. Solidarity economy offers examples of collective initiatives of persons who are looking for a sense of achievement from their own perspective, going beyond individual achievement as the sole horizon of “modernity”. These initiatives defend a sense of belonging and social recognition in their territories. Territories constitute a space where material interdependence, kinship relations, history and memory, cultural, affective and spiritual dimensions are incorporated (Escobar, 2008). They create conditions to redefine values, to reframe the meaning of work and social relations, to resist against the destruction of the environment and bodies, and to constitute oneself as subject of rights. Studies and policies on solidarity economy are increasing worldwide, especially in Europe and Latin America (Hart et al., 2010; Utting, 2015; Vaillancourt, 2013; Saguier & Brent, 2014; Rivera Ruiz, 2019). Yet only a limited body of literature is specifically concerned with building up a feminist approach of solidarity economy (to name but a few Guérin, 2003; Nobre, 2003; Matthaei, ; Guérin et al., 2011; Degavre & Saussey, 2015; Farah, 2016; Saussey2018; Guérin 2019; Hillenkamp & Lucas dos Santos, 2019). The main part of the growing literature on solidarity economy remains surprisingly gender-blind, although solidarity economy initiatives are highly gendered, and a majority of persons involved are subaltern women. Additionally, many women’s informal collectives, analysed by feminist studies, are not considered as part of the institutional field of solidarity economy, whether by scholars in this field of study or in public policies, even where solidarity economy is recognized as is the case of several countries in the world (like Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil, which are discussed in this book). Not surprisingly, many of these collectives deploy activities in the field of activities of social reproduction—like preparation of food, childcare facilities, care for the

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environment (Guétat-Bernard & Saussey, 2014)—that are considered women’s main responsibility. Gender as an organizing principle permeates the perception of the world, institutions, social processes and the whole social organization, and thus necessarily also solidarity initiatives. These are often—but not only— deploying activities in fields that are considered in their specific context as “feminine”. But they also illustrate subaltern women’s agency and contestations against their subordination and the devastating consequences of the crisis of social reproduction. These initiatives are intersected by gender, class, race and caste divisions of labour and power. Indeed, we do not intend to essentialize women’s solidarity groups by supposing that they are exempt from power imbalances or by negating tensions and divisions, which are present in any group or community, nor to pretend that they function smoothly. Neither do we presume that solidary economy would magically change the world. Definitely, these initiatives are often fragile and sometimes ephemeral. They may sometimes be locations where gender identities and inequalities are reinforced, increasing the burden and mental load of work of subaltern women. But they are also spaces where experiences are lived, where the voices of the powerless are released, where common private and problematic issues are discussed and awareness of women’s rights arises, where also joy and a sense of bonding are shared. Despite their fragilities and ambivalences, they are part of lifeworlds in the sense of Habermas (1997), where communicative rationality unfolds, resisting colonization by instrumental rationality, and where subaltern women’s political subjectivities may emerge. What difference does it make to acknowledge the huge participation of women in solidarity economy initiatives and to state that they are gendered? As Louise Tilly, a feminist historian, wrote, “studying the vanquished allows us to better understand the victors, to understand how and when they won […] and to take possible alternatives seriously, for example those sought by women” (Tilly, 1990, 167). Despite the weaknesses and contradictions that these solidarity initiatives may entail, they confirm that subaltern women are making history (Verschuur, 2014). Notwithstanding the gendered dimension of these initiatives, the growing interest on solidarity economy by both academics and politicians had not until very recently been irrigated by the considerable feminist body of literature. A major consequence of this is that feminist scholarship on social reproduction was not taken into account. We believe

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the reflections on gender and social change in the context of the global crisis of social reproduction require putting this issue at the centre of our thoughts.

Social Reproduction: A Powerful Concept for a Feminist Analysis of Solidarity Economy Feminist studies have identified social reproduction as a central issue to understand the reproduction of inequalities and the expansion of capitalist development. Challenging women’s subordination in the family and the unequal sexual division of labour is since long part of the struggles of feminist movements. We define social reproduction as all the activities, social relationships and institutions that are necessary for the reproduction of life, now and for the next generations. Social reproduction includes the renewal of the workforce, caring for oneself and the others—dependent persons as well as non-dependent persons—and caring for the environment. It implies maintaining the social fabric and social institutions. Social reproduction is performed under different forms of social relationships. It is carried out either by the families, associations, communities—where domestic or solidarity-driven forms of social relationships prevail—or by the state (schools, nurseries, retirement homes, infrastructures,…) and the market (private institutions, employees in households), where capitalist social relationship prevail. In all these institutions, it mainly relies on an unequal division of work—organized along gender, class and race lines—and on poorly valued or unpaid labour. Social reproduction encompasses all kinds of activities, from the production, preparation and processing of food to small-scale market production; from the maintenance of one’s home to that of one’s environment; from the education of children to the caring of relatives; from cultural and festive activities to the preparation of meals for social events or the cleaning of the church; from claiming a right to obtaining social protection. While social reproduction includes care, it is much broader than that. It encompasses activities in both the intimate and structural dimensions of life. These activities reveal social reproduction both as a place of labour exploitation and as a space for political struggles. International organizations and mainstream discourses on gender equality largely recognize now the unequal share of unpaid domestic and care work as one of the main constraints to women’s access to paid

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jobs and the benefits associated with it, social rights and protection, and empowerment. The issue is now even included in the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 set by the United Nations (SDG target 5.4) and calls are made to recognize, reduce, revalue and redistribute care. It is an important step to move forward towards more gender equality. Besides, the concept of care has enriched the discussion on social reproduction, since it includes emotional and ethical dimensions that were rather absent from the earlier debates. However, while it is crucial to increase the recognition and to measure unpaid care and domestic work, care appears as rather consensual, without the critical and political dimension attached to social reproduction. Thus, while the concept of social reproduction seemed out-passed, we argue that it is much larger, richer and political and consider it is time to revisit this powerful concept. The political struggles of feminist and women’s movements in the Global South for the defence of life contribute to renewing the understanding of this concept (Arruzza & Gawel, 2020). We use the concept of social reproduction, inspired by critical feminist and decolonial theories, who have highlighted the work of subalternized and racialized women to feed the prosperity of the globalized capitalist system, who emphasized women’s subordination at the family level and who acknowledged the emotional dimension of women’s work that relies on human relations (Mackintosh, 1977; Verschuur, 2013b, 2017; Federici, 2014). This concept embodies an understanding of its interdependency with a territory, considered as a space with material and social, cultural, affective and spiritual dimensions. “Body and place are ineluctably the bases for human existence” (Escobar, 2008, 153). Feminist studies have underlined the need to analyse female subordination in the family and society to understand and change the relations of social reproduction, permeated namely by gender but also race, class, caste and other unequal power relations. The “relations of human reproduction – the subordination of women, the control of their sexuality, their fertility and their children – are the means by which the reproduction of labour power and the insertion of individuals into the class structure are controlled under capitalism” (Mackintosh, 1977, 124). Discussing these issues and women’s rights at the domestic level is highly political, as many recent reactions against the so-called “gender ideology” illustrate, and central to the fight against the reproduction of the capitalist economy. Since the 1960s, feminist movements in different continents have highlighted the issue of unpaid women’s work, invisible, for the “others”,

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in the name of nature, love or maternal duty (Kergoat, 2000; see also: Pedro, 2013; Bhattacharya, 2017). Feminist researchers have theorized on “domestic work”, deconstructing what is work—paid and unpaid— and the male bias attached to it, domestic labour, paid and unpaid care (Benería, 1979; Combes & Devreux, 1992; Souza Lobo, 1992; Folbre, ; Razavi, 2007; Salazar et al., 2012; Laugier, 2015; Degavre & Merla, 2016). Intense debates have taken place on the patriarchal and “domestic mode of production” (Delphy, 1970), on the political economy of social reproduction and the constructed separation between “production” and “reproduction” (Benería, 1979, 1998; Combes 1991; Devreux, 1995; Mackintosh, 1977). Whether domestic work was seen as productive or not had political consequences, since only so-called “productive” workers were considered as political agents of change, thus excluding non-wage working women from social struggles. Nonetheless, as feminist historians have shown, women workers have indeed participated in struggles (Tilly & Scott, 1978). And not surprisingly, the feminist social movements in the 60s mobilized specifically around the issues of recognition of unpaid domestic work as work. The separation between production and social reproduction is born with the capitalist mode of production. The separation of the “free” worker from his/her means of production went alongside with the gendered separation of production and social reproduction, through the process of primitive accumulation or what Marx also called accumulation by dispossession. “The expansion of capitalist relations is premised today as well (no less that at the times of the English Enclosures, the conquista of the Americas, and the Atlantic slave-trade) on the separation of the producers from the means of their (re)production” (Federici, 1999, 53). Social reproductive work is not a survival of previous forms of work, “pre-capitalist” or deemed to disappear, it is shaped by capital and essential for the reproduction of capitalism, still and moreover today. Domestic economy is not isolated nor external to capitalism, but articulated to it. It belongs to the “sphere of circulation” of capitalism, supplying it with labour power and food, while it remains mainly outside the capitalist “sphere of production”. It is by maintaining organic links between capitalist and domestic economies that the former ensures its growth and prosperity (Meillassoux, 1975; Rey, 1976; First, 1977). Gender as an organizing principle, intersected with other categories of exclusion like race, caste, class, constitutes the “magic” power that helps maintain this

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organic link between the capitalist economy and the domestic economy (Verschuur, 2008). In fact, the relevant question in the debate on social reproduction is not the nature of work, but its mode of appropriation, domestic or capitalist—both permeated by patriarchal relations of exploitation. In the domestic mode of appropriation, the work is supposed to be done “for free”—for a husband, a father, the family or the community—and by doing so it is giving a huge and invisible “gift” to the global system (as Federici formulated it, 1999, 54). In the capitalist mode of appropriation, the work is supposed to be done in exchange of a monetary payment, sometimes with a wage earner status, although often lowly valued and not in decent working conditions (Verschuur, 2013b). What is at stake are the social relationships within which the work if performed. To understand how the whole system reproduces itself, it is essential to acknowledge and to understand the articulation between the domestic and capitalist economies. While Marx mentions the hierarchies in the family, and talks of the “latent slavery” that relies on the appropriation of women and children’s work by the men in their families (Marx, Engels 1976, cited by Holmstrom, 2010, 307), he, as most political economists, had a pernicious productive bias. Marx concentrated his analysis on what he called “productive” work in capitalism, defined as what produces surplus value. This means failing to recognize the production of use values, necessary for the reproduction, maintenance and reconstitution of the labour force, both biologically and socially. Besides the productive bias, recognizing women’s subordination to men in families has generally been neglected by theorists of social reproduction (Mackintosh, 1977). More largely, as feminist and decolonial studies have underlined, the intersection of domestic social relationships by gender, class and race divisions of power has been until recently disregarded. Rosa Luxemburg (2015 [1899]), in her controversy with Lenin, had already stated that domestic and peasant economy is indispensable for the reproduction of capitalism, which explained why the latter maintains the former. Vast debates have taken place on the domination and “hegemonization” of the capitalist mode of production over other modes of production and on the transformations of modes of production (Castex, 1977). While there is no “domestic mode of production” which would not be both articulated to and dominated by other modes of production, it is fundamental to acknowledge the persistence of domestic forms

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of social relationships as well as of relations of subordination in the families. Understanding the relations of social reproduction, including the underlying patriarchal values, and their articulation with other social relationships, is thus central in the search for solidarity-driven social relationships. The question of the transformation of the capitalist mode of production and of the articulation with one or more modes of production has been revisited with different perspectives from the South. The Peruvian heterodox Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui had a major influence by asserting that in non-European societies socialism could come from an organic evolution of local practices and forces, especially indigenous ones, and not from a revolution led by a non-existent working class (Arico, 1980). In this vein, Anibal Quijano later drew attention to the destructive effect of the colonial/modern power pattern on the subjective conditions of social change and on the open character, “without any historical guarantee of victory” (Quijano, 2008, 15) of this change. From this perspective, he characterized solidarity economy “as a heterogeneous universe of social practices” and a “vital expression of the no less heterogeneous and contradictory movement of today’s society” (ibid. 12). Sharing this hypothesis of structural heterogeneity and of non-deterministic social change, the Brazilian economist Paul Singer (2000) defended that the solidarity economy may constitute, through the work relations that it institutes, a distinct mode of production and distribution not necessarily subordinated to capitalism, under certain conditions. On this key point, these Marxist authors converge in some way with the theory of the solidarity economy developed in France from the legacy of the plural economy of Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi, which recognizes the existence of a plurality of economic principles and forms of property within predominantly capitalist economic systems (Laville, 2013). In solidarity economy, work is supposed to be subject to a collectively constructed democratic will, with social relations of solidarity taking precedence over individual interest or material profit (Eme & Laville, 2006). According to Singer, the concrete possibility that the solidarity economy constitutes a distinct mode of production and distribution that would not be subordinated to capitalism rests on the organization of workers at two main levels. At the level of solidarity economy initiatives, firstly, workers face the challenge of self-management. Organization and experimentation are the necessary conditions for building new collective management skills indispensable to escape the unequal division of work in

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capitalist enterprises. The organization between solidarity economy initiatives, secondly, is crucial to create an “integrated sector” that brings together these initiatives and other institutions in order to generate their own modalities of financing, marketing, circulation of knowledge and relations with governments. Internal democracy through democratic self-management and external autonomy through the institution of an integrated solidarity economy sector are therefore two key conditions for solidarity economy to constitute a mode of production and distribution that can co-exist with capitalism without being subordinated to it. Paul Singer’s analysis, inspired by the experience of production cooperatives and centred on solidarity economy as an alternative to capitalist relations of production, deserves to be confronted with the theories of the relations between men and women in the family or in workers’ organizations, and with the debates on social relations of reproduction. Indeed, “no conceptualization of a particular mode of production is complete unless it can account for the reproduction of the people within the system and of the system as a whole” (Mackintosh, 1977, 126). Transforming the capitalist mode of production requires rethinking the articulations between the domestic, capitalist and solidarity economies. Solidarity economy may offer spaces of resistance to both domestic and capitalist economies, all the more solid and extensive as they rely on strong internal democracy, provided that they consider gender, race and class power inequalities. Our findings show that this requires connecting the myriad of existing initiatives to each other and weaving organic links with feminist networks, movements, scholars and allies, including nongovernmental, governmental and intergovernmental and transnational institutions or movements. Solidarity initiatives may not represent radical transformations of a system on their own. But aggregating experiences and articulating with feminist, solidarity and other social movements may open, here and now, paths of emergence of alternative spaces to the expansion of capitalism in all spheres of life. Obviously, the role of the state to offer conditions to make this possible is part of the issue, while also being part of the problem (as we will develop in the conclusion). Feminist and decolonial debates on social reproduction shed light on the powerfulness of this concept. We defend the idea that a feminist perspective on solidarity economy requires putting social reproduction at the centre of the analysis. Through a feminist analysis of solidarity economy,

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we propose to enrich the discussion of the concept of social reproduction, grounded on in-depth studies of grass-roots women’s collective initiatives. We are interested in understanding under what conditions solidarity economy may offer some spaces to organize social reproduction differently, without reproducing gender, class, caste and race inequalities, in other words, rethinking the social relations of reproduction and rearticulating domestic, capitalist and solidarity economies. We argue that solidarity economy can offer transformative and sustainable paths for feminist social change. This means reorganizing social reproduction, constructing new social relationships, neither domestic nor capitalist, but based on solidarity. This requires internal democracy, putting gender, race, caste and class equality at the forefront of political debates, at all levels, from the household to the communities, the market and the state.

Feminist Epistemologies and Contributions from the Global South Based on the ideas exposed, and in line with the stands defended, a research was conducted in grass-roots initiatives in the field of solidarity economy in the Global South. It explored the specific conditions under which solidarity economy initiatives may represent possibilities of resistance against capitalist and domestic modes of appropriation of work and the unequal global division of labour. It investigated the possibilities of emergence of new social relationships, neither domestic nor capitalist but driven by solidarity and feminist values, to reorganize social reproduction. The book presents the results of a feminist collective research project initiated between a network of researchers from Latin America, India and Europe. The reflections presented are at the same time the result of maturation of long-standing personal research questions and of shared ripening of thoughts, through collective work, interactions, dialogues, joint research and writings that fed the theoretical discussions at the heart of the book. The researchers, coming from varied disciplinary backgrounds—anthropology, sociology, political economy, political science, agronomy, law—constructed a shared feminist epistemological perspective and discussed methodological choices. Feminist epistemologies are based on principles of collaborative, participatory, non-hierarchical, reflexive and transformative research. They are inspired by the long history of feminist studies and movements that have

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forged the concept of gender. This involves recognizing the political and heuristic scope of gender as a category of analysis that helps understanding and questioning the power relations between women and men. By developing analytical and reflexive capacities, feminist epistemologies break the contested dichotomies between theories and practices, between academics and professionals or activists. They also contest the homogenizing and victimizing vision of women as poor and powerless (Mohanty, 1988). Using feminist epistemologies implies being aware that “our embodiment as members of a specific class, race, and gender as well as our concrete historical situations necessarily play significant roles in our perspective on the world […]. Knowledge is seen as gained not by solitary individuals but by socially constituted members of groups that emerge and change through history” (Narayan, 2004, 218). This implies being conscious that no perspective has a universal validity, contesting Euro-centric visions and valuing the knowledge of “others”, feminist scholars from the South, local women’s or feminist organizations. The decolonial perspective is defined as an alternative for thinking from the historical and political specificity of the societies themselves, and not only towards or on them, as has been defended by the decolonial current born in Latin America since the 1970s (Fals Borda, 1970, Quijano, 1991, Escobar, 2019, Viveros, 2019). The latter considers that culture is intertwined with political-economic processes, and that globalized neoliberal capitalism cannot be understood without taking into account the race and gender discourses that organize the population in an international division of labour (Castro-Gomez & Grosfoguel, 2007). The term decolonial thus responds both to the demand to shift perspectives from the points of view of the “others” and to the criticism that postcolonial studies are deserting the terrain of real social struggles (Verschuur & Destremau, 2012). In India, too, there are currents of thought which aim to decolonize research, by revealing and dismantling unequal power relations in knowledge production processes and institutional practices and by shifting perspectives from those expressed by the “other”, the subordinate (Spivak, 1988). The decolonial current has thus criticized the coloniality of power and knowledge that runs through the social sciences, including gender/ feminist studies. Despite the fact that we defend this perspective, the constitution of this research network could not escape all the constraints linked to the coloniality of power. Research conditions are often more unfavourable in the Global South, especially for women and/or racialized

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women researchers, and even more so in tense political contexts. They are more likely to have part-time or precarious commitments, heavy service, teaching and administrative burdens in institutions, besides heavy personal ones. Some people in research institutions in the Global South have to juggle between consulting assignments, various institutional commitments, activism and research. These inequalities are sometimes reflected in the ability to find time and resources for writing. In addition, the need to use a dominant language such as English—which was not the mother tongue of any of the researchers in this network—has made exchanges between certain teams difficult, particularly for Latin American teams— despite efforts to find help with interpretation and translation. These various constraints also explain why some teams, while having extensively contributed in the theoretical debates, provided less detailed and lengthy written pieces than others. Feminist epistemologies and the decolonial perspective inspired the way the network conducted the research with grass-roots women’s groups and produced the results, which are part of the dynamics of concrete social struggles. We are therefore committed to an approach that postulates, among other things, that the research process itself is part of social change. As we will develop in Chapter 2, our epistemological perspective includes a position that is both critical (paying a constant attention to structural mechanisms of oppression) and open to “possibilism” (i.e. the idea that change within any context is possible, but it may take hidden forms and may follow hidden rationalities and that research must look at these counterintuitive and hidden forms of change). This resonates with feminist approaches that claim that in order to understand something one has to change it (Mies, 1979), and that recognize personal and collective room to manoeuvre for change (Scott, 1986; Rauber, 2003). It also resonates with the call for epistemologies of the South (de Sousa Santos 2011), recognizing the different ways of knowing, forged by their social position, by which women and men organize their lives and give meaning to their existence, with the approach of pedagogy of the oppressed (Freire, 1974) and participatory action-research methods (Fals Borda, 1999) used by some of our partners in their work. The case studies presented are drawn from countries from the Global South (Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil, as well as Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu—India) where intellectual collaborations between the researchers of the network exist since long. The case studies are specific

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to each country and depend upon the specificities of each context. We did not look for “best-practices” or emblematic initiatives, but privileged the field knowledge and collaborative experiences of the members of the network and those initiatives which were the most relevant to answer our research questions. This network’s common methodological basis also includes a qualitative and careful use of comparison between the different contexts. Comparison aims either at highlighting divergences and similarities or at raising new questions (the confrontation with new contexts helps going beyond conventional frameworks). Both objectives were pursued here. Comparison and pluridisciplinarity are easier said than done. They require multiple precautions in order to avoid misunderstanding and “false-friends” (a same word is used in different disciplines or geographical areas but with a different meaning). The countries studied are characterized, whatever the disciplines, by specific intellectual traditions, embedded in local histories, which are also specific ways of thinking of what must be taken into consideration. We identified two major conditions for collaborative research, which are often under-estimated (Kanbur & Shaffer, 2007; Bardhan & Ray, 2008): mutual respect and a common epistemological position. A research protocol was designed during a kick-off workshop, where epistemological stands were discussed. Halfway through the project, a collective field visit to one of the case studies, in Vale do Ribeira in Brazil, was organized where methods, concepts, the framework and the work in progress were discussed. A pluridisciplinary approach, combining concepts and methods from feminist anthropology (lived experience, subjectivities, power relations), political economy, a substantive and plural approach to the economy (market and non-market practices) and political science (public action, social movements, the public space and subaltern counterpublics) was adopted, following common feminist epistemological perspectives. Based on ethnographies and interdisciplinary case studies, the book discusses how grass-roots collectives organize themselves, often in connexion with external organizations, and how social relations are being (re)constructed in these spaces, intersected by gender and power relations. We explore under what conditions marginalized women, majoritarian in these initiatives, can constitute themselves as subjects of rights, to transform the reproduction of gender and social inequalities. We analyse the practices, the social and power relationships through which social reproduction is organized. We investigate whether and how the high level

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of participation of marginalized women leads to power negotiations, at the domestic, local and global level. We also explore the contribution of solidarity economy to the renewal of public action and policies, and whether and how the inclusion of feminist agendas in the field of social reproduction is negotiated. We study both the tensions and opportunities to imagine and build new social relationships, to open breaches in the dominant economic and political models and renew public action. These initiatives are approached as processes where power relations are at play, and which may as well or at the same time reinforce unequal gender, race and cast relations and capitalist accumulation and open spaces of reinvention of the economy and of doing politics. The conjunction of the subversive power of solidarity grass-roots women’s and feminist organizations and of a feminist focus on women’s rights, gender equality and power transformations emerge as paths of resistance to both domestic and capitalist modes of appropriation of subaltern women’s work and their subordination. It suggests the possibility of emergence of different social relationships, not based on gender, class and race exploitative relations but on solidarity and egalitarian values. It offers glimmers of hope to resist the hegemonic worldview that sustains the financialized global capitalist system, permeated by patriarchal values, coloniality of power and racial hierarchies. A feminist solidarity economy ambitions to rethink, beyond the context of the crises, the enlarged reproduction of life, now and for the future generations. At the same time, as we will see all along the book, social change must always be contextualiszd and historicized. Point-to-point comparisons make little sense: only processes can be compared, and achievements can never be taken for granted. Contexts change rapidly, and practices are constantly evolving. What is gained today may be lost tomorrow. Moreover, given the multiple nature of oppressions and struggles, what is gained here may be lost elsewhere. However, even ephemeral victories are never lost; women’s collective struggles and dreams contribute to experiences of awareness and changing perceptions and interpretations of everyday life. They are part of the continuous feminist and political struggle in times of crisis of social reproduction.

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CHAPTER 3

Solidarity Economy Under a Feminist Lens: A Critical and Possibilist Analysis Isabelle Guérin, Isabelle Hillenkamp, and Christine Verschuur

Production, exchange and redistribution practices based on solidarity— i.e. on voluntary interdependent, inclusive and egalitarian relationships— can be found in almost all areas of economic activity, from agriculture to

I. Guérin (B) · I. Hillenkamp French Institute of Research for Development (IRD), Centre for Social Science Studies on African, American and Asian Worlds (CESSMA), Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] I. Hillenkamp e-mail: [email protected] C. Verschuur Anthropology - Sociology and Gender Center, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1_3

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handicraft, manufacturing, finance, social and care services. These practices privilege the quest for solidarity (among workers and producers, between producers and consumers, between locations and between generations) over individual (or group) profit and rent-seeking behaviour (Eme & Laville, 2006; Guérin et al., 2011; Servet, 2007). More or less successfully, solidarity economy (SE) practices aim at (re)inventing non-capitalist and non-domestic social relations. Starting from management forms that allow workers to appropriate (or re-appropriate) the means of production and build (or reactivate) social dynamics that counter individualism and greed, they create the possibility to organize social reproduction in a way in which “all persons’ capabilities and the quality of all lives” matter (Coraggio, 2009). SE practices also aim at making room for debate, thus associating democracy and the economy, and bringing about new ways of contesting institutions and public and development policies. The inseparability of these two dimensions—economic and political—is what distinguishes SE from other proposals, such as the “social economy”, “inclusive economy”, “social enterprises” or “social business” (Laville et al., 2020). Long ignored, SE practices have received growing attention in the last decades. In Latin America, interest in SE has been part of a broader paradigm shift around the notion of the “popular economy”, which turned attention away from the formal/informal economy debate to consider all forms of work, regulated or not, from the point of view of their contribution to the reproduction of life (Coraggio, 1994, 2006; França Filho et al., 2009; Nuñez, 1996; Razeto & Calcagni, 1989; Sarria & Tiriba, 2006). In Brazil, in particular, SE has been conceptualized in terms of self-management, differentiating itself both from wage labour and from small-scale informal enterprises (Singer, 2000; see also: Lemaitre, 2009). In Andean countries, SE has been discussed in relation to “community economy” and the “good life” model (buen vivir) as a potential alternative to “capitalist modernity” (Hillenkamp & Wanderley, 2015; Ruiz-Rivera, 2019). This paradigm shift has echoed the renewed interest in the English-speaking world of a livelihood approach to local economies in poor neighbourhoods and communities (Hillenkamp et al., 2013). Here too, authors emphasize actors’ multiple strategies and creativity (Hull & James, 2012), their need for protection (Cook et al. 2008; Kabeer 2010) and security (Krishnaraj, 2007; Shiva, 1996). While issues concerning the relationship to the capitalist mode of production (Gaiger, 2003; Singer, 2000) and mechanisms of internal competition

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and domination (Coraggio, 2006) are not ignored, the reproduction of life (and not only market mechanisms and capital accumulation) is at the centre of these analyses (Morrow & Dombrowski, 2015). As a concept, SE is less frequently used in the Anglophone world where concepts like “human economy” (Hart et al., 2010), “alternative” or “community economies” (Gibson-Graham, 2014), “people’s economy”, or “hybrid” models combining “struggle” and “development” are more common (Kabeer et al., 2013). In continental Europe, SE has also been conceived as part of a new “welfare mix” (Evers, 1995; Pestoff, 1998) and of a “plural economy” (Eme, 1991; Laville, 1994; Nyssens, 1996; Roustang et al., 1997) that links market, state, household and community resources to address the unemployment and the welfare state crisis. At an international level, growing interest has been evidenced in publications, conferences, laws and the creation of public institutions for SE. Within the UN System, UNRISD created an Inter-Agency Task Force on SE in 2013. Given the challenges of inequality and climate change, the UN has put forward SE as an alternative model of production, financing and consumption (UNRISD, 2014; Utting, 2015). However, apart from a relevant yet limited body of feminist literature on solidarity economy, the rising awareness of SE among academics and politicians remains largely gender-blind, despite the fact that they are highly gendered and that women play a major role in it (see Chapter 2). This literature was mainly developed in French-, Spanishand Portuguese-speaking circles and has often remained inaccessible to English-speaking researchers and actors (Guérin et al., 2019). Moreover, quantitative evidence is scarce because official definitions of SE, when they exist, most often exclude a large number of female-led initiatives. In France, the only data available concern the social economy, in which women represent 65% of workers (Observatoire national de l’ES-CNCRES, 2012). The social economy in France is defined on the basis of the status of non-profit organizations (associations, cooperatives, foundations), which does not necessarily mean that practices are solidarity-based (Laville, 2010). In Brazil, a 2010–2012 census found that nearly 44% of those affiliated to the 20,000 initiatives included in the National Information System on SE were women. But this figure is certainly underestimated due to the fact that many women participate in small-size initiatives, which have not been registered in the census. In addition, in cases where the whole family takes part in a SE organization, only the male head-of-family is generally registered (Nobre, 2015).

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Although quantitative evidence is lacking, field observations show that a large number of sub-sectors within SE are predominantly female-based (Hillenkamp et al., 2019). Collective food services are largely, and many times even exclusively, female (Anderson, 2015; Hersent, 2015; Ndoye, 2014), as are food processing cooperatives in low-income communities (Hainard & Verschuur, 2005; Ypeij, 2002). Women are very active in specific fair-trade value chains (Charlier, 2006; Saussey & Elias, 2012), barter clubs and social currencies (Saiag, 2015). They make up the majority of workers in environment and housing improvement initiatives—parks, low-income housing, sanitation, waste management, water management (Bisilliat, 1995; Haritas, 2014; Saussey & Degavre, 2015; Suremain, 1996; Verschuur, 2005, 2008, 2012), child-care and eldercare organizations and cooperatives (Fournier et al., 2013; Fournier, 2017; ILO, 2015; Suremain, 1996) as well as health care mutuals and savings and credit unions (Chatterjee, 2015; Fonteneau, 2015; Johnson, 2015; Sudarshan, 2015). In rural areas, women play an active role in subsistence agricultural cooperatives (Angulo, 2011; Guétat-Bernard & Saussey, 2014; León, 1980) and agroecology (Hillenkamp & Nobre, 2018; Prévost, 2015). This is not surprising since these activities are related to the enlarged reproduction of life and reflect the gendered nature of work in private, public, domestic, community and market spheres (Chapter 2). This overrepresentation has often been perceived as the sign of the overburdening and undervaluing of women’s work and as another mechanism of reproduction of unequal work distribution. This perception is particularly legitimate, given that jobs within non-profits’ sectors, which offer the lion’s share of work in the SE, are often lowly paid in mediocre working conditions (Saussey & Degavre, 2015). At the same time, this overrepresentation of women has also been seen by some as a sign of new and innovative forms of wealth creation that are more inclusive and egalitarian. In the updated version of their book Gender, Development and Globalization, Lourdes Benería, Günseli Berik and Maria Floro consider SE a promising path to build pro-women alternatives to neoliberalism (Benería et al., 2016, 242–243). Our empirical observations lead us to be more nuanced, and to ask under what conditions SE can offer transformative and sustainable paths for feminist social change. In this chapter, we suggest the need to develop a dual perspective of a feminist analysis of the solidarity economy: one that is both critical and “possibilist”, by considering at the same time the violence of

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domination and the possibility to resist it, the effects of structures and the existence of interstices for change (section “A Critical and Possibilist Epistemology”). This stand is necessary in order to account for the complexity of the processes of change, the tensions and sometimes the contradictions that the initiatives under study are facing, and to do justice to them by avoiding to summarily oppose “good” and “bad” practices. In addition, and as Jean-Louis Laville shows in this book (Chapter 12), developing such a position requires broadening our understanding of the economy beyond the market and the capitalist sphere and of the political beyond the sphere of the state and public authorities. The plural approach to the economy, inspired in particular by Karl Polanyi, revisited through a feminist perspective, offers a framework for understanding the economy, including the central question of social reproduction, considering both the mechanisms of domination and the possibilities for building spaces of resistance (section “Broadening Our Approach to the Economy: Social Reproduction from a Plural Economy and Feminist Perspective”). On this basis, the SE initiatives presented in this book, combined with examples from the literature, allow us to refine our analytical framework by identifying four main processes—not exhaustive nor mutually exclusive—through which such spaces can be constructed (section “Solidarity Economy as Reorganization of Social Reproduction: Avenues Opened up by the Case Studies”). Finally, a broad and feminist approach to the political process, paying attention to the public spaces of debate at different levels and the multiple intersections with the economy, allows us to understand whether and how social reproduction can be politicized (section “Politicizing Social Reproduction: Public Action from Autonomous to Instituted Spaces”). These two broad approaches to economics and politics are inseparable in understanding the conditions for social change and form the basis of the feminist approach to solidarity economy that underpins our collective research.

A Critical and Possibilist Epistemology We propose a critical analysis to examine the nature of social relationships that drive SE practices, and how they interact with dominant power relationships. Our analysis questions the way in which SE initiatives liberate women from confined spaces or on the contrary, close them in; the way in which they reinforce or even generate inequalities—not only gender, but also class, caste, race, religion or ethnicity. It questions to what

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extent they are substituting—at a lesser cost—local, national or supranational public initiatives, and the way they serve as vehicles of globalized value chains and even extremist religious movements (Selim, 1988; Sen, 2007). However, focusing on power relations only has several pitfalls. We run the risk of “deserting the field of real social struggles” by ignoring the “subjects’ capacity for cultural action” (Verschuur & Destremau, 2012, 9). The critical stance, when it fails to identify the seeds of social change present in existing initiatives, also leads, paradoxically, to a “fundamentalism of alternatives”, consisting in “[rejecting] proposals born of capitalism that nevertheless pave the way for a non-capitalist orientation and that create solidarity enclaves within the system” (de Sousa Santos & Rodriguez, 2013, 133; see also: Dacheux & Goujon, 2011, ch. 3). This is why a critical analysis needs to be combined with a utopian view that explores the potential of SE to “overcome the social and economic limitations imposed by reality” (Cattani, 2006, 653). Exploring potentialities rather than certainties echoes the epistemology of “possibilism” elaborated by Albert Hirschman (2013, Chap. 1), and his “bias for hope” (Hirschman, 1971). In particular, the modalities and range of “connections between economics and politics is limited only by the ability of social scientists to detect them” (Hirschman, 2013, 10). While dominant theories of social change are usually restricted to social regularities, Hirschman’s claim for a “passion of the possible” (ibid., 21) draws attention to the part of unexpected and even improbable change. Exploring all the forms of interactions between economics and politics opens up spaces for alternatives that may not have been imagined before. The paradigm of social innovation, which emerged in the 1980s in the face of the limitations that became evident in the narrow and deterministic conception of social change in the theories of modernization, contributes to the possibilist approach. The approach developed in particular by the Centre for Research on Social Innovation (CRISES) in Canada has drawn attention to the capacity for change of civil society actors and to the potential of solidarity and not just economic growth (Klein et al., 2014). Particular attention has been paid to non-market logics, based on the principles of reciprocity and self-sufficiency (Moualert & Nussbaumer, 2014), although the question of the relationship between solidarity and non-solidarity ethos in social innovation should not be lost sight of, as should the capacity of local initiatives to trigger a transformation of social relations (Hillenkamp, 2018). These questions have been explored in depth in recent literature on transformative social innovation

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which studies the complex relationships between social innovation and transformation at different levels, in relation to empowerment processes (Avelino et al., 2019) and social movements (Callorda et al., 2020). Possibilism consists of substituting scepticism with a “sociology of absences” and a “sociology of emergences” (de Sousa Santos, 2016). The sociology of absence aims at revealing what has been produced as “non-existent” by the dominant categories of knowledge underpinned by a monocultural logic. It deconstructs this logic, by showing that it recognizes only one form of (linear) temporality, only one form of spatiality and politicization (namely scaling up), only one form of social classification and differentiation and only one form of economy (judged by its material productivity). In addition, the sociology of emergences focuses on possibilities and capacity contained in other forms of knowledge and trajectories. Possibility “has both a dimension of darkness insofar as it originates in the lived moment and is never fully visible to itself and a component of uncertainty that derives from a double want: (1) the fact that the conditions that render possibility concrete are only partially known, and (2) the fact that the conditions only exist partially” (de Sousa Santos, 2016, 183). Ultimately, a critical and possibilist epistemology involves recognizing and embracing an irreducible tension between emancipation and the gradual, hesitant and sometimes ambiguous nature of change. This stand posture is not straightforward, since it involves combining epistemological traditions which are often thought to be contradictory. These traditions pay attention, on the one hand, to subjectivities, life experiences, leeway, resistance and processes of change at the individual and collective level, and, on the other, to power dynamics and structures that are a constant source of differentiation, inequalities, exploitation and domination.

Broadening Our Approach to the Economy: Social Reproduction from a Plural Economy and Feminist Perspective We have seen in the first chapter how the concept of social reproduction can help us broaden our understanding of the capitalist economy, explaining how the latter relies on the articulation with the domestic economy to increase its prosperity. Some Latin American theorizations of

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solidarity economy, situated within heterodox Marxist conceptual framework, have discussed the possibilities of solidarity economy as a mode of production that would not be subordinated to capitalism. This leads us to the central question of how to identify the conditions of possibility of this non-subordination to capitalism, through a different articulation of social relations of production. Karl Polanyi’s substantive approach to the economy, revisited by feminist readings (Benería, 1998), offers some leads. By recognizing four economic principles—the market, redistribution, reciprocity and householding—Karl Polanyi’s substantive approach to the economy opens up a pluralistic view of the many ways to “practice the economy” (Polanyi, 1983, Chapter 4). These four principles, called by Polanyi “principles of economic integration”, describe how economic institutions and practices are integrated into social relations. Each is supported by specific institutional patterns: the pattern of centrality in the case of redistribution and of symmetry in the case of reciprocity; the market is based on the meeting of a group of supply and a group of demand; and householding obeys particularly to the logic of autarchy in “closed” groups, such as domestic groups or others. This fourth principle, which disappeared from several texts of Polanyi after The Great Transformation, is essential for understanding how the organization of the economy integrates social reproduction (Hillenkamp, 2013). In order to analyse the plurality of the economy in a nuanced way, it is necessary to consider that the principles are not embodied in the institutions in a pure way. The principles are ideal-types or abstract models. The institutions are concrete sets of historically and socially installed norms that guide practices. Institutions are permeated by various principles, which create tensions and even contradictions within them. Households, for example, do not obey solely to householding as a principle of economic integration, but are submitted to some degree to market logics, to forms of redistribution, particularly through social policies, and in certain cases to obligations of reciprocity, typically in communities or in mutual aid networks. SE represents the possibility to democratize the social relations that underlie the principles of economic integration. Moving away from a common interpretation of Polanyi’s principles as simple forms of exchange, we consider them, in line with Servet (2014), as ideal–typical forms of interdependence, of which certain modalities correspond to solidarity relations, that is to say to voluntarily consented interdependences of

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egalitarian type. In this theoretical approach, none of the four principles is by nature solidarity-based, but each one entails solidarity and democratic modalities. The construction of the solidarity economy represents the dispute for a more democratic and solidarity-based organization of the reproduction of life, which takes place both in the sphere of families and communities, in those organizations directed towards production and the market, and in the sphere of social policies and the relationship with the state (Hillenkamp, 2019). This approach is meaningfully informed by critical feminist studies, which have deconstructed the dominant categories of economic knowledge by denouncing their gendered, hierarchical and normative nature, as well as the blind spots and the inequalities that result from them. While there are various schools of feminist economic thought (and differences), several elements may be retained for our purpose. As mentioned in Chapter 2, feminist scholars showed that domestic labour, whose value and social utility are invisibilized, is indeed work (Benería, 1998; Combes & Devreux, 1992; Delphy, 1970; Esquivel, 2012). They explained how the separation between production and social reproduction was introduced with the capitalist mode of production. They also highlighted how maintaining domestic social relations of production actually feeds capitalist accumulation (Federici, 2002; Meillassoux, 1975, 1984; Pérez Orozco, 2014; Verschuur, 1986). In addition, feminist anthropologists have deconstructed the concept of “reciprocity”, showing its role in the construction and hierarchization of masculinities and femininities, as well as other forms of social differentiation (Strathern, 1988; Weiner, 1976, 1980). Post- and decolonial feminist scholars have further deconstructed the category of “woman”, showing how gender is intertwined with class, race, caste, religion, sexual preference and other belongings (Lucas dos Santos, 2016; Viveros, 2015, 2019). They deconstructed the idea of emancipation, denouncing the narrow, arbitrary and normative definitions of autonomy and wage labour in some Western feminist currents (Mohanty, 1984, 2003; Spivak, 2003; Verschuur & Destremau, 2012). Feminist development studies have also denounced the “triple role” of subaltern women, who combine (re)productive work in their families and communities and the management of the commons (Anderson, 1992; Kabeer, 1994). They have shown the ambiguities and in many cases the limits of so-called development policies aimed at supporting these women’s collectives by inserting them into the market,

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without properly considering their impact on non-market economic practices (Cornwall et al., 2007). In the name of emancipation, these policies often resulted in exploitation, dispossession and a new form of co-opting unpaid labour force (Molyneux, 2007). In other words, feminist studies have widened the spectrum of oppression and empowerment to a range of economic principles and contributed to revisiting the reading of plural economy. A decisive contribution of these studies is to show that it would be wrong to idealize “embeddedness”, through which market principles are subordinated to non-market principles (reciprocity, redistribution and householding), given that the latter may also operate under oppressive conditions. It would also be a mistake to vilify disembeddedness, since the market can also be a vector of emancipation (Fraser, 2013). The concepts of “market”, “state”, “community” and “household” are often fetishized, understood abstractly as normative institutions that generalize and caricature their presumed character (regarded as either alienating or emancipatory, depending on the school of thought) prohibiting any empirical investigation. Yet none of them ever operates in isolation and none of them never represents purely any economic principle. Each institution is permeated by varying configurations of the four economic principles. It is precisely the extent to which the institutions and the ever-mixed principles that underlie them are submitted to the principles of democracy and equality that defines the more or less oppressive or liberating dimension of economic activities.

Solidarity Economy as Reorganization of Social Reproduction: Avenues Opened up by the Case Studies Based on this broad approach to the economy, we identify in the case studies presented in this book and in some other examples in the literature different modalities by which SE initiatives are concretely reshaping social reproduction relationships in a more egalitarian and sustainable way. These learnings deserve to be integrated into the analytical framework of this book.

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A Precondition: Overcoming the Separation Between “Reproduction” and “Production” Overcoming the separation between “reproduction” and “production” as well as the articulation between the domestic and capitalist economies is a precondition to reorganizing social reproduction in solidarity-based initiatives. As we have seen in Chapter 2, it is exactly by maintaining this articulation that the global system reproduces itself, largely based on the exploitation of subaltern women’s labour. Echoing other women workers’ initiatives in various parts of the world (Kabeer, 2008; Kabeer et al., 2013), specific forms of female unionism in Tamil Nadu presented in this book (Chapter 4) show that improving women’s livelihood necessarily requires an approach to the economy not limited to monetary production, but encompassing the various facets of social reproduction. The ultimate goal of these unions was to improve the working conditions of women workers in the informal economy. But unions’ leaders were quick to understand that this improvement requires first and foremost “taking up issues such as potholes in roads, open drains, the intermixing of drinking water and sewage, garbage heaps on public streets that grew by the day and street lights that did not work”, which are left aside by a narrow approach to the economy limited to the sector producing direct monetary value. Conversely, the case of Bolivian producers’ associations confirms that a “productive” bias severely limits their potential for action (Chapter 6). This case study shows the weight of local institutions that perpetuate the perception of social reproduction as a private issue, separate from supposedly “real production” or “real economy”, and to be solved through women’s work at the household level. The case study shows that while mixed producers associations (men and women) in the agriculture and livestock sector enhance the value of production through specialization, quality improvement, the centralization of products and collective sales, they remain alien to the issues of work at home and for social reproduction. By contrast, female-only associations, in the sectors of bakery, greenhouses and handicrafts, help women breaking isolation and generating a space of conviviality, close solidarity and moral support, but they do not automatically question the privatization of social reproduction issues, nor do they generate common forms of management of social

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reproduction. Time constraints and distance, but also the lack of conception of oneself as a worker and subject of rights are important limiting factors. Communalizing Social Reproduction The expansion of capitalism today is still based on the separation of producers from their means of (re)production. The global economy relies on a major restructuring of social reproduction, with continuing dispossession, offensives against subsistence agriculture and huge migration of workers. Sharing this analysis, philosopher Federici proposes a politics of the commons and commoning as the foundation of new forms of social reproduction (Federici, 2002, 2011). Moving away from any essentialist approach, in particular a positivist understanding of common goods, based on their presumed intrinsic qualities (see also: Dardot & Laval, 2014), she defends a political approach, geared towards the process of building commons from the emergence of political subjects and of communities understood through “a quality of relations, a principle of cooperation and of responsibility to each other and to the earth, the forests, the seas, the animals” (Federici, 2011, 7). Communalization represents a first modality of reorganizing social reproduction relationships in a more equitable and sustainable way that can be observed in this book through the examples of child-care community centres in marginalized urban neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires (Chapter 8) and of women fish-sellers association in Udupi, India (Chapter 9). In Udupi (Karnataka, India), women fish-sellers have created an association in order to protect themselves against the competition from supermarkets. At the same time, the association has collectivized some aspects of social reproduction, through internal microcredit, medical insurance and mutual support for child-care. In Buenos Aires, child-care (education, recreation, nutrition) is achieved collectively by community centres. This allows to share the work of social reproduction and to revalue it, both materially and symbolically. Collectivization allows for the “de-familialization and de-commodification” of “child-care in a structural way” (Chapter 8). Food preparation in collective kitchens is another example of communalization. Examples from South America and West Africa in the literature show how these experiences have contributed to food security and to relieve women of some of their domestic work (Anderson, 2015; Angulo,

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2011; Ndoye, 2014). Meal preparation is often time consuming for different reasons, namely little or no equipment combined with culinary traditions that call for lengthy preparation and cooking times. Collective kitchen allows women to save time and money and is sometimes connected to an effort to use short circuits to achieve food sovereignty at a local level, as is the case in Senegal (Ndoye, 2014). Engaging for the Sustainable Reproduction of Life When women’s livelihood depends upon the broader reproduction of human and non-human life, the reorganization of social reproduction forces them to engage into the preservation of the broader reproduction of life, including the necessary natural resources. The feminist critique (Carrasco & Tello, 2012; Peréz-Orozco, 2014) here intersects with the ecological critique of the capitalist mode of production: capitalism cannot function without social reproduction work, which it nevertheless devalues at the risk of destroying it; nor can it function without the extraction of “natural” resources (energy and materials) and the production of waste, for which it intends neither to pay the price nor to respect the limits (Herrero, 2016). In this sense, the labour/capital conflict must be extended to the broader life/capital conflict (Osório-Cabrera, 2016). This second modality of reorganization of social reproduction is illustrated in this book through the case studies in Chengalpattu (Tamil Nadu, India, Chapter 5) and in Vale do Ribeira (Brazil, Chapter 10), where the unsustainability of the reproduction of life was a starting point of womenled SE initiatives. In both cases, women’s primary objective was to defend their livelihood, but they quickly realized that this meant first and foremost fighting against massive extractivism (sand, forest) by private capital, often in complicity with the state. In Vale do Ribeira, the defence of livelihoods has also meant the need for women farmers and their communities to oppose measures to evict local populations from protected areas established by the state, demonstrating their contribution to the sustainable reproduction of forest ecosystems. Alternative Modes of Appropriation of Work Thirdly, the reorganization of social reproduction means alternative modes of appropriation of work, which in turn require a revaluation of women’s work (see Chapter 2). Rejecting the exploitation of women’s labour

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in the domestic economy and/or its underpayment in the capitalist mode of production implies a broader and richer vision of economic value, including use values, as feminist scholars have shown. How should producing food in family gardens, selling fresh fish, child-care of domestic work be valued? In Vale do Ribeira (Brazil), the feminist NGO SOF who accompanies peasant women involved in agroecology set up an accounting system aimed at quantifying and therefore valuing women’s production. This system, which had been proposed by the Women’s Group of the Brazilian National Agroecological Network, includes not only the sold production but also what is self-consumed, given and bartered, which until then had been invisible because it is not monetarized nor marketed. It turned out that “family consumption accounted for 51% of the total number of records in the notebooks and 28% of total production when assigned a monetary value” (Chapter 10). The calculation of the monetary equivalent of women’s production has greatly contributed to taking it out of the invisibility of domestic work. Combined with the NGO’s construction of new sales opportunities, in particular through a network of responsible consumers in São Paulo, this has served to change the way in which women farmers value and reconsider their work. The case of women fish-sellers in Udupi (India) can serve as a counterexample (Chapter 9). By creating an association in order to protect themselves from competition from private capital, women managed to retain a monopoly on the sale of fish, and this is a remarkable result. But by perceiving their activity of selling fish as an extension of their domestic tasks, and not as a productive activity per se, women fail to gain a fair monetary recognition for the value of their work, remaining underpaid and confined to a subsistence activity. As a consequence, with few exceptions, they remain excluded from a wide range of services and measures that would enable them to develop their trade on a larger scale. As mentioned already, the valuation of work through its quantification is an old claim of feminism, from the pioneering critics of national accounting ignoring unpaid and domestic work to more recent forms of quantification of women’s time through time-use surveys. What SE initiatives add is visibility and value in their daily lives for the women themselves. The revaluation of social reproduction does not only mean quantification. It can also take symbolic forms, and this has been observed in various case studies. In Tamil Nadu’s women’s Unions, where all activities are manual labour, historically denigrated in a caste society, “the first challenge before the unions was to make the woman self-identify as a worker a sense of

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pride and to recognize that it was a positive identity that gave her independence. […] In defending women’s wages, skilling women workers, building their self-confidence so that they may negotiate better in job markets and persuading them to embrace (manual) work-derived identities, these organizations strongly resisted the devaluation of women’s productive work and forced all social actors—middle class employers of domestic workers, construction site engineers and contractors and the women workers themselves, to re-evaluate women’s work or, at least, not to take for granted women’s contribution to economic production” (Chapter 4). In the community care centres in Buenos Aires, a large part of the collective’s efforts is precisely to raise the profile of care work and to encourage women’s perception that it is “real work”. This requires “reviewing the hegemonic perspective that defines nutrition, affective support and education as assistance” instead of work (Chapter 8). In other words, in addition to quantifying the monetary equivalent of reproductive activities, it is necessary to underscore their social and symbolic value. The reproduction of life is no longer seen as a constraint but as an end in itself. Beyond the case studies of the book, the valuation of reproduction as an end in itself echoes various initiatives of “local feminism” observed in different parts of the world. In these initiatives, the goal is not to accumulate, but to carry out activities that “reproduce, at the societal level, social bonds, material sustenance and, more generally, a common space of life” (Degavre, 2011, 82). The action research group Community Economies, initiated by Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham,1 pursues a similar objective. This network of researchers shares a common view that economies have untapped resources and forms of work that are too often hidden, disqualified or rejected by the dominant, monocultural, capital-centric thinking. Echoing the “hermeneutic of emergences” (de Sousa Santos, 2016), Community Economies advocate to end up with the standard criteria usually handled to map local “needs”, including through participatory tools. By focusing on “gaps” and “failures” (poverty, unemployment, low human capital, low productivity, etc.), they contribute to maintaining the perception of the non-existence of local resources and value. A counter approach consists in identifying the entire set of assets and social relations that make up local economies, and this in turn reveals the plurality of valid economic logics and entanglement of

1 See http://communityeconomies.org/.

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forms of interdependencies in the Polanyian sense. In a second stage, this network proposes to identify ways of valuing the assets and social relations that contribute to individual and collective well-being, that redistribute material, social and cultural surplus and that build and maintain the commons (Gibson-Graham, 2005; see also Federici, 2010). Finally, alternative modes of appropriation of work can be achieved through collective negotiation with employers, which involves both quantitative and symbolic dimensions, as the examples of the unionization of domestic workers in Kerala (Chapter 7) and of unskilled informal workers in the domestic and construction sector in Tamil Nadu (Chapter 4) illustrate. In SEWA Kerala, domestic work at third parties’ homes remains performed individually, but the union offers a common platform providing skill training, placement services and spaces in which women can “learn, understand and share socio-economic and political issues and ideas”. These platforms can be considered as “feminist” spaces insofar as they “allow women to exercise a role that is not strictly reproductive or familial […] and shared interests of women may result in a “voluntary community” (Chapter 7). Similarly, in women-led Unions in Tamil Nadu, “the aim was for the worker to go beyond her individual relationship with her employer and grasp the principles of collective bargaining” (Chapter 4). Building a Plural Economy, Geared Towards Democracy and Equality A fourth type of process related to the potential of SE initiatives to reorganize social reproduction in a fairer and more sustainable way is based on spaces of plural economy where the four principles of reciprocity, redistribution, householding and the market are present and subjected to the principles of democracy and equality. Organizing social reproduction through non-domestic and capitalist relationships can be facilitated by the subsidization by the state of social reproduction costs, at least partially. In child-care community centres in Buenos Aires, the remuneration of care work is based on a mix of market price, unpaid work and state subsidies, though the latter are still highly insufficient (Chapter 8). In Tamil Nadu, by “forcing the state to subsidize the reproductive costs of their families [education scholarships, health care, social security (old age and disability pensions), marriages and funerals], women-led Unions have challenged patriarchal assumptions in the public and private spheres and exposed the interdependence of productive and reproductive spheres” (Chapter 4). In Brazil, the network of women farmers has grown as a

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result of the federal government’s technical assistance policy implemented by the feminist NGO SOF, as well as public procurement of family farming’s agricultural products. Smaller subsidies at the municipal level, such as the provision of a truck for deliveries, have also made it possible to meet specific needs. At the same time, significant support from civil society has developed, for example through the network of responsible consumer groups in São Paulo. The refinancing of the supporting NGO—SOF—by non-state donors has made it possible to overcome the halt in policies supporting family farming and agroecology under the ultraliberal government of Jair Bolsonaro. Relations of reciprocal exchange are combined with the redistribution of various types of resources. More broadly, all initiatives described in this book devote part of their time and energy to support women in their quest for accessing various forms of governmental redistribution schemes that cover part of their social reproduction costs. At the same time, market relations are continued. Whether they are domestic workers, manual workers, agricultural or handicraft producers, fish-sellers or child-care workers, women trade their work and products on some markets. For women fish-sellers, selling their fish in a marketplace is a source of autonomy and liberation from the traditional forms of caste interdependence that forced them to exchange their fish for other services (Chapter 9). For care-workers, charging for child-care is also a way of making it a “true work” (Chapter 8). But these market relations articulate with other forms of interdependence that allow the women to get a better price (either through collective bargaining or subsidization) and to enjoy various forms of protection, whether by the state or by their own collectives through reciprocal relations. As mentioned in Chapter 2, solidarity is defined in this book as inclusive and egalitarian voluntary relations of interdependence. If social reproduction is to be politicized, it is precisely the subordination of the principles of interdependence to those of democracy and equality that can pave the way. In summary, our case studies, analysed from the perspective of plural economy and feminist literature, reveal four types of processes through which SE initiatives can offer spaces of resistance to both domestic and capitalist economies and to women’s subordination, starting from the precondition of rejecting the separation between production and social reproduction. Firstly, creating spaces of resistance and sustainability by communalizing social reproduction work. Secondly, extending action and reflection on social reproduction to the reproduction of life, both human and non-human, and of broader ecosystems, as this is indispensable for

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the overall sustainability of the spaces and processes that are being created. Thirdly, valuing, both monetarily and symbolically, the whole issue of social reproduction. Finally, we argue that, if the initiatives succeed to build social relations that are neither domestic nor capitalist, it is because they articulate the principles of reciprocity, redistribution, householding and the market, and subject them to the principles of democracy and equality, questioning subordination based on gender and other forms of unequal power. These different types of processes are, of course, neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. They are also tightly linked to the building of political awareness, will and capacities for constructing feminist and solidarity-driven social changes.

Politicizing Social Reproduction: Public Action from Autonomous to Instituted Spaces Political thought, just like economics, has been the victim of normative and biased gendered categories, based on restraining the concepts of “public” and “private” that mask the complexity of daily practices and forms of engagement, particularly those of subaltern women. Under the dominant thinking, public debate and political action are considered only possible by separating so-called “private” interests, whether in the domestic or market sphere (Waller & Jennings, 1991), from “public” ones. Feminist historians, social scientists and activists have countered these dichotomies and redeemed various forms of political commitment, showing that it is often women’s domestic responsibilities that lead them to engage in political mobilizations (see, for example, Tilly, 1978), as well as their denial of sexual and reproductive rights or threats and violations at the domestic level. This has led to the feminist statement reaffirmed since the early 1960s that “the personal is political”. Care theorists later claimed that care—including emotional care—is both universal (all of us, whoever we are, need emotional care, recognition, affection and love) and political. Under this broader conception, where politics is no longer a standalone field, but one that is inseparable from the private sphere and that encompasses multifarious practices, the highly political nature of SE initiatives becomes obvious, including those led by women. In line with previous research, what is observed in the various cases studies can be termed a “cultural reinvention of politics”: these initiatives are not intended to

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overthrow the patriarchal nor the capitalist system, but present themselves as “places where the subjects (women and men) construct solutions and blueprints of new relations between men and women, within this territory, without waiting for longer” (Verschuur, 2005, 52). Politicization happens at multiple levels: from the creation of microand local deliberative spaces that are essential to identifying aspirations and priorities and building modes of action, to attempts to get the attention of municipal, regional, national and international decision-making bodies.2 Far from being distinctly hierarchical, these levels interact with each other. The global is not only shaped by the local but may not take place without the local. Politicization also takes many forms, ranging from public negotiations and dialogue to more radical forms of protest. Local Deliberative Spaces and Lifeworlds At the very local level, the cases studies of Vale do Ribeira and women-led Unions in Tamil Nadu underline the embeddedness of women’s initiatives into women’s “lifeworlds” (Chapters 4 and 10). The concept of lifeworld (Habermas, 1997) certainly applies to other case studies. Whatever the contexts, women’s lifeworlds are characterized by the burden of social reproduction tasks, by continuous violence, within their household, their neighbourhood and sometimes with employers. Depending upon local gender norms, women’s lifeworlds are characterized by an intense control over their bodies and sexuality. But women’s lifeworlds are also marked by specific material and emotional relations to trees, plants, insects and animals (Vale do Ribeira, Chapter 10) and to land and water (Chengalpattu, Chapter 5). Women’s lifeworlds may be affected by anxiety but also anger, which may prove instrumental in fuelling the willingness to struggle (Chengalpattu, Chapter 5). They may also be marked by gratitude to committed leaders and empathy towards companions in misfortune, and this proves instrumental in shaping mobilization and solidarity (Chapter 8, Buenos Aires, Chapter 4, Tamil Nadu, Chapter 9, Udupi, Chapter 7, Kerala, Chapter 10, Brazil). Whatever the context, the participation in local and autonomous spaces of discussion in which women share similar lifeworlds allows them to express themselves, share their experiences and sometimes take collective decisions, adapted to local 2 This echoes our previous work on women’s collectives. See, for example, Guérin (2003), Guerin et al. (2011), Verschuur et al. (2015).

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aspirations and constraints. It is through these local spaces that internal differentiations can be, not dismissed, but at least weakened and possibly discussed and debated. It is also through these local spaces that the transformation of values and meaning of work and social reproduction may occur and furthermore, their publicization and transformation into public action. In the monthly vanithavedi meetings of SEWA Kerala, women “debate, discuss and resolve issues starting from the household conflict to employer’s behaviour and from sexual exploitation of children to violence against women” (Chapter 7). In Tamil women-led Unions, in area meetings, “people bring up their issues, be it violence or sanitation. Then we [union leaders] explore how this can be dealt with and find strategies to resolve them”. And it is through “the collective deliberation processes [that] women’s identity formation as workers deserving of dignity, respect and social recognition takes place” (Chapter 4). Similarly, female-only associations in Batallas, Bolivia, provide spaces where the women can build “a collective identity (…), reversing the imaginary of individual stories without connection with each other”. These associations constitute both spaces of production and income generation and spaces of sociability which “enable them to express, sometimes for the first time, problems such as domestic violence and the fear of being abandoned by one’s husband and not being able to feed one’s family” (Chapter 6). In community child-care centres in Buenos Aires, the issue of care-work itself “is part of a permanent deliberative exercise. They do not care because they are obliged to do so; they do it as a decision that is planned as a group”. And here too, it is through these deliberative processes that transformations in the self-assessment of the value of their work occur, when women “changed the way they consider themselves from “caring mothers” to “educators or community workers” (Chapter 8). In Chengalpattu, it is the women themselves who requested the NGO to address the issue of land and water depletion. This awareness was already there. But it was through an ongoing dialogue with the NGO that strategies were developed. Apart from specific meetings devoted to debates, evening classes, training sessions and informal discussions were crucial in these local deliberative processes (Chapter 5). In Udupi, the association of women fish-sellers meets monthly and these meeting lead to various outcomes. Managing tensions and conflicts is one, and this not only vis-a-vis men, but also among women themselves, since women fish-sellers have very diverse profile, whether in terms of caste or class. Another outcome is to strengthen “the political consciousness amongst

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women of the threats they face from other players” (Chapter 9). In Brazil too, the construction of a network of local women farmers’ groups has meant simultaneously to learn through debate and deliberation to manage differences and daily difficulties and to Instituted Spaces for Public and Political Action The very fact that women share and debate collectively issues and challenges that they had been thinking up to now as a private matter is a first and decisive form of politicization (see also Narayan, 1997). These autonomous local spaces then connect with instituted spaces of debate and negotiation at a broader level that allow women to engage in public and political action. Women-led workers’ Unions in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, often in coordination with other Unions, involve in continuous efforts of lobbying to get and institutionalize various forms of social protection (Chapters 4 and 7). In Tamil Nadu, women-led Unions contributed actively to the adoption of the Manual Workers Act (1982) and the formation of the Construction Workers Welfare Board (1994). In Kerala, women obtained in 2011 the creation of a domestic workers’ welfare scheme which ensures pension, social security and minimum wage. Public action also involves negotiation with employers regarding amounts and modalities of wage payment and resistance against evictions of street lenders. In Udupi (Karnataka, India), the women fish-seller association managed to get a “government order” by the District Commissioner to suspend licences to any new fresh fish outlet in the district, allowing them to retain the monopoly on the grounds of the quality of their fresh fish (Chapter 9). In the Vale do Ribeira, Brazil, a network of women farmers, with the help of the feminist NGO SOF, negotiated in a very practical way for the recognition of women’s agricultural work at the municipal level: by asking for the granting of a communal plot of land to enable a group of landless women to cultivate and for the provision of a truck to transport their products (Chapter 10). These requests do not challenge the gender bias of municipal policies head-on, but they are changing them in practice. In Buenos Aires, community care centres are subsidized by the state and are in constant negotiation to increase state support so that women care-workers are paid at a fair price (Chapter 8). In Chengalpattu (Tamil Nadu, India), a network of women agricultural labourers, with the help

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of the NGO GUIDE, and in coordination with many other associations and movements, obtained that the extraction of sand is now regulated by the state (Chapter 5). The valuation and quantification of social reproduction work can be an effective tool of political negotiation. To convince the state of the extent of environmental degradation, the NGO GUIDE got the support of experts to quantify precisely soil erosion and the drying up of the water table. Examples in other fields of social reproduction can be given as additional illustrations. In Senegal, in the early 2000s, women involved in “restaurants de quartier” (neighbourhood restaurants) were fighting to avoid eviction in a context that discourages any sort of street-vending activities. Calculating their monetary contribution to the local economy has been a way to assert their right to exist as economic and political actors (Ndoye, 2014). Putting a price on activities is also relevant for degrading, yet essential tasks such as waste collection. In the city of Pune, India, a union of women waste pickers built its reputation on valuing this type of work, vis-à-vis the workers themselves—members of the lowest social class and caste and fully convinced of the “dirtiness” of their status—and the public authorities. By calculating the monetary equivalent of their work, the union showed how much the municipality was saving on waste treatment (US$ 330,000 a year with each worker giving the equivalent of $5/month in free labour). Others have calculated the extent to which the waste pickers contribute to the local economy, by indirect financing of the recycling process and energy gains compared to mechanized collection methods (Narayan & Chikarmane, 2013). Of course, the politicization of social reproduction is far from being a straightforward process. In the debates on gender equality—like in the sustainable development goals—the need to recognizing, redistributing, reducing and revaluing and the right to care are present. However, the question of how to politicize these claims remains absent and is too often seen as a technical policy issue and not as a political one. By contrast, the case study of community care centres in Buenos Aires highlights two key conditions for such politicization to take place: the collective organization of care work and the connexion with the Argentinian feminist movement, which together lead the members of these centres to recognize themselves as workers, producers of social value and worthy of public recognition and support (Chapter 8). When women don’t recognize themselves as workers and right-holders, this is particularly challenging, as the case study in Batallas, Bolivia, recalls (Chapter 6). In Udupi, women fish-sellers

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now recognize themselves as right-holders, but not as workers and this prevents them to claim their right to social protection (Chapter 9). Strategic alliances with various forms of organizations, institutions, networks and social movements are of course key to sustain the capacities of local initiatives to promote institutional change. But the choices and possibilities of alliance are never given in advance. They depend upon specific historical and political configurations. As a consequence, their understanding must necessarily be historicized and contextualized. The same goes for the range of possible claims. Feminist movements are important allies, as the Argentina and Brazilian, or the Tamil Nadu and Kerala cases show. But the feminist movement is heterogeneous, and hegemonic forms of feminism, even at the national level, often bourgeois, urban-based, are not always in tune with local and popular feminisms or women’s movements. In certain political configurations, the alliance with political parties, most often male-dominated, is unavoidable. Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Bolivia are good examples. Refusing such alliances necessarily limits progress, while preserving women’s autonomy (Chapter 7, Kerala), or confines women’s action to claims of limited ambition (Chapter 9, Udupi). Alliances with men are also highly strategic. Looking at various forms of women-led collectives and the permanent threat of capture and recuperation by external male-dominated entities, Maxine Molyneux came to the following conclusion: there is a need to promote and secure independent spaces where women can define their own priorities and strategies without external intrusions, and only then linkages with broader struggles can be considered (Molyneux, 2007, 394). This has also been observed in this book, and here too the link to broader struggles takes varied forms, which depend upon both the nature of the claims and the intensity of patriarchal norms. Some initiatives get male support. This support may be explicit, as in the case of women fish vendors in Udupi through the help of the dominant political party in the sub-region (Chapter 9). This support can also be implicit: men do not participate openly, while supporting indirectly women’s claims insofar they do not prevent them from taking action, as observed for women agricultural workers fighting against illegal sand extraction in Chengalpattu (Chapter 5). In these two case studies, this tactical alliance is the only way for women to achieve their goal. But this in turn implies that there is no—or limited—questioning of gender inequalities, even though these inequalities are part of the problem they are trying to solve. Women are well aware of this, but

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solving part of the problem seems more rational to them than solving nothing at all. Relationships with men can also take the form of dialogue and discussion within spaces of negotiation with authorities and institutions, as observed in other case studies. This is an ongoing challenge. Women are sometimes accepted only as wives or daughters of political leaders (Chapter 4, Tamil Nadu, and Chapter 6, Bolivia).

Conclusions: Feminist Solidarity Economy Through a Critical and Possibilist Lens Appreciating the real subversive and emancipatory value of SE from a feminist perspective requires an adequate framework. Combining a critical and possibilist epistemology allows to highlight the unsuspected potential of SE, without losing sight of social and power relationships. Far from being isolated and ephemeral experiences, SE practices contribute to rethinking and transforming the very notion of economy. This new conceptualization is no longer limited to the production or allocation of resources; it includes social reproduction defined as all the relationships, institutions and activities necessary for the reproduction and maintenance of life, now and for the future generations. SE initiatives are concrete actions that may associate decision-making with discussion, mobilization, resistance and, eventually, institutional change—thereby helping to rethink politics and politicizing the issue of social reproduction. As such, they address the long-lasting concerns of some feminist movements, convinced that the patriarchal struggle requires revisiting the very nature of economics and politics (see also Chapter 12), as well as the fundamental heterogeneity of women’s aspirations and constraints. Is it possible to determine the conditions needed for a feminist solidarity economy and the challenges they face? The final chapter with our concluding thoughts will come back to a number of common trends. At this stage, it is worth mentioning very broad conditions. Some women, especially the most marginalized, can and want to (re)appropriate their own destiny and decide by themselves their priorities and forms of action; this is an essential condition, one which implies accepting the indivisibility of action and deliberation. In line with our epistemological posture, another aspect is worth mentioning: considering that there is a radical discontinuity between emancipatory alternatives and oppressive practices and sources of exploitation is illusory. Many women are experimenting new ways of thinking and doing, while contributing to broader social

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dynamics they do not always control. In this process, paths of resistance to both domestic and capitalist economies are emerging, which are in fact concrete illustrations of a number of ancient feminist claims: discarding the division between “production” and “reproduction”, alleviating the unequal sexual division of labour, moving towards the communalization of social reproduction while continuing the pressure to the state to fulfil its responsibilities, claiming for the valuation of women’s work, both monetarily and symbolically, and an extension to a broader vision of life, both human and non-human. If the initiatives succeed to create social relations that are neither domestic nor capitalist, it is because they articulate the principles of reciprocity, redistribution, householding and the market, and subject them to the principles of democracy and equality, contesting subaltern women’s subordination. These plural configurations are indeed unstable, first and foremost because they are often rooted in structural asymmetries that reflect and crystallize affiliations of gender but also class, race, caste, location, life cycle, etc., and this at various scales. Due to the continuous adaptation to contexts that are both unique and changing, the forms and motivations for struggle are a succession of steps forward and backward, in which the outcome is often unpredictable, as observed in other forms of women’s mobilization (Kabeer et al., 2013). Balancing various forms of economic interdependency is an ongoing process that never ends. This may give a feeling of incompleteness and “permanent experimentation” (Hersent, 2014) or “structural indeterminacy” (Gibson-Graham, 2014). But these features are the very conditions of existence of these initiatives. The following chapters of this book, based on in-depth empirical investigations of seven initiatives from various parts of India and Latin America, describe and analyse the trajectory of these initiatives, their achievements and the obstacles they face. They show the difficult paths for change, in a context of global financial capitalism and deep crises of social reproduction. They show that while resisting the growing expansion of capitalism and the pervasive place of domestic economies, rethinking and reorganizing social reproduction is a perilous, fragile and ambivalent exercise. But they also show that new imaginaries, new social relations, new forms of organizations and new institutions are possible.

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Verschuur, Ch. (2012). Raccommodages de la pauvreté ou engagements féministes dans les quartiers populaires de San Cayetano et Gamboa en Amérique latine. Autrepart, 61, 175–190. Verschuur, Ch. (2005). Mouvements de base, genre et justice sociale, réinvention culturelle du politique, In F. Hainard & Ch. Verschuur (Eds.), Mouvements de quartier et environnements urbains, La prise de pouvoir des femmes dans les pays du Sud et de l’Est (pp. 49–83). Karthala – ENDA Diapol. Verschuur, Ch. e.a. (1986). Mozambique, dix ans de solitude. L’Harmattan. Verschuur, Ch., & Destremau, B. (2012). Féminismes Décoloniaux, Genre et Développement. Revue Tiers Monde (no. 1: 7–18). Armand Colin. Verschuur, Ch., Guérin, I., & Hillenkamp, I. (Eds.). (2015). Une économie solidaire peut-elle être féministe? Homo oeconomicus, mulier solidaria. Coll. Rencontres. Genre et développement. L’Harmattan. Viveros Vigoya, M. (2019. Etudes décoloniales et intersectionalité dans une perspective féministe latino-américaine. In Ch. Verschuur (Dir.), Savoirs féministes au Sud. Expertes en genre et tournant décolonial. Cahiers genre et développement (n°11, pp. 53–73). L’Harmattan. Viveros, V. M. (2015). L’intersectionnalité au prisme du féminisme latinoaméricain. Raisons politiques, 2, 39–54. Waller, W., & Jennings, A. (1991). A feminist institutionalist reconsideration of Karl Polanyi. Journal of Economic Issues, 25(2), 485–497. Weiner, A. (1976). Women of value, men of renown: New perspectives in trobriand exchange. University of Texas Press. Weiner, A. (1980). Reproduction: A replacement for reciprocity. American Ethnologist, 7 (1), 71–85. Ypeij, A. (2002). Ateliers collectifs: une alternative pour les femmes dans les quartiers pauvres de Lima. In Ch. Verschuur & F. Reysoo (Eds.), Genre, mondialisation et pauvreté. Coll. Cahiers genre et développement (n°3, pp. 99–105). L’Harmattan.

CHAPTER 4

Forging Solidarities: Women Workers in the Informal Sector in Tamil Nadu K. Kalpana

Living in the era of rapacious neoliberal capitalism, we bear witness to the ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey, 2003) it generates and the consequent ‘expulsion’ of large sections of the under-class—workers whose bodies are destroyed on the job and swelling numbers of the dispossessed who have lost their land, rivers and forests (Sassen, 2010). There is a hunger for change, and therefore, the idea of a solidarity economy that is not predicated on profits and hinges on more humane and egalitarian principles of organizing production, consumption and exchange offers a ray of hope in dark times. In highly stratified socioeconomic contexts marked by the interlocking inequalities of caste, class and gender, the question of what kinds of solidarity economies are possible and how they survive and sustain themselves even at a microcosmic level becomes important to investigate. Drawing on the experiences of unions / organizations that mobilize women workers

K. Kalpana (B) Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), Chennai, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1_4

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labouring in the lower rungs of the informal sector in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, this paper will address the question of what kinds of solidarity-based ties and social bonds these organizations have forged. The paper traces the processes, struggles and campaigns by which women workers organize to defend their livelihoods, constitute themselves as the subjects of rights and press claims for ‘recognition, redistribution and representation’ (Kabeer et al., 2013) vis-à-vis state actors and private employers. The paper discusses the efforts of three autonomous (non-party affiliated), grass-roots organizations in defending the livelihood rights and spaces of women workers; securing basic amenities and infrastructure in residential neighbourhoods; protecting wages and enhancing the perceived social value of women’s work; defying ‘tradition’ by upgrading the skills of women construction workers; challenging workplace sexual harassment as well as domestic abuse and violence in homes and community spaces; building women’s leadership within a mixed-sex organization; and forging solidarities across and despite caste-derived animosities and differences. The paper dwells on the tensions that complicate the unions’ efforts to build worker solidarities and the strengths and limitations of the volunteerism that drives autonomous and community-based organizations. The paper also discusses whether and how these organizations have influenced public policies on the welfare and social reproductionrelated needs of manual workers in the informal sector. In conclusion, the paper reflects on whether the grass-roots work of these organizations may be perceived as alternative ways of organizing production and social reproduction in consonance with the ideals of an egalitarian and inclusive solidarity economy.

Organizations Selected for Study and Study Methods The paper discusses the experiences of three organizations viz., (i) Tamil Nadu Kattida Thozhilalar Panchayat Sangam (Tamil Nadu Construction Workers Panchayat Union), (ii) Pennurimai Iyakkam (translated as Movement for Women’s Rights) and (iii) Penn Thozilalar Sangam (Women Workers Union). These organizations were selected for the study since they had explicitly adopted a gender equality perspective and linked the economic rights of women workers with political struggles in order to advance their rights and entitlements, as women and as workers. The

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Kattida Thozhilalar Panchayat Sangam (hereafter KTPS) has branches in 20 districts and a membership of approximately 27,000 workers all over Tamil Nadu, 30% of whom are women.1 The union emerged in 1993 from several waves of public agitation and struggles of construction workers that began in 1979 in Tamil Nadu. Pennurimai Iyakkam (hereafter PI), an autonomous, grass-roots women’s organization set up in 1977, has an occupationally diverse membership and a base in the urban slums of Chennai and rural pockets in Madurai district. R. Geetha, a founding member of PI, was also the founder of KTPS and a leading organizer of construction workers’ movements in the state since the late 1970s. Pennurimai Iyakkam and KTPS work together closely in Chennai and Madurai districts. Created in the year 2000, Penn Thozilalar Sangam (hereafter PTS) was envisioned (by its founder) as an organization that would combine feminist and trade union struggles. The majority of PTS’s members are women domestic workers and women garment workers in factories in Chennai and its adjacent districts of Thiruvallur and Kanchipuram. In terms of caste composition, the three organizations primarily consist of informally-employed manual workers from the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Most Backward Castes (MBCs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs).2 This study involved in-depth, semi-structured interviews and open-ended discussions conducted between August 2017 and August 2018 with the founding members and leading state-level organizers of all three organizations. Interviews were also held with the principal district organizer of PI and KTPS in Madurai district, a leading organizer of a local branch of PI in Pattinapakkam (a fishing hamlet in Chennai) and the coordinators of the domestic workers union of PTS. The following sections discuss the principal campaigns and struggles by which the three organizations asserted the livelihood and other social rights of their working-class women members.

1 About one-third of the construction workforce in Tamil Nadu consists of women workers (Source: Interview with R. Geetha, founding member of KTPS). 2 The Tamil Nadu government classifies caste groups as SCs, MBCs and OBCs in decreasing order of social oppression, discrimination and deprivation. Policies of affirmative action directed at these caste groups include reservations in public sector employment and higher education.

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Community as Primary Site of Mobilization For Sujata Mody, the founder of PTS, community-based organizing was a natural choice since women workers were engaged in all kinds of livelihood activities, making it difficulty to classify them on the basis of occupation-specific categories. A woman worker often shifted from construction work (when she was younger) to domestic work over the course of her life or even during the course of a working day. It was not easy to define occupation-specific boundaries for women unlike men who specialized as painters, plumbers, carpenters, masons and electricians. When unionizing domestic workers, PTS found that women often reported late to work in their middle class employers’ homes due to a delay in the arrival of the water tanker and long queues for water in their own neighbourhoods. Women domestic workers sought out the union primarily to get help for dealing with the terrible quality of basic amenities in their residential neighbourhoods. The PTS therefore consciously decided to go beyond livelihood issues and involve itself in the social organization of women based on the problems shared by all working-class women, regardless of occupational differences. In areas such as Guindy and Perungudi in Chennai, the Domestic Workers Union (PTS) built its local branches by taking up issues such as potholes in roads, open drains, the intermixing of drinking water and sewage, garbage heaps on public streets that grew by the day and street lights that did not work. The stated aim of the PTS was to focus on organizing women around shared local issues that bind communities and thereafter build the idea of a trade union gradually. KTPS met and mobilized construction workers in assembly points in villages, small towns and big cities in which they gathered to look for work and wait for the contractors who recruited them as daily wage labour. The residential neighbourhoods in which construction workers were often clustered together also served as the focal sites for KTPS organizers to meet workers. KTPS and PI organizers in Madurai participated in Grama Sabha (village assembly) meetings of the village panchayats 3 in order to make sure that all issues concerning basic amenities were placed before the

3 The village panchayat is the lowest unit of a three-tiered structure of elected local self-government in India. The Grama Sabha is the body consisting of all adults whose names are included in the electoral rolls of the village panchayat. Grama Sabha meetings are required to be held a minimum of four times in a year in Tamil Nadu.

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consideration of the village public. Directing people on what to do, where to go and whom to meet to seek redress for poor quality infrastructure was an everyday activity for all the organizations of this study. Pennurimai Iyakkam (PI) set aside a day every week (Saturday) to receive complaints at its office in Chennai and Madurai and provide counsel on area-wise problems in all the slums and villages in which it had local units. As the State President of PI Gabriele Dietrich put it, the question of which issues to prioritize for action / intervention was decided through ‘area meetings and a constant interaction with the life-worlds of women’. She explained, ‘At local meetings, people bring up their issues, be it violence or sanitation. Then we explore how this can be dealt with and find strategies to resolve them’.

Defending Territory: Interlinked Rights of Livelihood and Residence All unions’ organizers stated emphatically that for the working class, the right to reside in the city was simultaneously the right to earn a livelihood. In Chennai, PI had mobilized women and men in 72 areas (most of them urban slums) in the 1980s against eviction. It was by mobilizing urban poor communities to protest and stall evictions that PI created a strong base for its grass-roots women’s collectives in these residential areas. Since the women members of PI in Chennai and Madurai were vegetable sellers, push cart vendors, domestic workers and the owners of tiny home-based shops and food stalls, any re-location away from the city would have been disastrous to their livelihoods. PI assisted community members to approach the Chennai High Court seeking a stay order against the evictions and stood with them through the long-drawn-out and often tortuous legal process. PI was fighting 7 court cases against evictions during the period of this study. In Madurai as well, PI acted on its conviction that the right to living space, livelihoods, health care and children’s education were interlinked issues. In Chennai, PI sought and won monetary compensation through the courts in 1997 for pavement-based street vendors who had to shut shop for 15 days as part of security arrangements when the (then) Chief Minister inaugurated an indoor sports stadium around which the pavement shops were clustered. The police evicted the vendors (at least half of whom were women) several times forcing PI to intervene each time and stall the evictions. Eventually, under sustained pressure from PI, a

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vending committee was created with participation from the vendors and 131 shops were allotted to the vendors who were required to make a monthly payment to Chennai Corporation. Wherever they have a strong local base, PI ensures that Chennai Corporation and the local police adhere to a central law4 that protects street vendors against arbitrary eviction, mandates enumeration and listing of pavement vendors and the grant of tokens and allotment of shops to them.

Claiming Worker Identities with Pride The organizations endeavoured to create the consciousness among their women members that they were workers even if they did not work in factories, workshops and other formal and socially recognized workspaces. Sujata Mody (PTS) pointed out that work was stigmatized for women construction and domestic workers who, therefore, kept repeating that they worked out of need and not choice. School-going children were often ashamed of their mothers when they saw them carrying a construction worker’s tools and caked with grime and dust. Given the pervasive logic of a caste society that routinely denigrated manual labour, the first challenge before the unions was to make the woman self-identify as a worker with a sense of pride and to recognize that it was a positive identity that gave her independence. Even politically progressive trade unionists took time to come to terms with acknowledging the legitimate claims of domestic workers. The founder of the PTS said that until 2011, sympathetic male colleagues in the trade union movement would say that organizing domestic workers would give their own families a ‘headache’ and wonder if it was reasonable to ask the lower middle and middleincome classes to pay domestic workers the same wages as the upper classes. In order to meet these challenges, PTS evolved a five-module training and education for domestic workers that includes identifying as workers, raising demands vis-à-vis employers, upholding their dignity and safety and demanding affordable public transport and health care from the state. PTS believes that the women it organizes cannot be regarded as union members unless they undergo the training programme. The aim was for the worker to go beyond her individual relationship with her employer and grasp the principles of collective bargaining. 4 This is the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 (http://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/A2014-7.pdf).

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Asserting Workplace Rights: Building Bargaining Capacities and Protecting Wages In domestic work, the terms of employment are usually decided through one-on-one negotiations between the woman worker and her employers. The Domestic Workers Union of PTS builds the negotiation skills and self-worth of its women members so that they may bargain for a better deal with their middle class employers. In 2003, PTS began campaigning for a minimum wage (of Rs. 2300 per month) for domestic workers, social security benefits and the provision of subsidized housing. PTS has organized processions and women’s rallies in neighbourhoods in which domestic workers march together demanding minimum wages and social security. Every year on the 2nd of October, domestic workers strike work and participate in large numbers in a public gathering in a prominent place in the city. The demands for workplace rights put forward by PTS currently are an hourly minimum wage of Rs.50 (as opposed to the piecerate wages that workers have), Sundays off every week and an annual bonus of one month’s wage. Through its training sessions, PTS brings women domestic workers together and gives them the opportunity to get to know each other and share work and personal experiences. Union organizer Panchali described the collective deliberation processes by which women’s identity formation as workers deserving of dignity, respect and social recognition takes place. She said: In Hastinapuram (a Chennai locality), the women who worked in an apartment complex did not know each other even though they were from the same neighborhood. They would see each other, but didn’t even know each other’s names. And they didn’t talk about individual salaries either. In the training, we first get them to talk to each other, find out about each others’ families, how many children they have and so on and then their salaries. After that we talk about the union. The next step is talking about problems at the workplace. We make them talk by asking questions. Initially, they don’t admit they have problems. They usually say “We are taken care off and get paid for the work we do”. Then someone comes forward and says that she gets shouted at or the employer throws the vessels around noisily in a fit of temper when the domestic worker shows up late. Another talks about what the employer says if she takes leave. One by one the women start talking: “When we take leave and come back, we have to do all the accumulated work - nothing is done”. “Now with the mobile phone, employers start calling us”. Then they open up about their

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health issues and how employers don’t help with treatment or hospital visits. And then, we talk about sexual harassment also.

If the Domestic Workers Union (PTS) built the confidence and capacities of women to negotiate higher wages and better working conditions from their employers, an important area of intervention of KTPS was to resist short-payment or part-payment of wages of construction workers. KTPS has about 1000 members in Madurai district, with 70% members being women due to the district leadership’s conscious decision to prioritize unionizing women. In Madurai, building contractors and site engineers paid workers their wage on a weekly basis and even once in two weeks when they did not receive payment on time from the principal employer in the heavily sub-contracted construction sector. When the wage was paid once in two weeks, the amount was correspondingly large, prompting some contractors to deliberately reduce wages for women. ‘The contractor thinks - a woman after all, why must she be paid so much money?’, said Sasikala, the district secretary of KTPS in Madurai. She counselled women workers to insist on daily rather than weekly wages and work with a different contractor each day, rather than a regular contractor who was more likely to resort to delayed and part-payment of wages. On account of his gender, the President of the KTPS in Madurai could authoritatively negotiate with the male-dominated construction industry. It was his responsibility to speak to the contractors who shortchanged women workers and ensure that full wage payment was made. These interventions made it clear to contractors that the woman worker was backed by a union and could not be exploited with impunity.

Challenging Gendered Occupational Segregation: Skilling Women Workers Traditionally, all skilled works in the construction industry in Tamil Nadu such as masonry, plumbing, carpentry, bar-bending, painting, electrical work and so on have been monopolized by men of the backward castes. While the exclusion of Dalit men from skilled and higher-paid work has eroded with time, entrenched socio-cultural taboos continue to prevent women from handling the crowbar, the paintbrush and the chain saw. Young boys who enter construction work graduated from being ‘quarter-masons’ to ‘half-masons’ to fully-trained masons given time and experience. A woman worker, on the other hand, usually spent her entire

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working life in construction as an unskilled worker carrying bricks, cement and sand. Men’s monopoly over the tools of the trade and skilled labour has legitimized a significant gender wage gap in construction labour. In Madurai, a woman worker was paid Indian Rupees (INR Rs.) 450 for a day’s work (around 5 euros), while a male worker in construction was paid Rs. 650 to Rs. 700. Given its commitment to gender-transformative social change, KTPS has been concerned not only about part-payment of wages, but also the socially regressive ideologies that keep women workers perennially unskilled and significantly lower paid than men. The construction workers movement in Tamil Nadu (from which the KTPS originated) organized skill training for women workers in the late 1980s with government assistance and financial support from other sources. Although these training initiatives faced resistance among union members in the early years due to their culturally transgressive nature, intra-union discussions and debates paved the way for their acceptance. The KTPS continues to organize one-week training sessions for women workers in specific types of skilled work such as masonry and painting. Male union organizers of the older generation have sometimes turned out to be the most ardent supporters of skill training initiatives for women. Over the years, KTPS has been deeply disappointed to note that site engineers and contractors, who remain conservative and resistant to change, refused to recruit trained women workers for traditional ‘male’ work. By way of response, KTPS has recently set up a cooperative of construction workers consisting of 100 workers each from Chennai and Pondicherry. The advantage of a cooperative is that it can bypass intermediaries such as contractors and directly secure contracts from principal employers, thereafter allotting work to its members as it decides. The primary aim of KTPS in setting up the cooperative was to provide employment opportunities in skilled and higher-paid work to women workers. KTPS has also directly undertaken construction projects on a small scale in the past. When it built temporary houses in Pattinapakkam (a fishing hamlet in Chennai) after the Tsunami tidal wave wreaked havoc in December 2004, a skilled woman worker built 62 of the 180 tiny houses that were newly constructed.

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Social Protection for Informal Workers: Accessing Worker Welfare Boards From the late 1970s, construction workers in Tamil Nadu began to organize themselves and demand minimum wages, social security provisions and the formation of tripartite labour boards. Mass mobilization by construction workers across the state led by the Tamil Nadu Construction Workers Union (the predecessor of KTPS) provided the bottom-up pressure for the enactment of the Tamil Nadu Manual Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Work) Act in 1982 by the state government. Covering diverse categories of workers including construction workers, the Act formally recognized that all manual labourers must be protected by state legislation and public policy, irrespective of an employer-employee relationship. Through this Act, Tamil Nadu was the first state in India to extend state protective cover to informal workers, many of whom were self-employed or had only tenuous and unstable relationships with employers. The Act provided for the formulation of social security and welfare schemes for manual workers and the establishment of worker welfare boards to implement these schemes (PRS, n.d.). Notably, women construction workers were in the forefront of the agitations that led to the passing of the Manual Workers Act (1982) and another wave of public action in the early 1990s that eventually led to the formation of the Construction Workers Welfare Board in November 1994 (Geetha, 1996). The PTS in Tamil Nadu, along with nationwide domestic workers’ campaign groups, has pressured state governments in many parts of India to formally recognize domestic workers and include them within the ambit of state protective legislation. Currently, the Tamil Nadu government has a total of 34 industry or occupation-specific welfare boards for informal workers that include a Domestic Workers Welfare Board set up in January 2007. The welfare boards for informal workers implement the state government’s schemes for workers of both sexes such as monetary assistance in case of natural death, accident-induced death or disability and funerals of workers, monthly disability pension, old age pension, marriage assistance and education stipends for the children of workers. In addition, maternity benefits and assistance for miscarriage and medical termination of pregnancy are extended to women workers (GOTN n.d). After the creation of the boards, PTS, PI and KTPS have carried out vigorous efforts to reach out to women domestic workers, self-employed women

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workers and construction workers to facilitate their registration with the welfare boards and help them secure various types of financial assistance from the boards. KTPS organizers estimated that they spent at least half their time and energies in pursuing welfare schemes for workers from the boards, even as they continued to struggle for workplace rights such as full payment of wages and payment of accident compensation. The Manual Workers Act (1982) and the welfare boards set up to operationalize social protection measures for different categories of informally-employed manual workers may be seen as public policy initiatives that emerged in response to informal workers (of both sexes) and their unions organizing and demanding entitlements and recognition as workers from the state.

Countering Violence Against Women in Homes and Workspaces R. Geetha, founder of the KTPS, pointed out that the union had taken up more cases of sexual harassment of women workers in building / construction sites in the past. In recent years, women workers themselves have come together to put up a fight and resist harassment with the union giving them the strength to do so. Pennurimai Iyakkam had taken up several cases involving molestation of women roadside vendors by the police or customers. On a few occasions, they had summoned the offenders to their office to reprimand the men. In the experience of the domestic workers union (PTS), women were wary of admitting that they experienced sexual abuse in the homes they worked in. They did not want to report an incident or press for action even though the training sessions for all union members included a discussion of sexual harassment at the workplace and the laws that criminalized it. Women’s overriding fear was that a confrontational attitude to sexual abuse at the workplace could lead to their husbands and family members getting to know and stopping them from working and earning an income. PI and PTS intervened proactively in situations of domestic violence, abuse and family conflicts through informal mediation and holding discussions with all parties to the conflict. Pennurimai Iyakkam invited its members to visit the office (in Chennai and Madurai) every Friday to seek redress for issues such as dowry demands and related conflicts involving in-laws, neglect and abandonment by a spouse, family property and inheritance issues, etc. Whenever required, PI organizers accompanied aggrieved women to police stations. The district-level organizers of PI

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made it a point to speak to abusive men directly when they visited local areas to morally coerce them into reasonably ‘good’ behaviour at least for a period of time. In the case of domestic abuse, the organizations warned the husband and his family members responsible for the harassment and sought a legal separation only if the violence endured by the woman was excessive. Both PI and PTS organizers filed cases or approached the courts as a last resort given their limited organizational resources and women’s own preference in this matter. Leaders of the local area committees of PI also mediated and resolved domestic conflicts and marital disputes. Kalavathi, leader of PI in the Pattinapakkam fishing hamlet (Chennai), had intervened in several such cases. She described it thus: The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law fight in a family. The girl wants to divorce the husband. We must not raise a girl’s status too much or treat her as inferior to a man either. A woman may find her own freedom. One woman may fight for the freedom of another. But a woman needs a man for protection. If a woman goes out of the bounds of this protection, we must intervene to resolve the issue. It is a woman who tries to degrade another, be it a mother-in-law or daughter-in-law. I speak to both of them… I have resolved many cases this way.

As Kalavathi’s testimony suggests, gendered notions of socially acceptable behaviour on the part of young women also influenced these conflictresolution initiatives. The organizations’ interventions in domestic violence and abuse were temporary and more in the nature of fire-fighting than effective resolution of the issue. In any case, it was not clear to the women affected or their organizations what forms such a resolution could take given the very limited options and constrained support structures that women had. Gabriele Dietrich, the State President of PI, reflected on how little women’s organizations at the grass roots had actually accomplished in terms of solving problems as fundamental to women’s well-being as domestic violence. Women construction workers, many of whom were active both in PI and in KTPS, could not stop the domestic violence in their own homes. They could not walk out of their marital homes as they had contributed to building the house and it was the only property they had access to. Often they had daughters who had to be married off, making it very difficult for them to jeopardize their own marital relationships. While her comments were made in

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the specific organizational context of PI, they point to a dilemma that prevailed across women’s organizations. Sujata Mody (PTS) echoed some of these concerns when she pointed out that her organization preferred to counter domestic violence indirectly through minimum wage campaigns that focused on strengthening women’s economic independence. Since it was nearly impossible to make informally-employed men pay alimony or childcare support, women’s income-earning and a ‘living wage’ was most likely to allow women to exit conflict-ridden relationships.

Building women’s Leadership: The Challenges of Volunteerism While PI and PTS only mobilized women, KTPS unionized both men and women workers. KTPS tried to ensure that at least 2 of a total of 5 or more members in each of its 20 district committees were women. R. Geetha (KTPS) observed that men sometimes preferred to keep women out in some districts, that this was an ongoing struggle and that the leadership at the state level encouraged these struggles. The state leadership also encouraged the President and Secretary of the district committees to be ‘pro-women’ even if they were male leaders. We note that the founding member and leading organizer of KTPS was herself a woman. This furthered the acceptance of women leaders in the district units of the union in an industry as male-dominated as construction. KTPS in Madurai district had 15 area-wise branches and 15 branch coordinators, 9 of whom were women. A branch coordinator was trained to instruct members on the personal identity documents to bring when they visited the Construction Workers Welfare Board to register as members or to seek financial assistance through a scheme. She was expected to call and inform the district office that a member from her branch was visiting the Welfare Board and required assistance. Sasikala (KTPS) observed that male union members at the branch level accepted a woman coordinator since they had no other option to get their work done and the branch coordinator was the link to the district office. For branch coordinators, it appeared that the prime issue was not acceptance, but the indifference and lack of motivation of other branch members. Like the KTPS, the domestic workers union (PTS) had branch coordinators whose work and position were not full-time and yet involved some level of effort and commitment. The branch coordinator was expected to inform the union office in case there was a problem in

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the locality, fill up the union membership form of a new member, help members fill up claims forms for benefits from the Domestic Workers Welfare Board and bring the members’ forms to the union office. The full-time organizers of PTS regretted that no one wanted to be a branch coordinator because they were not paid for the work. The coordinators were frequently asked (by branch members and others) why they were doing the work without any monetary return. Sometimes they were suspected of receiving financial or other personal benefits for the voluntary tasks they performed. All these factors combined to demoralize branch coordinators. Sujata Mody (PTS) discussed the question of developing women’s leadership in trade unions and public life more broadly in the context of a larger political space that remained dangerous, violent and very difficult for women to work in. Mainstream political parties accommodated women when they were the wives and daughters of powerful men. The real challenges of a women’s trade union lay in trying to create a space where women could be leaders on their own potential. Women’s unions could not do it entirely on their own and needed the support of sympathetic allies among left-oriented trade unions. While acknowledging that left and male-dominated trade unions were patriarchal, she nevertheless argued that the patriarchies that existed in political arenas in mainstream spaces and those that operated within progressive political spaces were very different and needed to be mediated differently. Sujata Mody described the reservoirs of local support that PTS drew upon: We are supported by the husbands, brothers and other male kin of our women union members. In the early days of the union, we did not have confidence. Our activists’ husbands helped us to set up a public stage (podium) for our meetings and invited local ward councilors to our events… I consciously build these relationships. I meet the men – the elders, grandparents, husbands and parents of our women activists. I give them the full respect of being elders. We cannot fight all our battles alone...

Caste and Worker Solidarity When workers joined their respective organizations (PI, KTPS and PTS), they were told in explicit terms that identities associated with caste, religious faith and political party affiliation had no place in the organization. While the organizations publicly affirmed their faith in equal civil and

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political rights to all, the social context in which they asserted equality among castes was hardly conductive to such equality. In rural Madurai, practices of untouchability such as separate tea glasses for Dalits were not uncommon. All district organizers in Madurai (including those from the backward castes) recognized that this was very wrong since caste injustices were often discussed within the organization. The offices of all three organizations were consciously intended to be spaces devoid of the customary markers of caste segregation. Union members and leaders of all castes and both genders took their meals together in union offices. Sasikala (KTPS, Madurai) confirmed that resentment fuelled by patriarchy and caste dominance did not influence the everyday functioning of the union’s village-level branches in any discernible way. But, she cautioned, one never knew what other union members at the branch level said about local branch coordinators who were Dalit women or what they said about district-level women organizers like her ‘behind our backs’. While workers of all castes ate together at construction sites in Madurai, they returned to their caste-segregated lives and routines in their villages. Sasikala said: Among us, we are equal. But we don’t live with the workers. We visit a village once in two weeks… To an extent, I think untouchability is less than before… But we cannot say it has fully gone… When they go back to their villages, these differences erupt.

In Tamil Nadu, some political parties have politicized the issue of intercaste marriages and elopements, portraying Dalit men as deliberately wooing young women of the dominant and intermediate backward castes, the OBCs. Caste-based ‘honour’ killings in which a runaway or newlymarried couple are set upon, violently attacked and murdered by the girl’s family (usually belonging to a non-Dalit or one of the backward castes) regularly occur and feed upon this vitiated atmosphere. Reflecting on whether the larger political climate in the state had influenced their organizing strategies or the challenges they faced in the field in recent years, R.Geetha (KTPS) replied that this dynamic had not so far affected the KTPS. She added that the union encouraged intra-organizational discussions, arguments and counter-arguments on contentious issues such as inter-caste marriages. Sujata Mody (PTS) maintained that the PTS was able to build solidarity across castes and that their organizers recognized that it was Dalit women who carried out most of the manual work in the prevailing caste-based division of labour. The frontline activists of

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PTS were also aware of the limits of caste-based organizing. Dalit women leaders in the PTS were reluctant to invite representatives of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK, a political party that championed Dalit rights) to their programmes even though its local office was located right next to theirs. The women felt that local leaders of the VCK were limited in their vision with respect to gender equality and often patriarchal too. Sujata Mody spoke of the dilemmas of an activist of the PTS belonging to the Vanniyar 5 caste, whose daughter had chosen to marry a Dalit. The mother’s reactions were influenced by a caste point of view and it took her a long time to come to terms with her daughter’s decision. It did not help that her extended family had ostracized the mother and daughter. Families used all forms of control to keep their daughters away from interacting closely with other caste groups. Dalit women were oppressive to their own daughters and tried to confine them in very harsh ways due to their great fear for the latter’s safety and the caste-specific vulnerability of Dalit girls and young women. A Dalit mother, whose daughter married an OBC boy, was afraid that the girl may be mistreated in her new home. Inter-caste marriages could fail because of the lack of social support and material resources and the isolation the young couple faced. These anxieties and pre-established patterns of social relationships structured interactions between women and their daughters in patriarchal ways, even if the mothers were exposed to union activism and alternative ideas through their unions.

Retaining Autonomy and Engaging Public Policy A great deal of volunteerism and free contribution of resources on the part of state-level and grass-roots activists sustained the everyday functioning and organizing work of all three organizations. The revenue of the organizations was mainly drawn from membership fees. The payment of organizers’ salaries, office rent and the costs of organizing meetings and public protests had to be recovered from this income source. The annual membership fee per member, which was INR Rs. 60 earlier (around 0,7 euros), had increased to Rs. 120 (over the last two years or so) in these 5 The Vanniyars are a numerically significant backward caste group in the Northern districts of Tamil Nadu. A Vanniyar dominant party the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) has mounted aggressive campaigns denouncing inter-caste marriages involving Dalit men and Vanniyar women.

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organizations. Making women workers part with Rs.120 was a great effort for the KTPS in Madurai. A woman construction worker, who made about Rs. 450 (around 5 euros) a day out of which she met her bus fare to work and back home, frequently struggled with her mason husband who usually drank his wage away and threw tantrums at home. Bearing in mind this wretched domestic situation, KTPS organizers could not press women workers for the membership fee and adopted a ‘soft approach’ by asking them with humility, as district secretary Sasikala pointed out. In Madurai, a house owned by the State President of Pennurimai Iyakkam served as the office of both PI and KTPS, saving both organizations from paying rent for office space. Apart from the district President and Secretary of KTPS in Madurai who were full-time union organizers, the other district office-bearers (both men and women) kept their jobs as construction workers and were not paid for their union activism. The limited financial reserves that sustained the organizations kept their full-timers and organizers acutely conscious of the social worth and purpose of their everyday actions and their life and work choices in a more fundamental sense. Panchali, a full-time organizer of domestic workers, had met Sujata Mody (PTS) in 2005 when she regularly visited Panchali’s neighbourhood to supervise a crèche for worker’s children in a construction site. After several conversations with Sujata and two other organizers of the PTS, Panchali realized that there was much that was new to learn about the world and that she too wanted to learn. Panchali worked without any pay for about five months after joining the union. Like other union full-timers in PTS, Panchali’s salary began at Rs.500 a month and rose gradually. As the responsibilities at work increased, her interest and involvement correspondingly grew. She said, ‘As soon as I started to work in 2006 there was the minimum wage protest and in 2007 the black protest. It was a big hit and the TV and newspapers covered our public action’. Although she had to employ two people to run her family’s shop that she managed earlier, she decided that earning an income could only be a secondary pursuit in one’s life. Since Panchali’s husband was a bus conductor with the state government’s transport corporation and had a protected government job, she had financial support to be a ‘social worker’. Alternative sources of household income were essential, especially since PTS full-time organizers, on occasion, had to make do without their salaries for 4–5 months successively if the union ran out of funds.

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Deeply committed crusaders, who had a strong sense of why they had chosen the path of social movements, led all three organizations. They did not apply for financial support for their organizational activities from governmental bodies and took pride in operating within uncompromisingly autonomous spaces and keeping well away from governments in power and the state apparatus more generally. Their autonomy from the state in a climate in which many NGOs were habitually coopted as junior partners implementing state-sponsored development schemes remains one of their greatest strengths. At the same time, their precarious and uncertain financial resources may well have limited their capacity to grow further by establishing local branches in new neighbourhoods, expanding their presence or deepening their interventions in existing areas. While the unions had no expectations (from the state) regarding financial support for their activities, they had a coherent and well-articulated set of demands with regard to the public policy reforms and initiatives they desired. The public policies they sought aimed to stabilize employment generation, improve working conditions, increase minimum wages and strengthen the bargaining capacities of manual workers in the informal sector. All the organizations expressed alarm and dismay at the spiralling prices of essential commodities for everyday consumption as well as raw materials used in production activities by self-employed women informal workers. In January 2018, the Government of Tamil Nadu increased bus fares for state-run transport corporations and private firms by a maximum of almost 67% (Government of Tamil Nadu, n.d.). The growing costs of public transport hit both union organizers who survived on low wages and workers themselves, especially women workers, who relied on public transport unlike men who used bicycles and two-wheelers. In recent years, employment opportunities in the construction sector have dramatically declined due to the non-availability of sand brought on by a boom in the real estate industry and excessive illegal mining of sand from the riverbeds of Tamil Nadu. This has paralysed the construction industry, with several companies pausing projects and several thousand jobs being lost. In a climate of unemployment, livelihood insecurity and the ensuing threat to workers’ collective bargaining efforts for increased wages and improved working conditions, the public policy changes sought by the organizations acquire salience. The KTPS has consistently raised its voice for the rollback of India’s new regime of tax (the Goods and Services Tax, GST) on essential food items and the raw materials used in construction such as cement, wood and sand. It has demanded that the state

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government regulate the price and quality and ensure adequate availability of M-sand (Manufactured Sand) in order to effectively address the employment crisis in the sector. The unions have engaged the state government in discussions regarding the institutional culture of corruption that pervades the welfare board offices in the districts and the unaccountability and anti-worker nature of the boards in which thousands of claims of informal workers for welfare benefits stagnate and suffer inordinate delays, negating the very purpose and existence of the informal workers’ welfare boards.

Conclusion: New Ways of Organizing Production and Social Reproduction? As discussed in the paper, the organizations’ struggle and campaigns at the grass roots were aimed at reforming the dominant capitalist social relations of production and its tendency to exploit the traditional low value assigned to women’s work in the public sphere by under-paying women workers, whether they worked in public spaces in the construction industry or in ‘domestic’ workspaces such as middle and upper middle class homes. In defending women’s wages, skilling women workers, building their self-confidence so that they may negotiate better in job markets and persuading them to embrace (manual) work-derived identities, these organizations strongly resisted the devaluation of women’s productive work and forced all social actors—middle class employers of domestic workers, construction site engineers and contractors and the women workers themselves, to re-evaluate women’s work or, at least, to not take for granted women’s contribution to economic production. We note that the public policy initiatives and grass-roots campaigns of these organizations may also be described as efforts to re-embed the (neoliberal capitalist) economy within social and political control (Polanyi, 1957) by countering the self-regulation of the free market insofar as its effects on women workers’ wages, working conditions and employment stability were concerned. The organizations’ intervention in ‘domestic’ spaces of homes and kin relationships and their refusal to tolerate wife-beating or any other form of violence against women politicized ‘the personal’ and set them apart from traditional unions of factory / industrial workers and their conventional modes of workplace-centred organizing (Kabeer, 2010).

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As discussed earlier, all the organizations of this study supported the efforts of local communities to improve the quality of services and basic infrastructure in the neighbourhoods in which the workers lived. These efforts, if successful, could mitigate and partially ease women’s burden of household and community care work. When garbage dumps increased and sewage seeped into drinking water, it was women who had to take care of infants, children and the elderly who were most likely to fall ill. Issues such as the remote and unsafe location of ration shops that distributed essential food items, improvement in the quality of childcare facilities in state-run pre-school centres (balwadis ) and irregular drinking water supply were taken up with local state actors. We note that the intrahousehold redistribution of household work between the genders was not an agenda that any organization had ever seriously advocated. This state of affairs ensued since the organizations had let their women members and local communities guide them on which issues to prioritize. Organizers of the domestic workers union (PTS) pointed out that most of their members were content if their men did not drink or beat them, went to work regularly and brought home the income. Organizer Sumathi (PTS) said, ‘Women just want to live in peace after working hard all day. If the man drinks and creates a ruckus, the woman’s sleep is gone and children cannot study at home’. Notably, the PTS enabled its full-time staff to balance their own social and care responsibilities by allowing young mothers to report to the office later than others or giving someone a leave of two weeks after bereavement in the family. Sujata Mody (PTS) emphasized that the core team had enormous trust and faith in each other’s support during difficult times (of household distress or crisis) and in the solidarity and comradeship that held the organization together. Gabriele Dietrich, the State President of PI, pointed out that the most important campaign on the question of household labour that had taken place in India was the struggle for national legislation for domestic workers. The European feminist debate on ‘Wages for Housework’ had remained unresolved, as did the questions of who pays for housework and whether a demand for payment would reinforce women’s isolation within the home. On the other hand, the Indian situation was one in which a whole population of workingclass women depended on domestic work as their livelihood and their very survival. Therefore, the question of how to measure its value, what could be the minimum wage, how much leave could be taken and so on had emerged as vital and valid questions. The militant campaigns

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of domestic workers organizations and movements had enhanced public understanding of the value of housework and how such value was created, Dietrich observed. Further, as discussed earlier, all three organizations fought to institute welfare boards for informal workers and secure workers’ access to the boards’ financial benefits and schemes. Drawing on her study of informal workers’ organizations in three Indian states, Agarwala (2013) argues that their struggles for welfare benefits have held the state accountable for the social consumption and reproductive needs of workers by drawing the state into their daily lives. The material benefits provided by the worker welfare boards, which finance education scholarships, health care, social security (old age and disability pensions), marriages and funerals, have established state responsibility for informal workers’ reproductive work burdens, disproportionately borne by women within the home. By forcing the state to subsidize the reproductive costs of their families, women informal workers have challenged patriarchal assumptions in the public and private spheres and exposed the interdependence of productive and reproductive spheres (ibid). When seen from this perspective, KTPS, PI and PTS have pushed and pressured the state to assume responsibility for the social consumption and reproductive needs of informal women workers through their engagement with the worker welfare boards. Undoubtedly, many of the struggles that these organizations have launched have only been partially won, as their leading organizers readily admit. Nonetheless, their rich organizing and struggle experiences provide us glimpses of alternative ways of imagining social relations of production, distribution and exchange that are inclusive, redistributive and gender-transformative in spirit and substance.

References Agarwala, R. (2013). Informal labor, formal politics, and dignified discontent in India. Cambridge University Press. Geetha, R. (1996). A struggle within a struggle: The unionisation of women in the informal sector in Tamil Nadu. In M. Carr, M. Chen, & T. Jhabvala (Eds.), Speaking out: Women’s economic empowerment in South Asia. IT Publications. Government of Tamil Nadu. (n.d.). Benefits given by the unorganised workers welfare boards. http://www.labour.tn.gov.in/Labour/tnmanwork.jsp. Accessed 28 November 2018.

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Harvey, D. (2003). The new imperialism. Oxford University Press. Kabeer, N. (2010). Gender and social protection strategies in the informal economy. Routledge. Kabeer, N., Milward, K., & Sudarshan, R. (2013). Introduction. Beyond the weapons of the weak: Organizing women workers in the informal economy. In N. Kabeer, R. Sudarshan, & K. Milward (Eds.), Organizing women workers in the informal economy: Beyond the weapons of the weak. Zed Books. Polanyi, K. (1957). The great transformation: The political and economic origins of our time. Beacon Press. PRS. (n.d.). The Tamil Nadu Manual Worker (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Work) Act, 1982. Laws of India: A Project of PRS Legislative Research. http://www.lawsofindia.org/pdf/tamil_nadu/ 1982/1982TN33.pdf. Accessed 28 November 2018. Sassen, S. (2010). A savage sorting of winners and losers: Contemporary versions of primitive accumulation. Globalizations, 7 (1–2), 23–50.

CHAPTER 5

Resisting the Destruction of Social Reproduction: Dalit women’s Struggle in South India Isabelle Guérin, Santosh Kumar, and G. Venkatasubramanian

We sincerely thank Antony Raj, whose fieldwork was instrumental in the data collection. This chapter has benefited from the comments of many members of the research project from which this book was derived, and we are grateful for their suggestions and comments. Last, and not least, we would like to thank Vasantha R. and Gilbert R. and all the members of GUIDE for their time and sharing their experiences. I. Guérin (B) French Institute of Research for Development (IRD), Centre for Social Science Studies on African, American and Asian Worlds (CESSMA), Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] S. Kumar Chennai, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1_5

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This chapter will discuss women-led resistance to a particular form of destruction of social reproduction in Tamil Nadu in rural South India. For over three decades, largely landless Dalit rural women have been fighting for their livelihoods, and more generally to sustain life, on their own territory. This struggle has always played out on diverse fronts. But one key aspect has been fighting sand plundering, which endangers water accessibility and quality, and harms agricultural land fertility. The struggle reached its height in the early to mid-2000s, and stood out for how, at least for a time and in a particular space, a women’s collective from the bottom of the social hierarchy, with assistance and support from the NGO GUIDE (the Gandhian Unit for Integrated Development Education), stood up to sand mining. This practice is one of the most important nodes in the criminalization of the Indian economy (Jeyaranjan, 2019). We will seek to break down the processes and mechanisms underpinning those Dalit women’s move to mobilize. We do not seek to romanticize the mobilization capacity of a group of subordinate women. Such activism eroded over time, and collusion between sand contractors, politicians, the police and officials has finally got the better of their campaigning. We will look to better understand the dynamics and potentialities that drive mobilization in a strongly oppressive setting. Following on from a recent work on Dalit women’s politics in India (Anandhi & Kapadia, 2017), we will also seek to highlight the diverse ways in which subaltern women, given the extent of the denial and violence they face, are driven to reinvent politics and experiment with multiple forms of resistance and action. Echoing the plea for a “sociology of emergences” (Sousa Santos de 2014) and a “possibilist” epistemology (Hirschman 1971) reconsidered from a feminist perspective (Guérinet al., 2019a), our observations suggest that subaltern women’s mobilization does emerge and is possible, even if it proves chaotic, fragile and temporary. But their invisibility is also what weakens them. Better understanding their strengths and weaknesses should help them to further expand, which is the epistemological choice adopted here. We will analyse women’s action in terms of social reproduction, by which we mean the range of actions, motivation and institutions that sustain life across generations. We will set out how a common identity has emerged for the preservation of livelihoods on their territory, and

G. Venkatasubramanian French Institute of Pondicherry (FIP), Pondicherry, India e-mail: [email protected]

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more generally in terms of the will to fight. This in turn has resulted in relationships of solidarity between Dalit women from various villages. We will discuss how this struggle is embedded within caste, class, gender, space and time. As a movement, it was both fragmented, as it remained confined to Dalit women, and united, in the sense that it transcended village boundaries and as such was dissociated from local micro-politics and local caste interdependency. As we shall argue, such fragmentation and unity were probably the sole means of legitimizing the fight. We will also analyse how women have gradually constructed themselves as political subjects, becoming involved in diverse means of fighting oppression. Local aspirations to preserve life on home ground are key here, as are the affective and emotional aspects of this construction. We equally discuss how the movement came to break down. There is nothing unusual about such a turn of events, and the fact that the organization maintained momentum over several decades is already highly noteworthy. Its decline reflects an increasingly antidemocratic climate, a criminal economy and predatory politics (Harriss-White & Michelutti, 2019; Michelutti et al., 2018). This now leaves very little room for political activism. This decline also reflects two of the sub-region’s key characteristics, which probably also hold true elsewhere: urbanization and industrialization resulting in the virtual disappearance of agriculture, and the rejection of the struggle by the younger generation. Older generation women fought to protect their resources and ensure their daily survival, and the social reproduction of their families, communities and territories more generally. But the content and modalities of social reproduction have been constantly changing, driven by urban living standards, consumer debt and aspirations for individual upward mobility and freedom, including among young women. Ultimately, our case study confirms one of the central contradictions of capitalism (Fraser 2017; Verschuur 2013). Above and beyond the contradiction Marx pinpointed—the trend for the disappearance of profit rates—capitalism is based on another essential contradiction: it desperately needs unpaid labour to ensure the social reproduction of its (paid) labour and resources, which is a precondition for its maintenance and prosperity. At the same time, it is continuously destroying the foundations of social reproduction. The history of these women is a struggle against this destruction. These dynamics also put the responsibility of the state into question. Some women’s struggles have been successful thanks to backing from the

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state. But the state’s complicity with private capital is the biggest reason that women have ultimately largely lost control of their livelihood and territories. Some of the wins have proven irreversible, however. Although their room for manoeuvre remains limited in the face of hostility from the state, private capital and patriarchy, the women have helped to put resource pillage on the public agenda. Moreover, their three-decade-long campaigning has forged several generations of women leaders, who have acquired a political consciousness and now forging their own paths. This is also an invaluable achievement.

Method Our analysis draws extensively on narratives, testimonials and immersion in the daily life of villages and GUIDE organization from July 2016 to July 2018. The first step lasted several months and consisted of building trust with our partners across various levels (NGO founders and staff, local women leaders, villagers, officials, etc.). Showing our sincere willingness to understand the complexities of local realities—rather than superficial research with the risk of hasty judgments—was prerequisite to earning our respondents’ trust. The first village visits took place with the NGO staff, before gradually conducting fieldwork on our own. Of the approximately 300 villages that GUIDE has been involved in throughout its history, 44 are situated along the Palar River, Kancheepuram district, south of Chennai. We selected 12 villages along both sides of the river for fieldwork for an in-depth analysis of their socioeconomic dynamics (local resources, income sources, infrastructures), local power structures (caste composition), and elected (panchayat) and “traditional” power bodies (caste associations). We then combined various qualitative data collection methods, using semi-structured interviews with villagers, including women and men, GUIDE members and non-members, Dalits and non-Dalits. Semistructured interviews were also conducted with GUIDE staff, GUIDE founders, local power bodies including local officers, political leaders and sand mining players. Around fifty semi-structured interviews were conducted in all. A dozen group discussions with women from various castes and generations were organized on social reproduction (which is

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very challenging to translate into Tamil), women’s leadership and solidarity. Group discussions were extremely useful—and sometimes unavoidable given that people often wanted to join in with the discussions—to gain an understanding of official discourses, social norms and acceptable practices. Informal discussions and immersion in local daily life were instrumental for understanding the processes underlying women’s mobilization and its evolution over time. Santosh Kumar, G. Venkatasubramanian and Antony Raj spent intensive time in the villages. Over two years, relationships of trust were established with twelve women who were considered local leaders and were instrumental in the collective struggles led or initiated by GUIDE. Ongoing discussions allowed us to reconstruct what amount to life histories, by which is meant the discursive product of multiple iterative interviews, which takes the form of a narrative. Such narratives stand out from other means of investigation as the sole means of perceiving the dynamic dimension of personal lives. A short questionnaire was also administered in four villages to 120 households. These aimed to quantify the portfolio of livelihoods for each household and earning member, their localization (within or outside the village) across gender and generations, the extent of sand mining and its change over time. Last but not least, observation was a key tool to analyse and interpret the nature of social interactions and social relations, both among women, women and their neighbourhood, and the broader community. Besides immersion in village daily life, we attended two protests initiated by women. These revealed to us women’s know-how and know how-to-be with regard to the organization of demonstrations and relations with officials, the strategic and supportive role of leaders, as well as the active commitment of many women, their awareness and determination to tackle the causes of their mobilizations. Much of our work involved tracing back the history of the movement and its leaders. The story we tell here is our own understanding of the events. We hope that we have done justice to the complexity of the processes, while focusing on some salient aspects; our analysis is inevitably incomplete and simplistic.

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The Emergence of a Common Cause: Defending women’s Right to Make a Living on Their Own Territory Women’s campaigning emerged out of the NGO GUIDE, whose headquarter is in Kancheepuram district in the Palar Valley (Tamil Nadu). Ever since it was created, GUIDE has been committed to women’s “empowerment”.1 It has involved fighting violence against women, be it physical, emotional or sexual, defending women’s rights to control local resources and to participate in decision-making, and backing organic farming projects for sustainable development. GUIDE was set up in the mid-1980s by an urban middle-class couple, Vasantha R. and Gilbert R. They were highly aware of rural issues, having worked as research assistants for the Madras Institute of Development Studies. Drawing on Gandhian ideology, they sought to put their knowledge and conviction to the service of social change. The NGO was officially created in 1986 after several years of interaction with villagers. It operates as a federation of women’s sangams (groups): other than the founders, the whole staff belongs to the local population. At the peak of its activity in Kancheepuram district, GUIDE was involved in 44 villages and hamlets, working with 120 women’s groups of various size and strength. These women sometimes also belonged to other groups such as churches, NGOs and self-made organizations. GUIDE also played a leading role in various environmental and feminist networks, at both state and national levels. Scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (administrative terms for Dalits and ethnic minorities) were the key focus of GUIDE throughout its history. Over the past two decades, many NGOs have specialized in supporting and promoting women’s Self-Help Groups (SHG), usually for savings and credit purposes. But GUIDE took a broader political vision of what women’s rights and alternative development should be. It worked hard to listen to women’s aspirations, requests and constraints in order to co-create the organization’s objectives, activities and strategies alongside these women. Economic issues were always at the core of GUIDE’s advocacy work for women to gain control over local resources and livelihoods. But 1 They used this term since the 1980s, long before it became a development industry buzzword.

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these soon became political with campaigning for women to have the capacity to make a living on their own territory through small-scale farming (as opposed to organic farming, which has remained marginal due to difficulties in finding a market, despite various experiments). The tragic consequences of the so-called “green revolution” on local populations, and women, in particular, were the starting point for GUIDE’s campaigning. In Tamil Nadu (as elsewhere in India), the “green revolution” of the 1960s-70s facilitated a significant increase in agricultural production, yet it excluded women, the landless, small-scale agriculture and dry lands (Harriss-White & Janakarajan, 2004; Mencher, 1974).2 As a result, manual agricultural labour has significantly declined and become increasingly women-dominated (after the pauperization of farmers and to cut costs) (Garikipati & Pfaffenzeller, 2012). The Palar Valley is typical of these changes, albeit with its own specificities. In the 1990s, the state government decided to industrialize the region (mostly through tax exemptions) and it slowly transformed into an urban corridor for Chennai. Many industries set up there, and a new railway line supported the urbanization process, which quickly led to a land price boom. Over the same period, the wide availability of sand and water resources drove many brick kiln industries (which are major consumers of sand) to move to the region from Chennai suburb. Sand plundering boomed, with disastrous environmental consequences. These included destruction of flora and fauna, decreased land fertility, the salinization of water and reduced groundwater levels, risks of rivers and lakes drying up, and flooding owing to changes in the path and speed of the river, and the erosion of river banks. Groundwater levels are continuing to decrease. The women told us that in the 1990s, water could be accessed at 5 to 10 feet below ground. This dropped to 20 feet in 2010 and is now at 45 feet. Such unbridled mining has sometimes led to the destruction of water pipelines and electric pylons. Moreover, various industries are pumping out heavily polluted wastewater, including the small tannery industry, which has long been in the area. In some areas, women have no choice but to buy water, which has of course severely affected their household budget.

2 Prior to their campaigning with GUIDE, both founders worked as research assistants, including with Joan Mencher, whose work on the dramatic consequences of the green revolution on women has been internationally recognized.

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Landowners have been gradually selling their land, mostly owing to industrialization and booming land prices, with unexpected sales and opportunities for easy profits. Many of them have left the area, which has helped fuel the almost total disappearance of agriculture. “Capitalism is forcing us to move out” as S. commented to us about the massive circulation of men to and around Chennai. The region’s industrialization has also led the industrial workforce to a relative feminization. Over the past decade, many young women have taken up work in various nearby private establishments, as cleaners for private schools or manual workers in the textile, garment, leather garment or agri-food industries. Among numerous other campaigns, including fighting alcoholism and campaigning for access to basic infrastructures, the campaign to protect livelihoods on people’s home territory was both a driver for GUIDE’s agenda and one of its achievements. In its early days in the 1980s, there was already strong concern about the groundwater shortage. GUIDE had been focused on infrastructures and domestic violence at that time, but its members started questioning the organization on the issue. This was not out of a basic desire to protect nature, but simply because their daily survival was at stake. Some of the women talk about a visceral attachment to nature, land and water. “Since water was in our blood, we decided to protest to protect the water resources”, N explained. V, meanwhile, describes her attachment to the territory in terms of what she experienced, what she lost, but also what she continues to defend: “I can smell this place; the longer vision I had was the river, the higher was the trees, I had my feet in the soil, I enjoyed the flow of the water; how can we expect me to go and work in cities?”

Beyond this type of narrative, as many feminist studies have suggested (Agarwal 1992; Cornwall et al., 2007), women’s activism is a pragmatic response to a threat to their own survival. As D. explains: “Actually, males they can go to Chennai to find any work. But we, ladies, we are always in the village. So we need water all our life and our next generation people as well. So the ladies are very clear about this”.

Thanks to the growing industrialization, more and more non-farm employment opportunities have emerged, but this has taken place outside

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the villages and has thus mostly been limited to men and educated young people. Married Dalit women have limited physical mobility because of gender norms and are restricted to agricultural labour, which they defend as what then was their only source of livelihood. The question of the social reproduction of their own families was also at stake, given the threat to domestic water. Moreover, the political rise of Dalit rights movements in the early 1980s in different parts of the state played a substantial role in shaping Dalit aspirations to engage in protest. These movements have shed light on the persistence of untouchability and discrimination. They have expanded the parameters of democratic protest and opened up spaces for dissent. They have not succeeded to truly empower Dalits as various forms of discrimination remain very high (Shah et al., 2018). But they have given visibility to power hierarchies by challenging taken-for-granted modes of existence (Gorringe, 2005). Details of occupations and their location by gender and generations can offer an initial insight into the context and help better understand the diverse types of involvement in the fight against sand mining. Our survey showed that most workers combine several activities (from 1 to 3, 2 on average, including for women). Women’s most common occupations are agricultural daily labour (71% of working women, see Fig. 5.1) and NREGA, the labour welfare governmental scheme (77%). This latter is most often considered a secondary occupation. For men, unskilled casual urban labour is by far the most common occupation (85%, see Fig. 5.1). Other occupations account for a quarter to a third of the figure and include daily labour in agriculture or local brick kilns (here too, this is mostly the older generation). It was clear that brickwork employment was crucial to the survival of families. Around a quarter of men and women earn their living in this sector (see Fig. 5.1), often as a second occupation. But 60% of families have at least one family member working in this sector. As far as places of occupation are concerned, the data are also instructive (Fig. 5.2). As Fig. 5.2 shows, many males work in Chennai or combine urban and local work, but this mostly holds true for the third generation. All the men of the first generation work only in the village. For the second generation men, the majority still work locally (62%), more than a third (34%) combine local and outside employment and only 4% work only outside the village. The vast majority of third generation men (74%) work outside the village. For women, working outside the

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1%

21%

22%

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Men (% total male working populaƟon) 77%

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Fig. 5.1 Occupations per gender (Source Authors’ survey, 2018) Chennai only

34%

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80%

100%

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4%

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22% 33%

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Fig. 5.2 Places of occupation per gender and generation (Source Authors’ survey, 2018)

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village is a possibility only for young women and this applies to 45% of them.

Social Reproduction: A Diverse and Changing Stream of Labour Reviewing the diversity of women’s social-reproductive tasks, and especially their evolution over time, is crucial to understanding how women’s mobilization has transformed over the last decades. Women’s collective action has been mostly concentrated on one aspect of social reproduction, namely the right to earn a living and access water on their own territory. Caring for the elderly and mentally distressed people who had been fully neglected by welfare policies, be it the government or NGOs, also became a concern over time. Over the past few years, some of GUIDE’s buildings have started to offer long-term care for the elderly. By contrast, other aspects of social reproduction such as child care have never been on the GUIDE agenda, for which there are three reasons: women internalizing their responsibilities as mothers; women sharing childcare practices with their extended families; the availability of crèches from the government for a few hours per day in most villages. But women’s social highly time-consuming reproductive labour has always limited women’s ability to mobilize and seems to be increasingly so. With the modernization of living standards, various forms of manual reproductive labour have now almost come to an end, such as collecting water, firewood and maintaining vegetable gardens. But these have been replaced by many forms of “modern”—and time-consuming—activities. Children’s education (including for daughters) is now a priority, but requires funding. Public schools are poorly rated and many households want to send their children to private school. This demands extra time, skills and energy from mothers trying to ensure their children study properly, so that their investment is not wasted. With a ballooning number of schools of very dubious quality, choosing the right school is often tricky. Common concerns include ensuring that children—especially girls—are treated fairly and not abused, and providing food that can withstand the heat over a few hours. Though mothers acknowledge some of the benefits of industrialization, such as allowing their young daughters to get urban wage jobs, they also widely talk about the risks of falling into a “love trap”. Women’s “empowerment” thus remains curtailed and has

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to be continued to preserve the family and kin’s honour and reputation (Anandhi & Kapadia, 2017; Still, 2015). Such worries have led mothers to devote significant time and energy guiding and monitoring their daughters’ behaviours. Household budget management is another consideration. Faced with insufficient and irregular incomes, and the commodification of a growing share of social reproduction needs (self-consumption of food has almost disappeared, education, health and sometimes water now pass through the market), debt is considerable and continues to increase. Women now have a wider range of borrowing opportunities in comparison with their elders (Guérin et al. 2015; Kalpana, 2016). Many juggle multiple debts, sometimes considerably so. Women are the family budget managers, and survival debts are considered degrading and pushed onto women, so they bear a disproportionate burden of the family debt compared to their husbands (Guérin, Nordman, and Reboul 2019). The widened choice is usually appreciated, but they only borrow to make ends meet and compensate for low wages, which are far below the necessary costs for social reproduction. There has been an increasing privatization of common and public goods, including health and education. Managing debt has led to new sources of tensions, anxieties and sometimes sexual exploitation (Guérin and Kumar 2020). It is also extremely time-consuming. Many women spend a few hours every day managing their debts, attending credit group meetings, waiting for door-to-door lenders, travelling to lenders in various places, negotiating prices, repayment modalities or rescheduling debts. As in other parts of the world, the rise in female consumer debt has reinforced capitalism’s contradiction between economic production and social reproduction (Fraser 2017), both as a new form of unpaid work and a transfer of wealth through the payment of interest rates. Consumerism is another “modern” issue. Living standards have increased and urban norms have been adopted. Clothing has changed. Households have gradually acquired durable consumer goods such as grinders, refrigerators and washing machines. This too has required adopting new skills and brought new pressures centred upon quality, brands or where to get good prices. The modernization of social reproduction and its partial transformation into commodities has brought forth other constraints and forms of dependency, particularly on paid labour, as feminists have clearly shown with regard to the industrial revolution in North America and Europe (Bhattacharya, 2017). “Needs are growing

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much faster than wages”, as the women often say, and “more is always needed”. Last but not least, there is ample and diversified access to government schemes, including subsidized food, housing and energy, free television and many other consumer durable items and cattle schemes. Although these schemes certainly help sustain household’s social reproduction, as other chapters in this volume have observed (see also Thara, 2021), women are once again at the forefront. Given that government resources are still distributed within patronage networks and rural women represent a major pool of voters, asserting one’s rights increases women’s responsibilities, whether in terms of attending numerous political meetings or the lengthy process of finding out the right administrative steps to become eligible. Much of GUIDE women’s workload, whether they are volunteers or paid, involves helping ensure access to government programs. “Now we are occupied”, as the women often told us to explain why they do not collectively mobilize as they did in the past. As we shall later discuss, getting the younger generation mobilized is indeed a challenge.

Struggle and Solidarities: Unity and Fragmentation The GUIDE women’s campaigns were built on solidarity relationships, which locally refer to as “unity” (othumai), between Dalit women from various villages, based on a common identity that has gradually emerged around various issues. But these solidarity relationships can overlap or even conflict with other forms of solidarity and relationships, as we shall now explore. Women’s move to mobilize does not emerge out of thin air. Feminist research has clearly shown that women’s solidarity is never a given (Mohanty 1984; 2003; Cornwall, 2007). When it does come about it is as a fragile, constantly renewed process that is subject to dissolution. For our purposes here, one might assume that Dalit women have been spontaneously willing to support their caste sisters, but this is not the case either. Identities are not fragmented along caste lines, but rather along sub-caste or even clan lines (sub-divisions of Jatis on the very local level, based on specific spatial areas and kinship networks). The term “Dalit”—which is a political term—has little meaning outside of specific political movements aiming to challenge caste hierarchy. As a category, “Dalit” brings together

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many communities (here, mostly Paraiyars), which are themselves strongly divided along hierarchical lines. The mobilization of women is nothing new in Tamil Nadu. A very large number of organizations and networks, including political parties, social movements and NGOs, have a long history of turning to mobilizing women, considering them to be more docile and willing to get involved in public events. It is quite common for women to demonstrate in India, but this is most often orchestrated from above by political parties, social movements, NGOs or the media (Guérin and Kumar 2017). The women in question here have not completely broken free from this instrumentalization, particularly by getting into politics, which we will return to later. But many of their actions were spontaneous and were initiated and led by Dalit women themselves, sometimes with enormous risk. Some have openly confronted illegal arrack sellers. They have also confronted lorry and tractor drivers in charge of illegally mining and transporting sand. They have adopted various tactics and strategies, including narrowing roads by building cattle sheds on the side, or digging trenches to prevent trucks from passing, blocking roads, puncturing tires and sitting on excavators. Some have been severely beaten, and others have been to jail for few days for disrupting public safety. Women’s demonstrations have received media support in newspapers and on television thanks to GUIDE’s networks, sparking similar action in other parts of the state. Women’s mobilizations are often depicted as less radical and more focused on compromise and negotiation (Kabeer 2008). But this example shows that women are capable of radical opposition. The first-generation leaders told us a lot about the extent of the hostility received, be it from the police, the government, higher castes feeling threatened or from men. They describe bans on demonstrations, imprisonment for the illegal occupation of public space and scenes of physical violence. The resistance these women faced prompted them to create alliances with various organizations and movements, which gradually allowed them to become established in the public arena. Such radical actions must, however, be contextualized. They emerged gradually and were consolidated step by step by a range of actions which gradually built a common identity around the concept of struggle. In the fight against sand mining, the issue of preserving Dalit women’s rights to livelihood on their own space of living was key and was expressed in such terms. More broadly however, it seems that the will to fight was the federative unit. “We have learnt how to struggle”, as we heard many

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times, as if struggling, demonstrating and demanding one’s rights had become gradually an objective in itself. This was certainly legitimized by the Dalit political movements that emerged at the same time, although no formal alliance was formed with them, in order to maintain GUIDE’s independence. Given the highly patriarchal dimension of Dalit political movements (Gorringe, 2017), this was undoubtedly an excellent strategic choice. Women’s collective action was not completely new: in Tamil Nadu, as probably elsewhere in India, Dalit women have always been accustomed to acting collectively in order to organize agricultural work, and sometimes to demand better conditions from their landlords, but this was mostly at the village level (Kapadia, 1995). As such, GUIDE’s campaigning work did not start out from nothing, but they did go much further than what women were used to, in terms of both objectives and scope, by crossing village boundaries. Its achievements in helping to tackle illegal alcohol production and sale were instrumental in cementing women’s relationships. It helped them to realize what kind of achievements were possible thanks to their unity. The will to fight was also made possible by detailed—and research-based—studies offered by GUIDE on the nature and origins of the problems the women were facing, especially as regards water and land depletion. Such risk-taking was made possible by the unfailing and ongoing support of GUIDE’s founders. Vasantha was consistently available to support the women set out their strategies to campaign against illegal alcohol production and sand extraction, or to take part of demonstrations (she also went to jail), to negotiate with the police and the court in the event of arrests, sometimes with the help of advocates, building alliances with the media to cover the events, and thus prevent the police from building alliances with the mafia networks the women were attacking through their campaigns. Given that the judicial system very often worked against the poor and marginalized, such support was crucial. Among local institutions such as the district collector (the district-level public administration), police stations and other NGOs, GUIDE gradually gained a reputation as being a reliable and committed organization. Independence from state funding (and political parties) was certainly instrumental to this. Other women too began to train in law, become involved and support GUIDE in this ongoing struggle for justice. Echoing many of the women, S. expresses this sense of security, with a mixture of personal support and public involvement:

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“Vasantha always picked up hard topics: conflict between boy and girl, family issues, narrow issues, big issues, issues about love, property, whatever. There is this feeling that there is a place to go and get justice and GUIDE can do that. Get justice without cost. Vasantha has an advocate. GUIDE is known everywhere. Women can go to the police and use the name of GUIDE, they will get some respect, otherwise people treat them as nothing. GUIDE has been able to penetrate each and every family. Other NGOs don’t care about this. GUIDE always keep the people in dealing with their day to day problems”.

The women also proudly talk about their ability to negotiate with institutions, such as N.: “Now I don’t care about anyone and I am not scared of anyone. I can go anywhere to ask about my rights. Now policemen are my brothers. Anytime I can go there. If we say that we are coming through GUIDE, they will be get scared by us”

N.’s trust in the police is unfortunately very much on the optimistic side. On some issues, such as domestic violence, convincing the police to intervene remains a major challenge. But we had the opportunity to observe interactions between women and various local institutions, including administrations, the panchayat (town hall) and political leaders. The ease with which they are able to speak and the solidity of the GUIDE label of credibility and respect are beyond doubt. We shall now discuss the issue of articulation between other forms of solidarity and power relationships. Struggles are embedded within social institutions such as caste, gender and class. They are also embedded within time and space. Only Dalit women participated in public demonstrations. Here, one might be tempted to criticize the fragmented nature of their collective action, or even the instrumentalization of subaltern women through the myth of women as “caring”, “in solidarity” and “close to nature”, which has been widely promoted by development policies (Cornwall et al., 2007). Contextualizing struggles within local power structures sheds a different light on these matters. As argued above, Dalit women are the first to be concerned by water scarcity and land depletion. Not only have Dalit men gradually moved away from agriculture since the 1980s, but many of them used to make a living out of sand trafficking, collecting and transporting sand for brick kiln owners or contractors. Throughout our survey, no one said they

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were currently involved in sand mining (mining, loading and unloading, transportation). But one-third of working men and one woman said they had done so in the past. These figures are undoubtedly underestimated, including for women, who are regularly approached by employers for small jobs (such as humidifying roads to avoid dust), in a deliberate attempt to discourage them from becoming mobilized. Another way of assessing the importance of sand mining for facilitating the social mobility of families, however modest, is to explore how housing is financed. All the families now have concrete houses, and three quarters state that sand mining, which was paid for in the form of substantial advances, played a key role. The women are clear that many men’s dependency on sand work made it difficult for them to be involved in any campaigning, as N. explains: “Men cannot come as they are involved with other caste people; sand is controlled by Naidu [upper caste] and somehow Vanniyars [middle caste] for transporting, and Dalits are laborers. If [Dalit] men join, they will be blacklisted and won’t get any work”.

“Men are bonded to each other because of the work; not easy for us to break this”, as one man told us once. Women—and men—also state that women’s mobilization is more efficient because it is less brutal. They are probably right on this point: any male-led confrontation would inevitably lead to violence. As mentioned above, indirect dependency on sand work, even today, through brickworks, for men but also for women, is also a barrier. These various factors help explain the significance of womanhood to the mobilization. It is interesting to note, however, that very few Dalit men stopped their wives from taking action. The women had proved able to rally Dalit men to their cause, or else the Dalit men would have stopped their wives from campaigning and confronting, implicitly joining the cause without becoming directly themselves. Caste and class, which strongly overlap in the sub-region, are at the core of the sand conflict. Sand trafficking is fully managed and controlled by Naidus and Reddiyars, two of the dominant castes locally. It seems that two strategies have helped build the movement’s legitimacy, for both the women and their “enemies”. The conflict was never called a caste conflict and the women have always scrupulously avoided naming their target by caste. Identifying the struggle as an action against upper castes would

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certainly have had devastating effects, leading to organized resistance from upper caste networks, including political ones. Conversely, Dalit women remain heavily dependent upon upper castes to access various resources and would never have accepted to be part of this. The other strategy concerns space. Confrontations were never limited to isolated villages. The women confirm that it would have been too risky for the same reason as above, namely the prevailing interdependencies with upper castes. Solidarity among women’s groups from various villages has been very helpful here, not only to get a critical mass of demonstrators, but furthermore to dissociate actions from micro-local politics. As far as non-Dalit women are concerned, very few were involved in the mobilizations. Yet they equally suffer from land depletion and water scarcity. Gender norms along caste lines clearly explain non-Dalit women’s decision not to get involved: “it’s not in our caste habits”, as we were told several times. A Dalit woman can afford to take to the street to protest, but not a non-Dalit woman, who is expected to remain confined at home, protected from contact from outsiders. As with Dalit men, nonDalit women never opposed Dalit women’s actions, but never actively participated either. Last but not least, the protests are also embedded within time. GUIDE was set up in 1986, and its actions emerged gradually. Its sense of unity and will to fight are the outcomes of a slow process, which began to bear fruit after a decade of campaigning.

The Emergence of Political Subjects: Knowledge, Deliberation and Affects GUIDE has clearly contributed to the emergence of women as “political subjects”, defined here in opposition to the “submitted subject”, with the idea that the individual begins to constitute a subject from the moment she resists power. The emergence of political subjects relates first of all to GUIDE members, especially among the older generations. Their testimonies and life trajectories shed light on the gradual creation of a common identity based on the will to protect their livelihood and to campaign to access basic rights. The threat of urbanization was already something that was sensed when GUIDE was set up. The organization helped to shape this into specific, coordinated and structured actions. Access to knowledge—a common thread throughout GUIDE’s history, on the basis of various popular education tools—has clearly helped women

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to identify the origins of the problems at stake and possible alternatives. GUIDE’s initial actions were evening classes, which the first women to benefit from gradually passed on by word of mouth. Above and beyond the transfer of knowledge, it seems that these sessions were mainly used as a platform for exchange and discussion, from which priorities for taking action gradually emerged. Besides evening classes, the women mention the key role of debate and discussion in the daily life of GUIDE. Techniques were used to ensure a certain equality of participation and not to give in to big voices—what Habermas calls deliberation (Habermas 1992)—such as excluding men, focusing on Dalits and providing particular support to the shyest, poorest or youngest members to give them confidence to speak. It equally used culture, collectively adapting and reinventing old songs to local realities. Time was of the essence here: the founders of GUIDE consider that it has taken at least ten years for these women to speak in public, especially in front of men. Deliberations were key to co-constructing goals and modes of action, and as such to adapting them to local aspirations and constraints. This was not free from conflict and tension, as we will discuss below. GUIDE’s goals constantly evolved throughout its history, not as the result of a fixed or pre-determined agenda—in this regard, independence from donors was key and was always strategically maintained—but rather through an ongoing process of discussion and dialogue with local populations. Women already had opportunities to discuss and debate in their villages, for instance in the agricultural fields, where work partly used to be done collectively, during wood and water collections. Discussions also took place jointly, or simply in the streets after managing to finish their domestic work. GUIDE gave them the opportunity to access broader platforms: during training sessions or evening courses, where much of the time was spent sharing their experiences and personal lives. Many leaders refer to these trainings as key events in their desire to fight collectively. This was the case at the GUIDE office, which at the peak of its activity resembled an anthill (one of us visited GUIDE in 2004 and got this feeling), but also during public events organized by GUIDE or its partners. The transmission of knowledge was inseparable from having the possibility to use their voice, to be heard, to listen to others and to debate beyond their usual neighbourhood circle of contacts. The idea of “political subjects” also pertains to the emergence of political leaders from a range of generations, getting involved in a wide range

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of campaigning, including party politics. Any true empowering project, by definition, has no pre-defined objective as people themselves define their own horizon. This can include opposing the organization that had trained and supported them. This is what is observed here. In a second phase of its action at the end of the 1990s, GUIDE supported its leaders’ political commitment and encouraged them to run for elections, which were mainly municipal (around 260 GUIDE members) and in a few cases (3 GUIDE members), legislative elections. GUIDE was convinced that many of its campaigns could be hampered by the weight of political parties, and that this was particularly true of sand mining. It encouraged women to run individually, without party affiliation, while being convinced that party affiliation was incompatible with true vision for alternative development. Many agreed with this, but others refused, arguing that running for politics would be impossible without party support. Others got involved but without adhering to the NGO’s vision, forming alliances for themselves with political parties, and as such distancing themselves from the NGO. Given the cost of election campaigns, including at the local level, it is clear that a single candidacy, without capital, has no chance of success. In the same vein, GUIDE always opposed microcredit because it was convinced that it was a standalone tool that could not in any way solve the structural problems of gender inequalities. GUIDE members resisted microcredit for several years, and some still do. But some leaders, particularly those from a younger generation (in their forties today), gradually became specialized in managing group loans or acting as intermediaries for microcredit companies. Today, Vasantha is convinced that by diverting women to individual and monetary issues, microcredit “created a shift from togetherness to isolation […] has killed the social responsibility of the women […] and slowly poisons women’s strength”. Indeed, many women admit they no longer have time to do anything else, but answer sardonically to our questions about political commitment (in the broadest sense of the term). T., for instance, asked us: “I offer you money [credit] or meetings to be held over and over again and you don’t know what the result will be, what do you choose?”. Political subjectivities are strongly embedded within emotions and affects (Castells, 2012; Jasper, 1997). As mentioned above, the transmission of knowledge was inseparable from having the opportunity to use their voice, to be heard and to listen to others. The pleasure of meeting others is also inseparable from the festive aspects of gatherings,

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with dances and songs allowing the women to relax, forget pains and sufferings at least for a while, and to escape the smothering, controlling aspects of village life for a moment. There was also an emotional component to framing objectives and repertoires of action: indignation and outrage against various forms of oppression, whether based in patriarchy or caste; against sand plundering and the progressive loss of their livelihood; but also the joy and pride of imagining a new and better society and contributing to it. Affects also include a relationship of gratitude towards GUIDE’s founders, and especially Vasantha, who had always been heavily involved with the women. Her tireless commitment was experienced not only as support, but above all as a form of recognition, especially in the organization’s early days, at a period when Dalit women did not spark any interest from outsiders. All the women stress the role of Vasantha in their testimonials. Sometimes they describe her as a mother, or a sister, ever-present to motivate them, encourage them, support them through difficult times, not just emotionally but also materially, personally intervening as a mediator, particular in contexts of strong hostility (be it from a spouse, family or in-laws, high castes or officials). The life stories of the leaders we worked with reflect the chaotic trajectory of their emancipation process (however modest some of which may have been), the progress and setbacks, and the many sacrifices made. These particularly pertained to their role as mothers and wives, with frequently conflictual relationships with family and in-laws. Finally comes the emotional component of their trajectory, highlighting how negative emotions gradually turned into positive emotions, and a driving force for collective action. The gratitude many of them convey (and which we had the opportunity to observe) could be considered as a problematic class (and caste) divide (Ms Vasantha is Brahmin), boding poorly for the sustainability of the movement. This is certainly true. Among many other factors, the Vasantha’s reduced presence in the field over recent years has often been perceived as a sort of abandonment. At the same time, we know the key role of emotions in forging and maintaining collective political identities. To think that social movements could emerge and sustain themselves simply out of narrow rational behaviour is completely unrealistic. Comparing generations is also instructive. The first generations of the 1980s fought for access to basic services, for women’s participation in public spaces and discussions. They remember how difficult it was to

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convince men to let their wives attend evening classes and attend meetings. They describe the constant struggle and the regular setbacks, about overwhelmed men blaming them for the lack of direct material benefits, especially on the individual level, since the struggle was above all for common and collective goods. The next generation was the one to become fully involved in more radical struggles, backed by the NGO’s renown, using acquired know-how and the organization’s power to call for action. With the current generation, leadership is above all a financial matter and mostly consists of helping women to access and repay credit. The infrastructure is there, albeit of poor quality. Its aspirations are more focused on the individual success of children and on raising living standards.

What Have the Political Outcomes Been? As far as the state is concerned, GUIDE women members have succeeded in some of their demands but failed in others. This is unsurprising given that the state is a complex, multiple entity. As with many other women’s movements all over South India, many of GUIDE campaigns have involved forcing the state to fulfil its basic functions, for instance as regards the delivery of administrative documents (land titles, caste certificates) and basic state infrastructures (roads, electricity and domestic water). In terms of the fight against illegal alcohol, GUIDE women, alongside many other activists in various parts of Tamil Nadu, have successfully pushed for the adoption of a new (yet another) state regulation, and moreover its implementation, at least in their own villages. As has been observed for other NGOs elsewhere in Tamil Nadu, women have slowly “learnt the state” (Kalpana, 2016), gaining experience with the tactics, strategies and practical know-how and know-how-tobe for approaching administrations and officials. Given the gulf between the Indian state and rural Dalit women, such a learning process was of particular importance. For public goods and services, this can involve pinpointing difficulties and priorities, mobilizing women (mass demonstrations remain an essential persuasive tool), deciding upon the most efficient repertoires of action (should there be mass demonstrations or personal bargaining with particular political leaders?), identifying windows of opportunity (with whom and how to negotiate?). For individual goods and services (land titles, ration cards, eligibility to welfare schemes), it involves accessing information, identifying the right point of contact and,

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once again, the right repertoire of action (keep a low profile or complain, pay a bribe but how much, to whom and when?), helping people with their paperwork, accompanying them in the event that negotiations with officials or administrations prove necessary, complaining when promises are not kept and so forth. Ensuring that the state fulfils some of its basic functions is one thing, and already very challenging in a patronage democracy like India. It is quite another to fight the nexus between private capital and the state. This nexus is at the heart of the current accumulation model in India, which has involved both uncontrolled resource extraction and the criminalization of the economy and politics (Harriss-White & Michelutti, 2019; Michelutti et al., 2018), sand plundering being a case in point (Jeyaranjan, 2019). Here, GUIDE’s campaigning has resulted in something of a backlash. The women’s campaigning alongside many other organizations in various parts of India has successfully pushed for the adoption of state regulation. By organizing and participating in numerous mass demonstrations, thereby stimulating public debate on sand pillage, by helping to produce figures on the extent of the problem, by initiating and participating in public hearings, GUIDE campaigning finally paid off. In November 2013, the Government of Tamil Nadu banned mining in 71 of the 90 sand quarries. In January 2014, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests issued guidelines regarding the sand mining methods: for quarries ranging from five to 25 hectares, only manual mining is now permitted. In the villages the women come from, mining has decreased considerably. A ban on trucks and even bullock carts is more or less adhered to. Mining continues, but on a small scale due to the lack of transport, and it is therefore women who are solicited (transporting sand in buckets) since it is now poorly paid. Some more mass-scale mining operations also happen to take place at night to circumvent the ban. The regulation could be considered as a success, but on a broader level the way the regulation has been implemented has further strengthened the problem it was supposed to eradicate. The state regulations have restricted access to sand at a time when demand for sand is reaching record highs due to the persistent growth of the construction sector. As such, a key impact has been to strengthen further illegal mining, strengthening mafia-based networks that prey on private capital, state officials and political parties. In other words, GUIDE activism made it possible to restrict illegal mining in the villages where it campaigned, and has led

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to the adoption of specific state regulations, but its effects have been completely bypassed by mafia-based alliances with private capital. It would, however, be unfair to conclude that the women’s campaigning has been in vain. The adoption of the regulation remains a success. Their work has made the problem visible to the general public. What is clear, however, is the scale of the contradiction inherent in capitalism, as discussed in the introduction: ongoing threat to the functions of social reproduction, and the permanent struggles women must wage to limit this contradiction and ensure that life continues. As Vasantha herself sums up well: “Progress has been made. But meanwhile problems have increased, some problems are solved, others are emerging. Solving some problems creates others. Girls go to school and work, sexual violence increases. The government regulates the sand, the mafias buy the government. So we have to work together again and again. It is a continuous process”.

The Erosion of a Movement: What Place is There for women’s Protest Action in Contemporary India? All organizations and movements have a life cycle, and GUIDE is no exception. Over thirty years since its creation, the organization still exists but is much less active. Its offices, which once swarmed with activity, only host occasional events. This does not prevent the women GUIDE leaders who were trained and supported by GUIDE over several decades from striking out on their own journeys. This is certainly one notable achievement. However, it is instructive to study the various factors that eroded the commitment and presence of GUIDE. They highlight the immense challenges any form of protest in contemporary India faces, with the criminal economy and predatory politics at their height, and the patriarchy persisting while constantly renewing itself. GUIDE’s decline is part of a more general downward trend among NGOs across southern India. The golden age of NGOs seems to be over, both because national and international funding has dried up and

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because of the state’s clear political will to regain control over development.3 NGOs have always been subject to tight control, notably by means of hefty authorization procedures to receive foreign funding. But such control has been strengthened. In March 2015, 69 NGOs, including Greenpeace, were prohibited from receiving foreign funding. An Indian intelligence service report states that this was because their fields of campaigning (anti-nuclear lobbying, anti-mining, anti-GMO) were harming the country’s economic growth (with an estimated 2 to 3% GDP loss). Thirty of the NGOs which lost their accreditation were specialized in minority groups. Numerous others—4138 according to some estimates—saw their applications refused. Between 2011 and 2014, more than 30,000 NGOs received warnings. Sixteen foreign donors, including the Ford Foundation, must now go through the Ministry of the Interior for each transaction.4 While many players do try to use “NGO status” for questionable purposes, the BJP government is certainly tightening control over civil society. Women’s activism has also become a real challenge. As previously mentioned, there had been internal conflict within the organization on the issue of political engagement and making alliances with political parties. As one woman leader put it: “If there is a meeting, means we have to get 20 people, isn’t it? But they [women] ask ‘what they [the organisers] will give?’. If there is any meeting organized by a politician who says ‘we give 50 rupees and a free saree’, they run there. In this sangam [group] if I give something then only they come. If I don’t give, they won’t come”.

As previously discussed, the golden age of the NGO ended in the mid2000s. This seems to have stemmed from various reasons. The December 2004 tsunami led them to largely focus on the coastal area. This raised the issue of priorities and possible conflicts between long-term campaigning and natural disaster calling for urgent action. Like many other militant NGOs, the government has threatened to have them closed down, particularly after they participated in a campaign against a nuclear power plant. This raises the issue of activism within an authoritarian state. 3 For the case of Andhra Pradesh, see, for example, Picherit (2015). 4 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Govt-bans-foreign-funding-for-69-NGOs-

30-of-them-work-for-minorities/articleshow/46461898.cms

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The willingness of GUIDE’s founders to slowly withdraw and let local leaders manage their own campaigning also comes into play. The local women leaders we met were fighting for many issues, but their scope for action was obviously much more limited than when they were strongly supported by GUIDE. This raises the question of the autonomy capacities of subordinate collective actions. More formal external organizations often play a catalytic and mediating role, as was the case here. But they also constantly threaten the adaptation of struggles to local constraints and realities. Last but not least, the new generation remains highly sceptical as to the value of collective campaigning. This generational gap clearly emerged during focus group discussions run with young women. In brief, young and unmarried women have new aspirations, firstly for non-farm employment, but also for sexual freedom. At the same time, sexual violence still persists and may be on the rise for various reasons. These include the crisis of masculinity, competition among social groups being partly expressed through control over women’s bodies and increasing exposure to images of sexual violence (Anandhi & Kapadia, 2017). As a result, since women’s chastity remains a strong social norm (including among some Dalit groups who used to be more progressive), women’s mobility is still very much under control, posing a strong barrier to women’s activism. Yet many young women are not at all interested in getting involved in collective campaigning that does not fit their own constraints and aspirations. Their testimonials confirm the extent to which gender is also a matter of generational conflict among women themselves.

Conclusion The activism discussed here never sought to offer a substantial alternative to the current economic order. The goal was for its members to preserve their own space and autonomy, to have a louder voice within those spaces, which in turn meant fighting the unbridled mining of natural resources. It was not because Dalit women are more likely to be concerned about nature that the movement was restricted to this group. Quite pragmatically, they were the ones to be directly under threat, at a time when Dalit males and non-Dalit caste groups had long been turning to depend on non-farm labour. Non-Dalit women also suffered from the domestic water scarcity, but social norms prevented them from campaigning in public spaces. At the same time, the fragmented nature of the movement

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certainly explains why it gained acceptance. Radical confrontation with upper castes would have certainly been doomed to fail. This also applies for the movement’s regional footprint: by crossing village boundaries, the women managed to avoid direct confrontation with upper castes in their own villages, with whom they continue to have ties of interdependency. The issue of social reproduction has been a driving force. Standing up for the right to earn a living in one’s own place of living is the precise motivation of the movement. But social reproduction has many components and it means various things for various groups, constantly changing. With the urbanization of the sub-region, agriculture has almost died out. Sustaining life across the generations—the very essence of social reproduction—no longer depends on agriculture. Both the men and women of the young generation now aspire to urban living standards. At the household and lineage level, aspirations for social mobility require prestigious rituals, as well as dowry practices, which further strengthen discrimination against women. These, in turn, make having an urban income essential. Aspirations to make a living locally have become obsolete, at least for the time being. Given the various challenges rural Dalit youth face trying to earn a decent living in the city, the urban dream may turn out to be shortlived. “Peasant mooring” may then take over, as it always has (Racine, 1994). As we finalize this chapter, India is being confined as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The urban dream has shown its limits and may also contribute to a return to the land. As far as the issue of solidarity is concerned, rather than contrasting “traditional solidarities” based on ascribed identities such as kinship, caste, ethnicity, gender or space with “modern solidarities” based on voluntary commitment and free will, our analysis suggests it makes more sense to explore the articulation between various forms of solidarities. It is precisely these articulations that allow for new forms of interdependence to emerge. As far as the emergence of political subjects is concerned, our analysis highlights its emotional and affective components, in both framing repertoires of action and motivating individual commitment. Relations with the state are diverse, reflecting the diversity of state entities. GUIDE has deliberately remained financially independent to avoid capture and instrumentation, which is a highly common occurrence among women’s groups (Molyneux 2007). Their campaigns largely focused on negotiating with the state for the implementation of governmental schemes and for access to basic rights and infrastructures. Their

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negotiations were often chaotic and lengthy processes, yet yielded significant results and improvements, starting with the acquisition of negotiating skills with the state, as shown by Kalpana in other parts of Tamil Nadu (Kalpana, 2016). GUIDE also demanded new forms of regulation on sand mining. Here together work alongside a wide range of actors and networks proved successful, but it ultimately backfired. Instead of tempering sand plundering, state regulation instead further strengthened the pillage of natural resources by the strong mafia-like nexus between the state and private capital. More generally, the various and subtle alliances within that same nexus is what explains the urbanization and financialization of social reproduction, and the fact that women have ultimately largely lost control over their livelihood and their territories. Today, the region’s urbanization is a reality and its agriculture continues to dwindle away. But we should not discount the movement that existed. Rural Dalit women were able to take concrete action, to exert their voices and to campaign. Their trajectory brought about several irreversible impacts, both individually and collectively. The first is the empowerment of GUIDE members, albeit partial and incomplete, to become political leaders. They are still highly active and have continued on their own journeys. The history of GUIDE women’s campaigning highlights the challenges that underpin women’s campaigning, the violent, continuously renewed nature of threats to social reproduction, and the diverse strategies and tactics women deploy on a daily basis, in the ongoing experiment of making their voices heard (Anandhi & Kapadia, 2017). This history also sheds light on the conditions that allow such mobilization to come about and sustain itself over several decades. These include its embeddedness in daily aspirations, the co-construction of objectives and strategies with women, the driving role of emotions and affects, both in terms of the awareness of injustices and in the dynamics of the struggle, both collectively—the pleasure of being together—and individually—with a strong relationship of trust and gratitude towards the founders of the movement. Of equal importance is the construction of institutional legitimacy by means of expertise, ongoing mobilization, independence from the state and political parties, alliances with the judiciary, the media and other social movements, be these feminist or environmental. Social scientists cannot satisfy themselves with critical analysis. it is also their responsibility to detect interstices, “emergences” (Sousa Santos de 2014), to have a “bias for hope” (Hirschman 1971). This is the only way to make the invisible visible, as feminist research has always done, and in

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doing so, to strengthen the legitimacy of these forms of mobilizations and struggles, and thus support their spread.

References Agarwal, B. (1992). The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India. Feminist Studies, 18(1), 119–158. Anandhi, S., & Kapadia, K. (2017). Dalit Women: Vanguard of an Alternative Politics in India. Routledge. Bhattacharya, T. (2017). Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression. Pluto Press. Castells, M. (2012). Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Polity Press. Cornwall, A. (2007). Myths to Live by? Female Solidarity and Female Autonomy Reconsidered. Development and Change, 38(1), 149–168. Cornwall, A., Harrison, E., & Whitehead, A. (2007). Gender Myths and Feminist Fables: The Struggle for Interpretive Power in Gender and Development. Development and Change, 38(1), 1–20. Fraser, N. (2017). Crisis of Care? On the Social-Reproductive Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism. In T. Bhattacharya (Ed.), Social Reproduction Theory (pp. 21–36). Pluto. Garikipati, S., & Pfaffenzeller, S. (2012). The Gendered Burden of Liberalisation: The Impact of India’s Economic Reforms on Its Female Agricultural Labour. Journal of International Development, 24(7), 841–864. Gorringe, H. (2005). Untouchable Citizens: Dalit Movements and Democratization in Tamil Nadu. SAGE Publications India. Gorringe, H. (2017). Liberation Panthers and Pantheresses? Gender and Dalit Party Politics in South India. In S. Anandhi & K. Kapadia (Eds.), Dalit Women Vanguard of an Alternative Politics in India (pp. 131–157). Routledge. Guérin, I., Fouillet, C., Kumar, S., Roesch, M., & Venkatasubramanian, G. (2015). Is the demand for microcredit in rural Tamil Nadu sustainable? In The crises of microcredit (pp. 73–92). Zed Book. Guérin, I., Hillenkamp, I., & Verschuur, Ch. (2019). L’économie Solidaire sous le prisme du genre : Une analyse critique et possibiliste. Revue Française De Socioéconomie, 1(22), 107–124. Guérin, I., & Kumar, S. (2017). Market, freedom and the illusions of microcredit. Patronage, caste, class and patriarchy in Rural South India. The Journal of Development Studies, 53(5), 741–754. Guérin, I., & Kumar, S. (2020). Unpayable debts. Debt, gender and sex in financialized India. The American Ethnologist, 47 (3), 219–233.

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Guérin, I., Nordman, C., & Reboul, E. (2019). The gender of debt and the financialisation of development. Insights from rural Southern India. CEB Working Paper, 19(16). Habermas, J. (1992). l’espace public. Archéologie de la publicité comme cimension constitutive de la société bourgeoise [Strukturwandel Der Offentlichkeit, 1962], Trad. M. B. de Launay,. Payot. Harriss-White, B., & Janakarajan, S. (Eds.). (2004). Rural India Facing the 21st Century: Essays on Long Term Change and Recent Development Policy, London: Anthem South Asian Studies. Anthem South Asian Studies. Harriss-White, B., & Michelutti, L. (2019). The Wild East: Criminal Political Economies in South Asia. UCL Press. Hirschman, A. O. (1971). A Bias for Hope: Essays on Development and Latin America. Yale University Press. Jasper, J. M. (1997). The Art of Moral Protest. University of Chicago Press. Jeyaranjan, J. (2019). Sand and the politics of plunder in Tamil Nadu, India. In B. Harriss-White & L. Michelutti (Eds.), The wild East: Criminal political economies in South Asia. UCL Press. Kabeer, N. (2008). Mainstreaming Gender in Social Protection for the Informal Economy. Commonwealth Secretariat. Kalpana, K. (2016). Women, microfinance and the state in neo-lberal India. Routledge. Kapadia, K. (1995). Siva and her sisters: Gender, caste, and class in rural South India. Westview Press. Mencher, J. P. (1974). Conflicts and contradictions in the’Green Revolution’: The case of Tamil Nadu. Economic and Political Weekly, 309–323. Michelutti, L., Hoque, A., Martin, N., Picherit, D., Rollier, P., Ruud, A. E., & Still, C. (2018). Mafia Raj: The Rule of Bosses in South Asia. Stanford University Press. Mohanty, C. T. (1984). Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Boundary, 2, 333–358. Mohanty, C. T. (2003). ‘Under Western eyes’ revisited: Feminist solidarity through anticapitalist struggles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(2), 499–535. Molyneux, M. (2007). Organisations populaires et Réseaux de Solidarité de Femmes: La Redécouverte d’une Ressource Pour Les Politiques. In Ch.Verschuur (Ed.), Genre, Mouvements Populaires Urbains et Environnement, Cahiers Genre et Développement (pp. 385–403). L’Harmattan. Picherit, D. (2015). When Microfinance Collapses: Development and Politics in Andhra Pradesh. In I. Guérin, M. Labie, & J.-M. Servet (Eds.), The Crises of Microcredit (pp. 170–186). Zed Book. Racine, J.-L. (Ed.). (1994). Les Attaches de l’homme. Les Editions de la MSH.

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Shah, A., Lerche, J., Axelby, R., Benbabaali, D., Donegan, J., & Raj, V. Thakur. (2018). Ground down by growth. Tribe, caste, class, and inequality in twentyfirst century India. Pluto Press. Sousa Santos de, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South. Justice against epistemicide. Routledge. Still, C. (2015). The Imperatives of Honour: Dalit Women and Patriarchy in South India. Social Science Press. Thara, K. (2021). In Search of Home: Citizenship, Law and the Politics of the Poor. Cambridge University Press. Verschuur, Ch. (2013). Reproduction sociale et care comme échange économicoaffectif. L’articulation des rapports sociaux dans l’économie domestique et globalisée. In Genre, migrations et globalisation de la reproduction sociale. Cahiers Genre et Développement, n° 9 (pp. 23–36). L’Harmattan.

CHAPTER 6

Local Transformations in Batallas (Bolivia) and the “Inexhaustible” Capacity of Women to Sustain Life Ivonne Farah, Isabelle Hillenkamp, Gabriela Ruesgas, and Fernanda Sostres

I. Farah · G. Ruesgas · F. Sostres Postgraduate Programme in Development Sciences (CIDES-UMSA), Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia e-mail: [email protected] G. Ruesgas e-mail: [email protected] F. Sostres e-mail: [email protected] I. Hillenkamp (B) French Institute of Research for Development (IRD), Centre for Social Science Studies on African, American and Asian Worlds (CESSMA), Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1_6

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Introduction Our study in Batallas focuses on the perceptions and practices of social reproduction of women heads of households, caregivers, part of them members of producers’ associations. By social reproduction, we understand the “set of activities and relationships through which our life and labour capacity are daily reconstructed” (Federici, 2017). We analyse how these women’s perceptions and practices interact with the institutions and organization that forge the territory—families, peasant unions, neighbourhood associations, producers’ associations, municipal government, schools, day-care, health services. These institutions and organizations carry their own perceptions and practices which, as a whole, give rise to the fact that social reproduction continues to be based on women’s work and to be considered a private and not a political issue. We question the assumption that solidarity, as a conscious or deliberate principle, underlies the organization of social reproduction at different levels. In particular, we consider that collective forms of economic organization, such as producers’ associations, do not necessarily embody social and solidarity economy (SSE) practices as a political aspiration. Rather, we study the potential of these organizations for the recognition of women as workers, bearers of social rights, and as germinal spaces of common forms of management of social reproduction. Batallas represents a case of a rural area in transformation, submitted to strong pressure on social reproduction. It is a municipality located in the Northern Altiplano of the Department of La Paz, in a region with a strong Aymara identity, expressed in particular in the maintenance of grass-roots community organizations. Of the 17,426 inhabitants of the municipality, 87% live in 42 scattered rural communities (whose population is in between 200 and 1000 inhabitants). The remaining 13% live in the village of Batallas (which is considered, from an administrative viewpoint, an urban area). Like other municipalities in the region, Batallas shelters a high number of producers’ associations in the agriculture and livestock sector. At the same time, Batallas is located only 52 kilometres to the cities of La Paz and El Alto, the country’s largest conurbation. This proximity has favoured a re-composition and intensification of the relations with urban areas, through the expansion of transport, trade and the multiplication of urban food markets, and the development of nonagricultural jobs. Multi-activity is becoming an everyday fact in Batallas, with rural families diversifying their economic activities and combining

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them in different territorial spaces, both through their insertion in wage labour and in non-paid urban and rural jobs, without abandoning agricultural and livestock production. Although this diversification of economic activities has a long history, the novelty is that it is now connected to the expansion of the capitalist market. As a result of this process and of the general fall in birth rate in Bolivia, between 2002 and 2012 Batallas lost 2% of its population, in particular of its male one due to migration, leaving a balance of 106 women per 100 men (to be compared with the departmental average of 102–100), and 39% of women-headed households (INE, 2013). Batallas experiences a feminization of subsistence agriculture, while non-agricultural jobs are being masculinized. Consequently, women become more visible in mixed producers’ associations in the agricultural and livestock sector, in their own emerging associations and in spaces of political representation, at the community and peasant union levels. One effect of this trend, combined with the persistence of a large proportion of the population with unmet basic needs (76% in 2012 according to INE, 2013) and of insufficient and precarious social services—in spite of the relatively high number of childcare services (see part II)—is to force women to “stretch” or “versatile” their time. Women remain the main responsible for work and social relations necessary for maintaining life in a context where productive and reproductive work has already become unsustainable for them. Batallas thus illustrates a particular type of modernization of the rural world in conditions of a sort of social precariousness, experienced in recent years in all Bolivia, in which subsistence activities organized at both the family and association levels are part of social reproduction. Together with scarce public services and domestic and community work—private services being virtually absent—these activities make up an expanded space of social reproduction of life, which is primarily sustained by women’s work. Despite this recent expansion, it must be noted that family and community have long constituted the basis of social reproduction in rural areas of the Altiplano region. This explains why the “imposition” and conversion of social reproduction into a “natural attribute” of the “psyche and feminine personality … supposedly coming from the depths of our being as women” (Federici 2013) continue to build

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the “acquired dispositions” (Bourdieu, 1996)1 that forge social representations. These representations are based on a “maternalized image” of women and operate to such an extent that they occult the increase in women’s productive work and become one of the major difficulties for their being recognized as economic subjects. At the same time, it is precisely based on their “maternalized image” that Aymara women may achieve justice, in the triple sense forged by Nancy Fraser of recognition, redistribution and political representation. Undoubtedly, this image must be carefully dealt with in the feminist discourse in favour of equality. Based on fieldwork at different levels (see below), our analysis is structured into three parts. Part 1 presents the socio-economic dynamics of Batallas, highlighting old and new inequalities based on gender and other power relations. Part 2 unravels the social reproduction institutions and practices that characterize this territory and the social representations that sustain them. Part 3 analyses the political organization of the main actors concerned, from local to national level, focussing on the mechanisms and processes of participation and deliberation and their relations with the State. We conclude on the possibility of problematizing social reproduction as a women’s issue, in families, producers’ associations, social organizations and in political bodies aimed at guaranteeing the exercise of women’s rights at different territorial levels. Methodology Our field survey aimed to capture the different dimensions of the abovementioned issues through a qualitative survey deployed at several levels. At the local level (Batallas), our access to the field was based on the work and contacts established for several years by the CIDES-UMSA team in the framework of projects in favour of women’s participation in the solidarity economy (Farah, 2016). With the collaboration of an Aymaraspeaking interviewer familiar with the local context and with the issues involved in this research, we conducted twenty-nine in-depth interviews with women and men heads of household. In order to assess different situations of access to social services, income-generating activities and political decision-making centres, our sample included nineteen interviews in three rural communities and ten others in the urban centre of Batallas.

1 Central subjective elements according to Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus.

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In addition, a variety of situations of women and men heads of singleparent, two-parent and extended family households, and with children in different age categories, were assessed. The data collected, according to a semi-structured interview guide, concerned the composition of the household in relation to migration, multi-activity and multi-residence strategies; the intra-family division of domestic work; access to and perception of social services; associative practices and income-generating activities; and participation and representation in social organizations. In order to explore this last dimension in greater depth, we carried out three focus groups with women’s, men’s and mixed territorial organizations (respectively the local federations “Bartolina Sisa” and “Tupak Katari” of peasant unions and a neighbourhood association in the urban centre of Batallas) and two focus groups with representatives of mixed and women’s producer associations. These groups focused on the participants’ perceptions of the needs of their communities or associations and on the existence (or not) of local expressions of these needs and of political intermediation that convert them into demands or proposals. Also at the local level, additional interviews on the political and socio-economic context were conducted with key informants (the mayor of the municipality and municipal councillors, the technical team of the Municipal Initial Development Programme IDP and several NGOs). Observations and secondary data were collected, including from producer associations. At the departmental and national levels, in addition to document collection, we relied on ten interviews (five at each level) with leaders of federations of producer associations and the departmental federations of Tupak Katari and Bartolina Sisa peasant unions, as well as political leaders in the Legislative Assembly, ministries and the government of the Department of La Paz. Through these interviews, we aimed to better understand the trajectories and individual and collective conditions of the politicization of social reproduction, and to identify continuities and breaks between levels. To this end, semi-structured interview guides were drawn up specifically for each interviewee. All the material collected was transcribed, translated from Aymara into Spanish when necessary, and discussed and interpreted at team meetings.

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Batallas: Old and New Inequalities in a Rural Territory in Flux The dynamics of social reproduction in Batallas, within the framework of the aforementioned transitions, is still marked by the profound changes brought in the rural areas by the Agrarian Reform of 1953, mainly in Northern and Central Bolivian Altiplano, and by the long memory of the traditional Aymara community. The 1953 land reform abolished the regime of haciendas —very large farms using indigenous community inhabitants as bonded labour—which prevailed, among others, in Batallas. Subsequently, the usurped communal lands were given back to the inhabitants under the form of family ownership (solar familiar) and communities were reconstituted, giving rise to peasantry. Yet, only men were granted the right to land ownership; women could only obtain it as widows with minor children.2 This had great consequences: the communal governance structure and its representation were left in the hands of the emerging peasant unions—one per community—made up of men in their quality of landholders, hence strengthening their role as representatives of the family and the production unit. Women were excluded from any visible representation and their work in agriculture and livestock was left in the dark (Uriona, 2010; Colque & SoriaGalvarro, 2014). Generally speaking, maintaining the right of land ownership and membership in rural communities requires the fulfilment of rotating responsibilities and obligations, such as to hold a charge (cargo) in the community government. A similar logic is observed in neighbourhood associations (or neighbourhood councils, juntas de vecinos ) in urban areas, such as the small town of Batallas. Based on the status as land and/or house owners, these organizations represent the residents’ claims to urban rights. In the last three decades, women’ struggles crystallized into public policies for gender equity (Farah & Wanderley, 2015). This has favoured, among other things, women’s right to land (both access to land and land ownership), regardless of their marital status (INRA Law 1996), as well as quota of representation in elected public charges (Quota Law No. 1779 of 1997; Law of the Electoral System No. 026 of 2010; and Law No. 348 of 2013 to guarantee women a life free from violence). Subsequently, 2 According to Colque and Soria Galvarro (2014, 7), at national level, 98.8% of the new land titles were issued in favour of men.

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women were formally recognized as representatives of peasant communities, giving them the opportunity to participate in agrarian procedures for land titling and make their right to land effective (Law No. 35 45 of Community Redirection of the Land Reform of 2006). However, the existence of a right does not ensure its exercise and the traditional form of representation in rural areas tends to be maintained, as can be seen in the composition of the community and peasant union authorities. In Batallas as in other regions, women gain access to land in lower proportions than men (in number of properties and surface area), and they do so in subsistence units, simultaneously with the weakening of small family agriculture that causes the temporary or quasi-permanent emigration of other family members. Migration, paradoxically, is a means of ensuring the continuity of agriculture and to face the limitations imposed by the small scale of properties (minifundio) and to hold up the erosion of the community (Urioste et al., 2007). The immediate effect of this is to reduce the relative contribution of agricultural activity to household income and to increase the share of other activities (transport, trade, public employment, etc.). This configuration also leads to changes in the uses of the land, such as the allocation of larger areas to livestock (dairy cows, which provide a more regular income than agriculture, subject to the seasonality of harvests) and increased market uses (buyingselling and renting land). These correlated change processes reinforce and forge multi-activity, which itself relies on the double and sometimes triple residence allowed by the proximity of the cities of La Paz and El Alto. Agrarian change, together with the increase in non-agricultural occupations and the daily or weekly mobility, is finally producing new family configurations, new senses of social belonging and new inequalities inside and outside the home. Inequalities are rooted, in particular, in the origin and forms of income, expressed in differentiated value given to the occupations: the closer occupations are to urban dynamics, the more appreciated. As a result, rural households are multi-active, but with (mainly female) feet rooted to the ground; households in the village of Batallas distribute their members’ working force among commerce, transport and services activities, leading to larger (mainly male) territorial displacements but maintaining social ties with rural areas and the large nearby cities. These changes in any case contradict the official discourse—echoed by social and political organizations—that describes

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rural communities as places of homogeneous, static, harmonious, equitable and complementary relations that would be inherent to the Aymara culture.

Organization, Value and Meanings of Social Reproduction in Batallas This scenario marks an important change in the perceptions of work, solidarity, female and male roles in production and social reproduction, and the very meaning of life. However, social reproduction continues to be fundamentally based on women’s work at household and community levels and on certain public services. Examining the institutions, practices, representations and system of values that shape this organization is necessary to understand the current configuration of families, communities and public services and to situate producers’ associations in this panorama. Women’s Work in the Face of Families, Communities and Public Services Our interviews with household leaders in Batallas confirm that most of domestic and care work at family level is provided by women, with men generally taking part in some specific tasks, like washing their clothes and possibly their children’s ones when they are at home. The sexual division of labour is unequal, particularly when men are absent and women take up family agricultural work, in the case of the communities, or small businesses (e.g. sale of agricultural products or fabrics/textiles), in the case of urban centres or villages. While, in the past, some degree of inequality in the distribution of household chores between men and women may have existed, today inequality is increased by the absence of men and justified by it and by men’s alleged lack of time; or by the simple fact that “it has always been like that”: mothers take care and fathers provide. The one who takes care is there, the one who provides not… In general, women do not condemn this division as unfair. At the most, when we ask them about it, they reply that “it’s not fair” because they are “tired” and have to get up at 4 in the morning, but they do not say that this work should be divided into equal parts with men. Their vision is that it needs to be shared with other women, and indeed, they call upon their mother, mother-in-law, daughter, daughter-in-law, sister, etc., when

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the burden of domestic and care work becomes too heavy. Thus, grandparents, particularly grandmothers, but also girls and boys—when they’re not at school—become pillars of domestic and care work in families. In other words, they become people who are supposed not require protection nor care to the extent that they are able to provide them and perform domestic and productive tasks. Only people with disabilities escape this logic. As for the community, focus groups with peasant unions highlight that its public role consists mainly in the regulation of certain public services and social relations, particularly regarding land management, family conflicts and domestic violence. This role emphasizes the importance for the inhabitants of participating in community governance structures: peasant unions led by men, although—as we will see in part III—they are gradually permeated by women. In any case, in the communities as well as in the urban neighbourhood associations, inhabitants organize in networks of proximity that develop reciprocal exchanges and other actions to face historical shortcomings in infrastructures and basic services (mainly water, education, health, electricity, basic sanitation and public spaces). In turn, availability of and access to public services that may reduce housework or improve the conditions for social reproduction (childcare, education and health services) depend on a complex set of factors such as distance, the quality of infrastructure and services, and their cultural adaptation to the context and the inhabitants’ perceptions. In the urban centre and in the communities, we observe a widespread criticism towards care centres, because of poor quality of infrastructure and care, justifying that families only use it as a last resort. In the communities, childcare centre employees are proposed by the peasant union to the town hall, which generally endorses its proposal. The union designates mothers of families for a turn of one year, with the right to receive a salary, in so far as they are considered able to take care of children because they are mothers. Distances, including within the same community due to dispersed settlements, and operating schedules, incompatible with agricultural (or even commercial) activity, are further constraints. There are no parents’ associations that could make public proposals or criticisms on the management of childcare centres and the design of their services. The only social control body is the peasant union or neighbourhood association, which does not generally consider quality of care as a part of their skills or priorities.

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Schools are another important matter in the current organization of social reproduction and its possibilities of transformation. Overall, schools are both over-valued by the population, due to the importance of children’s education to access vocational training, and criticized in private for the poor quality of infrastructure, of teaching and of school breakfast, as well as teachers’ absenteeism. Yet public criticism focuses on the material aspects (infrastructures and equipment in particular). Parents’ associations exist, but they are mainly used to delegate to mothers some logistical tasks, such as the distribution of school breakfasts. As to peasant unions and neighbourhood associations’ education commissions, their main role is to control administrative issues and to deal sporadically with issues related to the quality of teaching. As for health, finally, the city of Batallas, despite its growing population has only one health centre (called “hospital”). We observe, in private, complaints about the lack of space in the centre, ill treatment by the staff, lack of specialized doctors and medicines, resulting in patients being referred to bigger hospitals in La Paz or El Alto. According to the National Population and Housing Census for 2012, 80% of the population in Batallas do not access these services, 76% of women aged 15 and over give births at home and only 11% of population has a health insurance. Our investigation confirms this matter of fact and explains some of the reasons for this, with a significant proportion of our interviewees reporting that they resort to traditional medicine or renounce health care rather than resorting to the health centre. In general, we note that the population tends to believe that social services are not the means through which rights are accessed and exercised. One of the explanations lies in the very nature of social protection policies, that have favoured direct monetary transfers through bonds that induce people to face deficiencies via the market. This type of mechanism was introduced in Bolivia in the 1990s, but has been considerably expanded by Evo Morales’ government since 2006. Another explanation lies in the absence of agreement on the minimum quality threshold that a person deserves. This leads to a more general explanation, namely the absence of a conception of oneself as a holder of rights, which in the case of rural women is deepened by the non-recognition of themselves as producers and workers. Consequently, even if dissatisfaction is a condition for the formulation of new issues, individual criticism—as observed in our interviews—does not turn into a collective or public demand, but rather in individual strategies to “flee” from the service and solve the problem by

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one’s own. For the time being, the fact that social protection takes refuge in daily life practices and in the private sphere is a form of containment of the sense of right. It makes it possible for public policies to maintain conceptions and forms of management of social reproduction that strengthen existing gender systems and the vulnerability of population, especially the most underprivileged (Paulson, 2013). Producers’ Associations As it is common in the region, Batallas is home to a large number— approximately 52—of producers’ associations in the agriculture and livestock sector. Some, usually the oldest and/or more consolidated ones, are mixed associations (men and women). They were created to bring together families of producers from the same branch of activity in one or more communities. Others are women’s associations, which, in Batallas as in the rest of the region, are generally the result of local or international NGO projects aimed at increasing women’s autonomy and access to income. Some of these associations—14 in our 2017 survey, most of them mixed associations of dairy producers—have organized into a Regional Federation of Multiactive Producers’ Associations of Batallas (FAMPREB), to act as a representative with local government and other institutions. During our interviews with women and men heads of households, members of producers’ associations and two focus groups with representatives of mixed and women’s associations, we questioned the place that these associations occupy in the local organization of social reproduction. These observations lead us to distance ourselves from a narrow vision, which would have these associations participating directly in this organization, based on presumed solidarity relations. Rather, we take a broad view of this issue, highlighting the role that these associations may play in the recognition of women as workers, bearers of social rights and in the expression and politicization of issues related to social reproduction. Mixed associations aim to enhance the value of production through specialization, quality improvement, the centralization of products and collective sales. Production in these associations is family-based or individual. Due to the absence of men in many families—engaged in new activities, typically in El Alto or La Paz—women take on the daily work in the associations, which are hence experiencing a trend towards feminization. Especially in the more consolidated associations, women reinforce

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their self-esteem as “ranchers” (ganaderas ) and more broadly as specialized and skilled producers. They affirm their capacity to generate a monetary income, and the right to be, at least partially, outside the home and to participate into spaces of training. This helps them breaking their isolation and creating an image of themselves as producers. At the same time, the logic of mixed associations is alien to the home and to social reproduction. In general, this type of associations maintains a masculine discourse, paying exclusive attention to the money value of production, leaving aside the objective and subjective conditions of social reproduction. The Regional Federation FAMPREB typically focuses on obtaining benefits to improve production processes and expand and secure markets. One direct consequence is that women’s work-overload, due to their work at the associations in addition to their homework, is usually not addressed. The possibility for women to influence this discourse at their associations and at the FAMPREB is low and even lower when they replace the absent father or husband without being recognized in their own name. Another factor that hampers the emergence of this and other issues is the fact there are few moments of meeting and exchange, except when depositing products for sale. And when it comes to representation in government bodies, networks or others, men assume the leading roles, although the greatest share of work might be done by women. Women’s associations present a different profile. Most of them are active in sectors like bakery, greenhouses and handicrafts that are different from agricultural production at family level. This provides women with the opportunity to acquire new skills and knowledge and, in some cases, economic returns, which are valued for their contribution to the family economy and well-being. These associations also help women breaking isolation and generating a space of conviviality, close solidarity and moral support among members. It provides them with a possibility of building a collective identity as women, reversing the imaginary of individual stories without connection with each other. Spaces of sociability within the associations enable them to express, sometimes for the first time, problems such as domestic violence and the fear of being abandoned by one’s husband and not being able to feed one’s family. All these possibilities are positively valued by the women, even if these processes are not free of conflicts and are clearly limited by a series of factors. Time constraints and distance from home is a first issue. In most cases, the new activities have been proposed by the local or international NGOs sponsoring the projects and have not been chosen by the

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women themselves. This is a great difference with mixed associations, which trajectory starts from the development of family farming, integrating the successive phases of the same production process on their own initiative, whether with external support or not. In the case of women’s associations, compatibility between the new activities and their constraints, resulting in particular from domestic and agricultural work, has typically not been taken into account. Consequently, women’s associations tend to contribute to multi-activity and to adding more work to women’s load. In some cases, women organize in shifts of 3 or 4 who rotate each day in order to carry out the production at the associations. In all cases, time constraints mean that women run the permanent risk of having to disaffiliate themselves from their association. Lack of time also limits their possibility to constituting themselves as social and political subjects. Even though moral support of other women in the associations is positively valued, it is almost never converted into collective action. Besides time constraints, the main limitation lies in the fact of the discussed issues—violence, abandonment, the difficulty of ensuring productive and care work…—being understood as particular issues that affect a certain woman at a certain point in her life and not as public issues that structurally affect women, for the fact of being women. Thus, if these women’s spaces allow these issues to be expressed, they do not generally lead to their politicization, especially since the activities differ from family agricultural production and since their economic return is unreliable. This profile may reactivate the imaginary and practices of the “mothers clubs” of past decades which have contributed “to create a maternalized image of women, in which their knowledge as shepherds, weavers and responsible for cultural rituals (ritualistas ) was devalued” (Arnold, Yapita, quoted in Rivera Cusicanqui, 2010), and to replace this knowledge with the acquisition of personal skills useful for their work as housewives. In summary, producers’ associations contribute to introducing certain changes in the local configuration of social reproduction. These changes are mostly incipient and in any case differentiated: the recognition of women as workers, as potential bearers of rights, in mixed associations, whose economic contribution is socially recognized; the development of spaces of female solidarity and expression of issues related to their role as mothers and wives in female associations. At the same time, these associations and processes face limitations, such as the persistence of a

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productivist bias in mixed associations and the fragility of women’s associations, rooted in areas of competence that are poorly valued precisely because they are considered to be feminine.

The Politicization of Social Reproduction: The Fabric of Political Subjects from Local to National Level Shaped by the socio-economic processes and institutions that form the territory, social reproduction is also part of a larger process of politicization of social actors that goes beyond municipal boundaries. These include territorial organizations, such as peasant unions, which have a local basis and develop political action at departmental and national level (part III.1), as well as movements or federations in the fields of peasant economic organizations, solidarity economy and fair trade, that have developed first at national level and whose agenda and connections with local producers’ associations need to be analysed (part III.2). Territorial Organizations As we have seen above (part I), rural communities as well as urban neighbourhoods are structured by territorial organizations: peasant unions in the first case and neighbourhood associations in the second, that are home to practices of reciprocity and redistribution and collective actions. Peasant unions as well as neighbourhood associations are organized into larger bodies, ranging from the canton or area level (union of communities or union of neighbourhoods), to the province, department and national level. According to their level of action, these structures are interlocutors of the different levels of organization of the State. At national level, peasant unions are organized into the Single Union Confederation of Peasant, Indigenous and Native Workers of Bolivia (CSUTCB) and, with regard to women, into the National Confederation of Peasant, Indigenous and Native Women “Bartolinas Sisas” (CNMCIOB-S).3 These structures are known as “the Tupaks” and “the Bartolinas”, respectively. Urban neighbourhood associations, on their 3 The first national organization of peasant women was the Federation of Peasant Women Bartolina Sisa, founded in 1980 and which emerged as an organization under the umbrella of CSUTCB. Initially, it was formed by Aymara and Quechua peasant women.

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part, are grouped into the Federation of Neighbourhood Councils called FEJUVE. In the communities, peasant unions are the organic grass-roots support of the Tupaks. As for the Bartolinas, they are organized from the subcentral level (a group of several communities) and at the higher levels of aggregation, but they do not have an organization at community level. This women’s organization is subordinate to the CSUTCB and does not have grass-roots support. In the best case, the community backs up one woman by electing her as a representative to the Bartolina at sub-central level, usually through a vote at the peasant union. Currently, the peasant union structures are privileged interlocutors of the ruling party (Movimiento Al Socialismo, MAS, from Evo Morales). This recognition has been strengthened by the fact of the peasant unions having achieved an active presence in national politics, as well as by new social, political and economic competences in the management of their territory. Through this dual role, the peasant unions coordinate and represent interests with regard to the right to land and ethnic and cultural rights,4 while the neighbourhood associations coordinate and represent demands for the improvement of urban life. Women have always been present in these structures, but they typically participated in community tasks much more than in decisionmaking—at least not publicly (Ticona Alejo, 2003). This situation is now undergoing some changes as a result of multi-activity that has caused, especially among men, a detachment of social responsibilities. As a consequence, women increasingly assume the representation of their families, which implies obligations to the community and guarantees the family’s belonging to the territory and access to protection and benefits. The fact that women substitute men in this position does not mean that they have a capacity for change. Indeed, women exercise representation under a predefined script, guided by the already existing agenda of the community and by the predefined competences of communal governments. In both

In 2006, with the establishment of Evo Morales’ government as a result of the mobilization of popular and indigenous forces, it became a nationwide organization, changing its name to peasant, indigenous and native women, in line with official discourse and in an attempt to redefine its Andean identity and its political participation as a protagonist of the “change process” (Sánchez et al., 2015). 4 For example, the Bartolinas proposed the “chola paceña” Law in the department of La Paz, which defends the right of the Aymara women to wear their own clothing.

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cases, demands have to be collective, material and “gender-neutral”— they express the socially acceptable interests of families and communities. Women’s representation faces an adverse context that continues to value and prioritize adult males for their mastery of modern codes (dominant language and culture, learned, in particular, at school and during military service). This situation is being gradually reversed by the increased access of young women to education and by legal norms to ensure parity and political alternation, although the perceptions of women’s supposedly lower capacity of representation in public spaces have not significantly changed. Women’s participation is also limited by their obligation to frame their daily practice as leaders in their reputation as women-mothers aware that any failure to comply with this role makes them vulnerable to criticism and delegitimization. This explains why women mostly assume their participation as something external and added to “the norm”. New standards might be set by young women, although their participation is as substitutes and almost anonymous—because of the position being in the holder’s name and because of their age, they are subordinated to the authority of the older adults. Despite this and the fact that their entry into these spaces, forced by circumstances, means reducing their personal projects, they assume this experience as a school of learning. In spite of all these limitations, the Bartolinas offer a bridge for some women to actively participate in public management: at municipal and national government, at chamber of deputies and senators, or other State institutions, from where they may promote norms and legal provisions to encourage political participation (e.g. norms on parity and alternation), actions against violence5 and actions in favour of women’s health (e.g. campaigns to prevent cervical cancer), partially linked to protection and care. This shows, in a way, a greater autonomy of the Bartolinas at the highest aggregation levels (federation and confederation level), but which is built through contradictory processes. On the one hand, greater autonomy is indeed achieved thanks to the long individual political trajectories that led these women to these levels of representation and to the

5 In the peasant world, domestic violence is becoming increasingly important as a gender-specific demand placing on the public stage a central aspect of inequitable relations of power. Undoubtedly, the validity and dissemination of Law No. 348 of 2013 against violence provides the Bartolinas with the framework to legitimize this demand, which tends otherwise to be treated as an individual and not a social problem.

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fact that, at these levels, their political participation is somehow relieved from the pressure of their grass-roots community on taking care on their reputation as women-mothers. However, this does not mean that the possibilities for the Bartolinas of generating their own agenda are not limited. These remain indeed limited and even almost non-existent due to their subordinated position in relation to the government and to the Tupaks, which supposedly common cause they should support. Moreover, and paradoxically, the possibilities for the Bartolinas to develop their own agenda is hampered by the law of parity, which is presented and perceived by them as an end point to any feminine or feminist claim, as it would solve all problems thanks to the presence of women in legislative and governmental institutions. Some Bartolinas leaders report that men do not let them speak in high-level meetings and that they consider gender equity to continue to be an objective of their organization and not an achievement. The legitimacy of Bartolinas participating in public management has also been challenged by existing tensions with grass-roots peasant women. Their relation adopts prebendary characteristics in a sort of parody of some State and NGO projects, where the Bartolinas have sometimes encouraged discretionary practices without proper care in the management of resources6 , contrary to the idealized vision of the indigenous world as good and transparent managers. This has weakened their legitimacy in communities, which they only reach “occasionally”, when they obtain funding to implement projects. This discredit has not reached the male unions, despite being equally or mostly involved in similar practices. Because of all these factors, the national Bartolinas leadership has limited ability to aggregate grass-roots demands and tends to impose top-down proposals rooted in national government plans and mandates. According to our interviews with Bartolinas leaders, this position is justified by the fact that, with a government headed by an indigenous peasant, their demands would already be incorporated into the government’s development plans and their autonomy as an organization would be irrelevant. This shows that the constitution of this political subject at department and national level interacts in a complex way with the local 6 The Bartolinas managed significant amounts of money obtained through their alliance with MAS, from donations from private agencies, from the Indigenous Fund, “specializing” themselves in implementing projects for women of small amounts and ephemeral effects.

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level, exhibiting more ruptures than continuities. The ruptures or at least inflections between the territorial levels of organization generate discomfort in the local instances that maintain a weak relation with their national leaders, suspected of being primarily preoccupied to reproduce their own leadership and function as privileged interlocutors of the governing party and go-between of its slogans and instructions. In this sense, it must be said that today the Bartolinas unfold their relationship with the State without the mediation of NGOs or other institutions. This, in addition to allowing the government to present itself as a popular power, makes this organization feel like part of the State power. One effect of this is that Bartolinas identify themselves with government’s policies and consider that their own agenda should complement and not question these policies. Federations and Movements of Peasant Economic Organizations, Solidarity Economy and Fair Trade Besides peasant unions, federations or movements of peasant economic organizations, and solidarity economy or fair trade have emerged in Bolivia at national and sometimes department level for some time. To a large extent, this has been possible through support of NGOs or development cooperation institutions. Their political agenda—in particular, the place reserved for social reproduction, solidarity and gender—as well as their relations with local actors deserves to be examined. One important organization in the agriculture and livestock sector in Bolivia is the Coordination of Integration of Peasant Economic Organisations (CIOEC). Founded in 1991, with the assistance of international development cooperation, it aims at coordinating and representing the Peasant Economic Organisations (OECAs)—a generic category that includes different forms of organization, such as associations or cooperatives of rural producers in the agricultural and livestock sector. Formed first at national level, CIOEC subsequently (from 2003) began its “regionalization”, consisting of the creation of departmental coordination offices to increase its presence throughout the country. From around 2005, incorporating a terminology that had emerged during the World Social Forums in Porto Alegre in 2001 and 2002 and which was recognized by CIOEC leaders as corresponding to existing practices in the OECAs, it assumed the principles of solidarity economy, food sovereignty, peasant self-management and biodiversity (Hillenkamp, 2013). In 2009,

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according to a census carried out by CIOEC, there were 661 OECAs involved in agriculture and livestock activities in Bolivia. CIOEC’s political agenda includes “social welfare” of rural producers, in addition to the conventional objective of economic benefit. However, this objective faces difficulties of several kinds. In our interview, a CIOEC leader points out the limitations of rural producers’ associations in developing solidarity relationships that would allow them to decisively improve incomes and living conditions. As a result, producers’ associations continue to be perceived locally as not only precarious but also private organizations—a simple aggregation of family interests—and not as political subjects. Municipal governments, that manage budgets for social welfare programmes, would not consider them as legitimate interlocutors and would focus on territorial organizations. In addition, all existing rural producers’ associations or cooperatives country-wide are far from affiliated with CIOEC. This is particularly the case in Batallas, where none of the associations at municipal level was affiliated with CIOEC. Most of them are even unaware of its existence. For all these reasons, at both municipal and national levels, peasant unions and their federations, and not producers’ associations and CIOEC, are the main interlocutors of governments and the State. However, members and leaders of peasant unions can also be members of producers’ associations, which enable them to appear as promoters of “community economy”, the contours of which have never been clearly defined.7 While CIOEC is struggling to get the solidarity economy, food sovereignty, peasant self-management and biodiversity project recognized in rural areas, another organization, the Solidarity Economy and Fair Trade Movement (MESyCJ) formed in 2009. It was born from the reconfiguration of older organizations: the National Community Trading Network (RENACC), created in 1996, and the Platform for Solidarity Economy and Fair Trade in Bolivia, which functioned between 2006 and 2008. The Platform was created in the context of the preparation of the new Political Constitution and was supported by a Canadian NGO which 7 The notion of community economy was introduced in the 2009 Constitution and has been incorporated in several subsequent laws (Law No. 144 of Community Agricultural Production Revolution from 2011 and Law No. 338 of Peasant, Indigenous, Economic Organisations and Community Economic Organisations from 2013). It did not recognize the experience of producers’ associations, but rather idealized a form of economic organization of the whole community under the aegis of peasant unions, that is not proven in practice (Hillenkamp & Wanderley, 2017).

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uses the vocabulary of solidarity economy and fair trade. Originally aimed at political lobby at national level, the MESyCJ had to shrink from its ambitions in the face of its inability to integrate the major organizations of the sector. This limited capacity and the weakness of concrete action in the field of solidarity in general, combined with a tendency of public policies to favour the private and state economy, have encouraged a fragmentation of solidarity economy actors at national level. In 2012, peasant and handicraft organizations concerned by obtaining fair trade certification grouped together within another organization, the National Fair Trade Coordination (CNCJ-B), and began exercising political lobby at the Deputy Ministry of Internal Trade and Exports. In our interview, leaders of CNCJ-B defend the idea that fair trade represents a “transparent” and more operational approach than solidarity economy, an idea that tends to bypass the debate on strengthening productive organizations. All in all, the CNCJ-B maintains an important action aimed at strengthening its own organization and developing policy advocacy. Overall, solidarity economy at departmental and national level presents a complex configuration, in which several organizations co-exist and often compete for the representation of the sector, according to different logics of aggregation and construction of networks, movements or platforms of coordination. In this context, the political agenda of solidarity versus community economy tends to be dominated by peasant federations that occupy a position of strength within the government, and this although their local function is socio-political and not socio-economic. Finally, a common point of federations and movements in the field of solidarity economy and fair trade in Bolivia is that they generally deal with gender as a matter of parity and/or of inclusion of family members, without questioning the power relations that it entails. These organizations are not exempt from the naturalization of gender relations and social reproduction that prevails in Bolivia and that justifies this vision— a vision which is not challenged so far by the Bartolinas, who continue to show disposition to postpone their own demands in favour of support for the government agenda, according to political conjuncture. Solidarity economy and fair trade organizations also follow the general formalist tendency in Bolivia to deal with problems through the enactment of norms (e.g. parity quotas) that do not necessarily translate into action— the same logic that prevails at government level with the enactment of laws that are rarely followed by concrete policies. Finally, the limited

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vision of gender in solidarity economy and fair trade organizations is hardly influenced by feminist and academic NGOs that made some important advances in terms of political, economic and cultural rights in Bolivia since the 1980s but which, as we shall see in conclusion, fail to build a unified movement that would widen their political impact.

Conclusion Our case study in Batallas illustrates the fact that the tendency to feminize all areas of social reproduction has reached a critical point in Bolivia. This is true in rural and also in urban areas (Salazar et al., 2012). This situation, which has become hardly sustainable, places the country in the face of several possible and non-exclusive alternatives: (i) persistence of the naturalization of reproductive activities as a responsibility of the families and the (rural) communities, that is to say, of the women; (ii) emergence of a germinal process of politicization of social reproduction that challenges the State with regard to its shared responsibility in that matter; (iii) the emergence from the society of common forms of management of social reproduction, mainly observable in popular urban areas. Cultural change, as we know, is a complex and long-lasting process, in which achievement is never granted. Its possibility goes beyond the institutions and subjects involved in social reproduction discussed in this study and, undoubtedly, it depends on the subjective dispositions of a wide range of actors. In this sense, the cultural codes that naturalize the responsibility of social reproduction as being the responsibility of women, particularly in rural families, will remain unchanged for a long time to come. However, it is possible to bring women’s economic identity out of the dark and to fight to promote their rights as workers. Our results lead to formulating new questions in this respect: to which extent is it the responsibility of producers’ associations to open up this possibility? Under which conditions can these spaces be propitious for incorporating social reproduction as a principle of organization and collective action? And what would be the path for the producers’ associations to be integrated into the political dynamics at local level and beyond? These questions remain difficult to answer, especially in a context where the State does not show an integrated and solidarity-based approach to social reproduction, but rather privilege monetary transfers in public policies, and thus the acquisition of basic satisfiers in the market.

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In addition, the State gives priority in public policies to social and political organizations (peasant unions) that, for the moment being, do not include the economic demands of rural and urban producers’ associations in their agenda, nor concerns about the reality of women in their own structures. This happens in a context where the State demonstrates little interest in converting normative progress in favour of the strengthening of associations into concrete policies and regulations.8 From the viewpoint of the State, the Tupak and Bartolinas are the sole representatives of the rural world, the associations having to fight to be recognized as legitimate interlocutors. This semantic and political mismatch generates a field of conflict that makes agreements difficult (Wanderley, 2015). In this context, associations could try to break their isolation by considering two possible and non-exclusive ways: pragmatically orienting their construction as political subjects by establishing new relations with the Tupak and/or the Bartolinas, given their proximity to State power, seeking efficiency in their demands; and/or developing new articulation with sectorial platforms of producers’ associations such as CIOEC and/or the Fair Trade Coordination of Bolivia (CNCJ-B). The first alternative is more likely to happen in so far as the government’s political agenda tends to be dominated by peasant unions, even though their function is sociopolitical and not socio-economic. As for the second way, it might not be sufficient by itself to break the isolation of the producers’ association. Overall, whether Tupak or Bartolinas, or platforms of producers’ associations, all these actors tend to deal with gender as a matter of parity and of family, without questioning the power relations and the naturalization of women’s role in social reproduction. The inclusion of this issue in the political agenda faces important challenges. The trend in favour of a change in the terms of social reproduction, as has been said, might also come from feminist organizations (Sánchez et al., 2015). Yet, this possibility is limited by the existing split in these organizations’ political orientation. On the one hand, so-called “institutional” feminists, mainly organized in NGOs, tend to prioritize their

8 Policies privilege the so-called strategic sector of the economy (hydrocarbon extraction and mining), weakening agricultural and livestock production and not challenging the historical marginalization of the still growing sector of services, transport and trade which is based on self-employment. Overall, State economy and private sector have been favoured, to the detriment of associative initiatives (Wanderley, 2015).

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relations with the State and the goal of “feminizing” government policies and the legislative agenda. A turning point in this agenda may arise from the creation of a new “National Platform for Social and Public Coresponsibility of Care”, for now constituted by NGOs promoting gender equality with the support of UN Women. It is to be hoped that reproductive concerns will move closer and closer to the priority issues on the women’s agenda. On the other hand, diverse feminist collectives privilege action with civil society and dispute power relations in different spaces (families, communities, civil society, the State…). These two main components have united in some struggles, especially around violence against women and political participation. However, they face difficulties in building up a united movement, due to their differences in relation with the State, which ultimately limits their overall capacity for change. As for the third path—the emergence of common forms of management of social reproduction—it is barely germinal and, for the time being, mostly present in the urban context, based on the initiatives of some NGOs. One example is the Network of Women Transforming the Economy (REMTE), an institution that supports some workers’ and producers’ organizations for obtaining socio-economic and political rights. In this framework, REMTE promotes actions in favour of social protection as a right for women workers members of associations, in sectors such as construction, where they do not have access to health or retirement insurance. These initiatives address social reproduction, contributing to the development of initiatives for its common management, without ceasing questioning the shared responsibility of the State. Undoubtedly, this combination of paths, together with the action of some women and men at family and community levels, will follow a long journey in future of the country, and even more so in rural areas. However, in conditions of subsistence, marked by a critical level of women’s work-overload, the path linked to family and common management has very precarious scope as long as the trap of “conciliating” productive and reproductive work is not overcome. Therefore, a central challenge will be to reorient State policies in two directions: to conceive care and social protection as a fundamental and universal right, and to strengthen the associative and collective forms of economy in order to expand at the same time emerging forms of common management of social reproduction. Both paths strengthen social cohesion at a general

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level and the conviviality and already broad and vigorous links of proximity in our country. The expansion of the State’s shared responsibility for solidarity is a major challenge in Bolivia, which involves reorienting the current pattern of development towards compliance with the normative advances in terms of social reproduction, already included in the constitution and a number of laws.

References Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-P. (1996). La Reproducción. Elementos para una teoría del sistema de enseñanza. FONTAMARA, Barcelona, Segunda edición. Colque, G., & Soria Galvarro, F. (2014). Inclusión En Contextos De Exclusión. Acceso De Las Mujeres Campesinas E Indígenas a La Tierra. Fundación Tierra. Coordinadora de Integración de Organizaciones Económicas Campesinas de Bolivia (CIOEC). (2009). Primero Censo De Organizaciones Económicas Campesinas, Indígenas Y Originarias. CIOEC. Farah, I., & Wanderley, F. (2015). El Feminismo y la otra economía. Una mirada desde América Latina, en Coraggio, J.L. (Organizador) Economía social y solidaria en movimiento. Colección Economía y Sociedad. Universidad de Postgrado del Estado, IAEN/ CLACSO/Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento. Quito, Ecuador. Farah‚ I. (2016). Economía feminista y economía solidaria: ¿alternativa al patriarcado?. In C. Puig (Ed.), Economía social y solidaria: Conceptos, prácticas y políticas públicas (pp. 83–105). Bilbao, Universidad del Pais Vasco, Hegoa. Federici, S. (2013). Revolución en punto cero. Trabajo doméstico, reproducción y luchas feministas. Traficantes de Sueños. Federici, S. (2017). Capitalismo y violencia contra las mujeres. Conferencia en Madrid, octubre Hillenkamp, I. (2013). L’économie solidaire en Bolivie: Entre marché Et démocratie. Karthala, GIP. Hillenkamp, I., & Wanderley, F. (2017). Génesis y trayectorias de la economía comunitaria y solidaria en Bolivia. In L. I. Gaiger & A. M. Dos Santos (Eds.), Solidariedade e Ação coletiva. Trajetórias e Experiências (pp. 43–65). Editora Unisinos. INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas de Bolivia). (2013). Censo Nacional de Población y Vivienda 2012. Paulson, S. (2013). Masculinidades en movimiento. Transformación territorial y sistemas de género. TESEO. Rivera Cusicanqui, S. (2010). Violencias (re) encubiertas en Bolivia. Mirada Salvaje, Editorial Piedra Rota.

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Salazar, C., Sostres, F., & Wanderley, F. (2012). Hacia una política municipal del cuidado: Integrando los derechos de las mujeres y de la infancia. CIDES-UMSA. Sánchez, C. (coord.), Gil, M., Farah, I., & Tapia, L. (2015). La politización en la diferencia. Experiencia y diálogos políticos e las mujeres en Bolivia. ISET –CONEXION. Ticona Alejo, E. (Ed.) (2003). Los Andes desde los Andes. Aymaranakana, Qhichwanakana Yatxatawipa, Lup’iwipa. Yachaywasi. Uriona, P. (2010). Dueñas de nuestra VIDA, dueñas de nuestra TIERRA. Mujeres indígena originario campesinas y derecho a la tierra. Coordinadora de la Mujer. Urioste, M., Barragán, R., & Colque, M. (2007). Los nietos de la Reforma Agraria. Tierra y comunidad en el altiplano de Bolivia. Fundación Tierra. Wanderley, F. (Ed.), Farah, I., & Sostres, F. (2015). Discursos, prácticas y desafíos en Bolivia. CIDES-UMSA / HEGOA. Plural Editores.

CHAPTER 7

Solidarity at the Crossroads: Struggles and Transformations of Domestic Workers in Kerala Rajib Nandi

Introduction The present paper is based on an empirical research on social and solidarity economy’s practices that brings together various case studies from Latin America and India and critically analyses the solidarity within diverse power structures and unequal relations. The project tried to capture the multilayered and complex role of wider sociopolitical scenario in defining the nuances in power dynamics and production relations. This case study from Kerala encompasses the political struggles led by the marginalized domestic workers in and around Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of the state for protecting their rights to work and engage in paid employment outside their home.

R. Nandi (B) Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1_7

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SEWA

SEWA Bharat (National Organization)

(National trade union to organize women workers from informal sector) SEWA Union

SEWA Kerala

(State Chapter)

(Kerala State Chapter)

SMSS (Workers’ collective)

Federation of Reed workers (Workers’ collective)

Women run cooperatives

(All those individual workers are also members of the SEWA union)

Fig. 7.1 Structure of SEWA

The research is designed around SEWA Kerala—a federation of membership-based self-employed women’s organizations. The present paper concentrates on SMSS, a collective of domestic workers, which is a member of SEWA Kerala. SEWA Kerala facilitates in forming collectives of women primarily from the bottom of the social and economic ladder and over last 3 decades they built up a massive protest against the informal and exploitative system of engaging women workers in the unorganized sector. SEWA union on the other is a national-level trade union. SEWA as a trade union has been organizing women informal workers across 15 states in India (see Fig. 7.1). In the process SEWA has extended their resistance against the strong patriarchal value system which is still growing and started making its own mark gradually.

The Scope of the Study The vast literature on social and solidarity economy raises interesting questions on the functioning of public spheres both at the micro-level and at multilayered public spheres controlled by the government and the market forces (Eme, 2006). Similarly there are interesting observations on how economic and social actions are articulated (Guérin & Nobre, 2014) and the counter-hegemonic movements are constructed (Utting, 2015). Though SSE theory places reproduction of life at the centre of its work, it

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is still a valid question to ask whether the articulation between production and reproduction takes a new form or not in SSE. The feminist theories have always contested the binary understandings of production and reproduction and emphasized the importance of reconstituting the ideas of reproduction, social relationships and institutions in order to understand and value women’s work. The present study makes a modest attempt to revisit these questions and tries to understand empirically the complexities and dynamics around a particular initiative by SEWA Kerala. The present chapter confines itself in studying one collective of SEWA that is called Swasreya Mahila Sewa Sangam (SMSS). SMSS is a collective of women domestic workers,1 who provide domestic services at the household level or at other organizations to prepare food, clean utensils and floors, and provide nursing assistance to elderly and children. There are around 5000–6000 domestic workers across Kerala who are the members of SEWA union. Among them around 2000 are the members of SMSS. The members of the SMSS group also at times form cooperatives and sign contractual arrangements with institutions and organizations to run the canteens/cafeteria. They also provide outdoor catering services for institutes and individuals. The members of SMSS belong to different caste groups and religious communities. Building solidarity across these differences in order to make them visible; ensure their rights to be engaged in decent employment; and bring women domestic workers’ issues as a political agenda in policy making processes are some of the activities that SMSS has been engaged in. Building solidarity across caste lines and religious communities is itself a challenging concept and that perhaps distinguishes this solidarity group from many other solidarity groups in India that might originate from inherited attributes like caste, clan, religion or ethnicity. We are not claiming that SEWA is a solidarity

1 Domestic workis defined as “work performed in or for a household or households” (ILO Convention 189). Domestic work is therefore defined according to the workplace, which is the private household. Broadly speaking, domestic workers provide personal and household care. Occupations and tasks considered to be domestic workvary across countries. They may cook, clean, take care of children, the elderly and the disabled, attend to the garden or pets, or drive the family car. They may work part-time, full-time or on an hourly basis and may live in the home of the employer or not. According to this definition, the ILO estimates there are at least 67 million domestic workers over the age of 15 worldwide, 80% of which are women (see more at https://www.ilo.org/global/top ics/care-economy/domestic-workers/lang--en/index.htm).

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group in true senses but we definitely observed and recorded some efforts where the key solidarity principles have been followed by the group. SEWA, as a trade union, is open to all least unionized workers primarily those who are employed in different informal sectors.2 On the other hand, SMSS is registered under the Society Act of India3 that collectivizes the domestic workers also provides support including skill training programme for the domestic workers and offers placement services for its members. The skilling process encompasses both technical and soft skills including a space to learn, understand and share socio-economic and political issues and ideas. Once a worker enrols for the training programme, she also becomes a member of the Vanithavedi—a local level forum of the women workers. In this way, the women get opportunity to know each other in their areas and develop some bonds between them. The monthly vanithavedi meetings open up a space for the members to debate, discuss and resolve issues starting from the household conflict to employer’s behaviour and from sexual exploitation of children to violence against women. This is a platform, where the women domestic workers can express their views and take decisions on how to fight for their rights. The Vanithavedi members also elect their representatives to the managing committee of the organization.

2 The full form of SEWA is Self-Employed Women’s Association based in India. SEWA is a trade union registered in 1972. It is an organization of poor, self-employed women workers. These are women who earn a living through their own labour or small businesses. They do not obtain regular salaried employment with welfare benefits like workers in the organized sector. They are the unprotected labour force of our country. Constituting 93% of the labour force, these are workers of the unorganized sector. Of the female labour force in India, more than 94% are in the unorganized sector. However, their work is not counted and hence remains invisible. Log on to www.sewa.org to know more on SEWA. SEWA Kerala—the Kerala chapter of SEWA—was born in 1983 and has its base in Trivandrum. It is a federation of various organizations which are member based. The members are poor women workers from the informal sector. Its committee is made up of elected members representing the various organizations and some professionals who are at their service. To know more on SEWA Kerala, you may please log on to www.sewakeral a.org. SMSS—Swasreya Mahila Sewa Sangam—is a collective of domestic workers under SEWA Kerala. The meaning of SMSS is Association of self-help service groups run by women. 3 The Societies Registration Act, 1860 is a legislation in India which allows the registration of entities generally involved in the benefit of society—education, health, employment, etc. The Indian Societies Registration Act of 1860 was enacted under the British Raj in India, but is largely still in force in India today. It provides for the registration of literary, scientific and charitable societies.

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The study is contextualized within the larger sociopolitical ecosystem of Kerala. The movement of collectivizing and organizing socially and economically disadvantaged women towards protecting their rights to be engaged in paid employment, where dominant patriarchal norms don’t allow women to move out of the households and undertake paid jobs is a massive challenge. Moreover, domestic work, which is otherwise considered as a lower order job, is neither regulated nor the workers of the sector come under the purview of state-run social security measures. The paper looks at SEWA Kerala’s approach to women’s issues to understand the nature of the challenges faced, the strategies used to maintain solidarity and intends to critically address those issues that emerge from this process. As an ‘organic’/‘institutionalized’ solidarity this case can be distinguished from more visible solidarities in India those are built on inherited identities. The larger principles of feminism need to be understood contextually where groups of women are organized on the basis of their class identities that apparently contradicts other stronger solidarities, formal or informal, rooted in their culture and religious practices.

The History of SEWA and the Emergence of SMSS Nalini Nayak was one of the key of activists and organizers when the movement for organizing fish workers and self-employed workers began in Kerala in 1970s. She and other organizers on this movement in Kerala were inspired by the work of Ela Bhat. Ela Bhat is well known for beginning SEWA (self-employed women’s association) with women workers of textile industry, who were denied space among the organized workers in the industry. The Kerala movement of organizing women workers of SEWA Kerala sets its roots in the SEWA movement of Gujarat and became a part of nationwide SEWA networks and unions. The Kerala state chapter of SEWA was founded in 1983 as a federation of member-based self-employed women organizations. The Kerala SEWA movement began as a response to the loss of traditional livelihoods due to deprivation of natural resources. The members of the local women’s organizations in and around coastal Trivandrum (also called as Thiruvananthapuram) had a series of meetings on how to face the economic crises on the advent of denial of access to traditional resources in Kerala in the early 1980s. All those workers used to be depended heavily on natural resources—fish, land and reeds (a forest produce), respectively—for their

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livelihoods. Those workers, both the fisherwomen who sold fish and the women reed workers who used to make reed mats were challenged by the lack of access to these resources while agricultural work was declining.4 While they were seeking the intervention of the government to safeguard their rights to resources, several of them were also in need of immediate livelihood options. The single mothers particularly needed to be assured of daily earning so that they could run their kitchens. The group finally decided to create an organization of self-employed women based on the model of SEWA, which was also a women’s trade union. They also realized that if the workers are not organized their demand of protecting the rights will never be fulfilled. In one such meeting of women workers, a decision was made to register SEWA Kerala with the women members of the mahila samajams who wanted alternative work. The primary task of the movement was to restore economic security to these women. They did so by establishing worker cooperatives functioning in the service sector. Women were initially unsure about moving into these new fields that require training sessions and capacity-building to build self-confidence. A few collectives started working under SEWA banner. Swasreya Mahila Sewa Sangam (SMSS) was one such initiative.

How SEWA Places Itself in the Broad Sociopolitical Ecosystem The term ‘Solidarity Economy’ is not commonly used in the Indian context. However, in India, there is a long-standing tradition of women’s movements combining ‘struggle’ and ‘development’. SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association-India) is one of the best-known examples in India where the women members formed an alternative trade union to seek social and economic justice for the informal workers and their families. SEWA sees itself as a political movement. As stated by Sonia, the Secretary of SEWA Union and Treasurer of SMSS, ‘From the very beginning, SEWA was a political movement. We were trying to organize the informal sector workers to raise their voices. It was their political voice. The voice

4 See a detailed discussion on the political economy of labour and development in Kerala in Kannan (1998).

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was organized though a struggle that demanded a right to work and a decent space and conditions to work. This struggle to gain right to work provides the women the identity…the identity of a worker that leads to her political identity’. SEWA’s mandate is to organize poor self-employed women workers towards decent work and self-resilience. Decent work sums up the aspirations of women in their working lives that involves opportunities for productive work with a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom to express concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives, equality of opportunity and treatment for all genders. In the context of Kerala, the meaning of women’s self-resilience lies in the ability of making indepencent decisions with confidence in the family, community and at workplace. SEWA finds the barriers of self-relience within socio-cultural and political systems of the society therefore the organisation’s mandate of ‘full-employment’ and ‘self-resilience’ is built upon the concept of injustice which is perpetuated by the society itself. (Bhatt, 1989; Hill, 2001). Hill in her work on SEWA comments that, ‘Over past three decades SEWA has developed an integrated set of strategies to address the complex of self-reinforcing economic and cultural injustices that maintain female informal sector workers in a state of chronic economic and social insecurity and impoverishment. Economic and cultural interventions at the micro level are designed to build workers’ capacity. At the meso level, the development of alternative economic institutions is an important strategy for the institutionalizing fair wages, skill development and economic viability of the enterprise. And at the macro level the promotion of public recognition of workers by officials and planning agencies produces sociopolitical context within which SEWA members have their economic and social security formalized and protected’ (Hill, 2001, 450). One must analyse the social and political context to understand SEWA’s mandate and strategies. While analysing SEWA’s strategy, Hill (2001) concludes that SEWA’s collective strategies tried to promote self-realization among poor working women to the extent that this change in self-perception and capacity plays an important developmental role in both activating worker agency and in the implementation of strategies for economic development. The strength of SEWA’s collective strategies is their potential to redress both moral injury and material injustice. SEWA was able to demonstrate that solidarity-based strategies of collective action promote

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formal recognition and respect for both the worker and their work. SEWA’s strategy re-socialized women’s work one hand and facilitated the establishment of alternative institutional forms of economic organization and social support on the other.

The Sector of Domestic Work India with Highlights on Kerala Before proceeding further into discussing the public policies around the present case, let us develop the context of the domestic work in India and activisms centred around the sector. Since domestic workis predominantly female and invisible as it is performed in the confines of a private home, the complexities of this work has not received any attention. It is undervalued as it is seen as the extension of house-work that a housewife anyway performs in the household. It is poorly regulated as there is no fixed timings and no agreements between the employer and the workers which may impact negatively for either party (Grover et al., 2018). The estimated number of ‘paid domestic workers’ has risen globally from 33.2 million in 1995 to 52.6 million in 2010 (ILO & WIEGO, 2013) and 65 million currently (ILO, 2017). The increasing pattern is also reflected in India since early 1990s when the Indian domestic care economy became increasingly feminized with rapid economic liberalization (Palriwala & Neetha, 2010). Some estimates indicate the Indian figure as high as 10 million (Eluri & Singh, 2013). Some of the activists even argue that the actual figure in India could be even around 20 million. On the other hand, it has been discussed repeatedly that the trade unionism in India has either marginalized women’s issues or addressed them in strikingly conservative ways (Banerjee, 1991; Bhatt, 2007; Sen, 2006). Unfortunately, the bulk of literature on the history of Indian labour movement and organizations suffer from the same sort of blindness in foregrounding the category of class and the predominantly male, organized sector (Devika et al., 2011). In contrast, feminist labour historians have sought to demonstrate the centrality of gender to the constitution of labour processes and raise the question ‘why or how the industrialized working class became overwhelmingly male’ (Sen, 2006, 4). In general, their analysis has sought to explain the decline of the proportion of women in the industrial workforce, the rise of materialist ideologies, gender-based wage gaps and the unpaid economic activities

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within and outside the household, and the marginality of women to labour as an organized political force. Domestic workers have continued to remain grossly neglected in India as well as in Kerala by mainstream trade unionism. Efforts to organize domestic workers in India and negotiate for a minimum wage for them have taken place largely outside mainstream trade unionism till very recently. Civil social organizations have put pressure on governments to recognize domestic workers’ rights, including a minimum wage, and these have yielded some results. Also, in the last few years there has been a growing awareness worldwide on the need to consider domestic workas work and to regulate it. ILO convention for Decent Work for Domestic workers was a pioneering effort in that direction. Following that, there are some policy initiatives happened in India. In the wake of this international development the Government of India, under pressure from some of the trade unions, initiated a process to look into these issues and to consider the best strategy to safeguard the rights of these workers. The GOI has also passed the Act for Social Security for the Unorganized Sector in 2008. Unfortunately this Act, while highlighting the importance of this sector and the need to extend it social protection, finally only extended a few social welfare schemes for the workers. As far as Kerala is concerned, the Government of Kerala is presently one of the five states in India that has scheduled domestic work, established a minimum wage and has included domestic workers in some welfare schemes. This nevertheless does not regulate domestic workand neither does it assure this section of workers their legitimate rights as workers. In Kerala, domestic work started growing as a service sector in the 1980 and 1990s. One of the primary reasons the steady inflow of incomes to Malayalee families (original inhabitants of Kerala) migrants to the Gulf since the late 1970s, combined with the intensification of ageing in this post-demographic transition society (Zachariah et al., 1994), created a high demand situation for female domestic labour which, however, received relatively poor remuneration, and remained almost entirely unregulated. During an interview with the additional labour commissioner welfare, government of Kerala in 2016, he stated that 90% of the domestic workers in the state of Kerala are women aged between 40 and 55 years. Besides, given the low prestige of domestic work, it may be reasonable to hypothesize that women who entered it would be extremely

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vulnerable and marginal—which appears to be corroborated by our interviews with SEWA workers. Almost all the domestic workers, who had been interviewed during the course of this study, exemplified the extreme socio-economic situation under which they undertook paid domestic workas an occupation. SEWA’s intervention, while comparatively small, is interesting as a model of feminist trade unionism in the present context of women’s move to the unorganized sector despite the unfavourable terms on which women enter the market for domestic labour (see Devika et al., 2011).

Kerala’s Unique Development Narratives and Gender Concerns Before going deep into SEWA’s strategy and actions, lets’ look quickly at the broad socio-economic scenario of Kerala. The impressive performance of the state of Kerala in demographic and social indicators has carved out a separate niche for itself in the development discourse. A number of scholarly literatures considered Kerala to be an exemplary case of exceptional nature of social development without considerable economic growth and higher per capita income. Kerala’s development experience was thus showcased as a ‘model’ for the developing world and was termed as ‘Kerala model of development’ (Chakraborty, 2005). The dramatic decline in fertility since the 1970s and the process of demographic transition in the state is one such achievement. ‘Women’, during this time (the 1970s), were emerging as a recognized constituency in the development effort and this relationship helped in strengthening the conceptual links between women’s issues and economic development (Kabeer, 1999). Literacy, together with non-domestic employment, which gave women access to independent sources of income, came to be regarded as important components of women’s ‘status’, which affected fertility and mortality outcomes (Mason, 1985). In a snapshot the development literature highlights the following aspects of Kerala: • high level of female literacy and lower fertility rates, • customs of matrilineal inheritance, • participation of people in political decision making and social achievements regarding decentralized governance and commitment towards social welfare,

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• high levels of life expectancy and low infant mortality, in comparison to the north Indian states of India and • cohesive social structure that promotes effective space for social and political debates. However, soon the development literature started questioning this straightforward relationship between girls’ education and fertility, emphasizing the need to focus on Kerala’s social context which has an enormous influence on women’s choice and decision making. The feminist literature argued that the societal norms in the Malayalee (Keralite) society otherwise leave no space for younger women to make independent decisions (see Heward & Bunwaree, 1999). For instance, it was argued how a macro-outcome like the decline in fertility is actually negotiated at the household level where the authority, roles and responsibilities are highly patriarchal. The growing uneasiness with Kerala’s social development outcomes, with the rising visibility of gender-based violence, particularly domestic violence, poor mental health that manifested increasingly through high rates of suicide, and the rapid growth and spread of dowry and related crimes, reinforced the need to study family structures and practices (Eapen & Kodoth, 2004). Eapen (ibid.) suggested that the growing dowry demands and the visibility of domestic violence indicated that women of Kerala had internalized subordination, sustaining iniquitous gender relations within the household. Since the 1980s, ample evidences were presented by a range of scholars that show lower social and economic status of women and declining participation of women in labour force participation in contradiction to the myth of high work participation rate that had been created earlier. Women in Kerala have access to good education, but they constitute just one-fifth of the workforce. Many are forced into domesticity as their husbands are in the Gulf in many instances, the crippling labour problems denying them of jobs at home. Such a paradox opened up new sets of inquires among larger social science studies with gender and equity perspectives. It’s stated that in Kerala, both educated and not so educated women look after the children and stay at home or they can work but expected not to decide independently without family’s interference who she will marry. There are ample cases of wife-battering and psychological problems among married women. The high levels of alcoholism and high incidences of sexual abuses experienced by the adolescent and young adults within

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the domestic spaces but mostly unreported. These are some factors that are influenced by strong patriarchal values, have led to the state’s women getting a raw deal. Public interactions between men and women are still frowned upon by the local Malayalee (Keralite) society. This also has strong implications on women’s mobility in public spaces without men’s supervision. Moreover, the decision of a woman to participate in the labour force depends upon her personal and family characteristics and other intervening influences. Gender disparity is maintained in the household through the association of men with his so-called productive work conducted ‘outside’ the boundaries of ‘home’ and women with the ‘inside’ or ‘reproductive’ work. Some scholars argue that a women member’s bargaining power is defined by a range of factors, in particular the strength of her fallback position (outside options which determine how well off she would be if cooperation ceased) and the degree to which her claim is seen to be legitimate. Since women’s perceived interest is so intimately linked to the family’s welfare, it could influence bargaining outcome such as to make a perceived interest choice, weakening their individual well-being (cf. Eapen & Kodoth, 2002). Given such a social context, defining women’s ‘status’ in terms of education and labour force participation, is partial. No doubt that these two are potential sources of ‘autonomy’ for women. Together they enhance choice and opportunity in women’s lives; provide an independent source of income, strengthening fallback position, perception of individual interest and raising perceived contribution to the household. However ‘status’ is not necessarily distinguished from women’s position in society reflecting the values of the community and evoking some idea of esteem. By the early 1990s, Kerala was trying to balance between a widely supported social development model with high social indicators on the one hand and significant levels of social exclusion among historically marginalized groups including women on the other. Under such circumstances, in 1998 the state government of Kerala introduced a decentralized planning process and began to experiment with poverty eradication programmes targeted at women. As the official poverty eradication programme, the role of Kudumbashree is to provide support, training and coordination for the social movement side. An important feature of Kudumbashree involves its formal integration into the local

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decentralized planning process. Through their three-tiered social movement structure, Kudumbashree groups participate in a planning process through which they develop and consolidate development plans. With above 4 million members, Kudumbashree has developed a variety of income and employment schemes in the form of micro and group enterprises (Mukherjee-Reed & Reed, 2013). Kudumbashree was perhaps the first initiative in the state where the women were linked to the local political institutions and equipped them as partners of development. It might be argued here that the initiative was more about appropriating the existing state mechanisms towards gaining empowerment by becoming self-supporting consumers without any effort to change the society. The feminist scholars raised important questions whether Kudumbashree is only a larger ramification of the dominant concept of ‘women’s empowerment’ through SHGs or not (Devika & Thampi, 2007).

SEWA Kerala and Its Collective Strategies to Fight Against Women’s Subordination At the next level, the paper looks into the ways the gender issues have been understood and addressed by the SMSS—the collective of domestic workers. The paper builds its argument around the idea that gender transformative and feminist trajectories of change are determined differently in different contexts. The paper looks at SEWA Kerala’s approach to women’s issues: (i) to understand the nature of the challenges women workers and the collective face and (ii) how SMSS addresses those issues and maintain the solidarity among women workers. SEWA adopted a unique strategy in working with the domestic workers. SEWA Kerala started working with the domestic workers in Kerala in the 1980s. Instituting domestic workers into modern societies has been fraught with many problems in relation to the given image of a worker. There are plenty of examples to show the way a women domestic worker is being denied her rights as a worker. Social security provisions, like provident fund, health care, pension, etc., are out of the purview of this work as there is no well-defined employer-employee relationship. In many cases it is either difficult to locate an employer as many domestic workers work in multiple houses or the employers are reluctant to identify these women as their workers. To get registered in the Kerala domestic workers’ welfare scheme, the workers had to be

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endorsed by their employers. But in many cases the employers were reluctant to acknowledge them as their workers. The emotional and intimate bond that may develop between employer and worker also prevents such a worker from entering into a professional work relation. The space of unequal economic power, social status and, at the same time, the interpersonal intimacy and domestic isolation exposes domestic workers to a multitude of exploitation (Devika et al., 2011). SEWA is a trade union of informal women workers. The find organizing and collectivize women is the first and most fundamental step. The collectives that emerge are then able to improve the terms of engagement of the women workers in the labour market. SEWA leaders define SEWA as an organization seeking self-reliance and human development. It is located at the intersection of several movements: women’s movement, cooperative movement and labour movement. Often it is argued that whether SEWA is any better than a training and placement agency. In fact, this was acknowledged by a senior office bearer of SEWA that the growing network of placement agencies for the recruitment of domestic workers has become as a serious competitor of SEWA. In response, SEWA has very clearly made it a point to make their members understand how SEWA is different from a profit-making placement agency and what value does it bring to the lives of women apart from the income from salaries. Sonia George, the treasurer of SMSS and the Secretary of SEWA Union, comments, ‘The organization (SMSS) is run and managed by the members, but not by any profit making agency. There is a managing committee, a president, a vice president and secretary. All these office bearers are elected from the managing committee constituted by the local members’. She further comments, ‘SEWA is a political movement from the beginning. We were trying to organize the informal sector, trying to raise the voices of workers. This is the political voice which is being raised within the space of the economic activities. Once women have economic freedom, they will have more political identity, and the identity of a worker’ (Interview with Sonia George, Trivandrum, dated 19 August 2016). Discussions with women members of SEWA Kerala and the group leaders helped to understand the concept of ‘solidarity’. Instead of engaging with the idea of solidarity on a definitional level, it is more expedient to consider the various qualities that emerge from solidarity feelings. For the members of SEWA Kerala, the base of solidarity is equality and

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unity, which may be harnessed to create familial ties that engender actions of reciprocity between the women. This sense of being part of a family with some responsibility to one another is the foundation for group solidarity. The SEWA programme, through various activities, tries to strengthen and maintain the sense of belonging among women members. Organizing is accompanied by a compulsory ‘training’, which is an orientation to basic values of the union. In the case of domestic workers, this is followed by job-specific training in household work and management. The emphasis on basic values sets SEWA apart from mainstream trade unions. While SEWA also helps women to access work, the stress on values and commitment to the group sets it apart from placement agencies. Most of the SMSS members are also part of the Kudumbashree groups in the neighbourhood. SMSS had to reschedule the timings of Vanithavedi (local committee of SMSS) meetings as it clashes with the group meetings of Kudumbashree programme. Though the senior flag bearers of SEWA Kerala do not acknowledge any conflict with the state run Kudumbashree programme, one may notice that there was a subtle concern and comparison on the part of SEWA while illustrating the strategies of SEWA. Sonia comments, ‘In Kerala, SEWA has tried to raise this question of development and women’s work in a different way. I might be small but, I find it extremely relevant because it has been always linked with grassroots level movement. SEWA organized domestic workers for the first time in Kerala. Even SEWA has the history of organizing local women’s groups much before Kudumbashree was launched. One must note here that we tried with a different type of development model in the state that is linked with the people’s movement. The persons who started the (SEWA) movement had wider exposure to people’s movement and development and so that was the perspective on which SEWA was built. That’s why it is people’s movement, labor movement and feminist movement. I too come from that background. So we could easily relate the issues from that perspective. We always feel that feminism should not come from some upper middle class people. Rather it should come from the grassroots. The women at the grassroots should own this movement. The movement must be led by those women. They are the ones who really take these struggles, to sustain their family, to work, to maintain their relationships. This is the core of our consciousness. We are not a big number like Kudumbashree, but we play a major role in changing lives of women. This is the major

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contribution of SEWA in the lives of women informal workers’ (Interview with Sonia George, Trivandrum, 19 August 2016).

Social Reproduction and the Challenges Posed by the Gender Norms The question of changing gender relations and transformative power is not easy to address. It needs noting that SEWA has undoubtedly transformed the individual lives of most of its members. The pace of change and the direction of change need to emerge from the group. Both SEWA Kerala and SMSS have well-defined leadership structures. In addition to the official structure, leadership has been defined as women’s role in decision making in matters within as well as outside the organization, i.e., in their family, community, neighbourhood, etc. SEWA Kerala is facing a number of challenges in strengthening the existing fragile solidarity among the women from disadvantaged social and economic background. As mentioned earlier the SEWA training includes orientation to workers’ rights and entitlements, women’s issues as well as specific job-related training. The recent trend of mushrooming of placement agencies has made it challenging for SEWA as women tend to leave SEWA in case they find other job opportunities with slightly better salaries. At times, the domestic workers also attracted towards the personal gifts from the employers beyond the salary component, which is strictly prohibited under the SEWA terms and conditions. Secondly, as younger women enter the workforce and join the union, inter-generational tensions can emerge. For union leaders including the young is essential for longevity of the union itself. Younger women need to join and in time take over leadership roles. So, the aspirations of younger women can influence the strategies and practices followed, with some discontent among older women members. At this juncture, the study tries to describe the ways in which solidarity emerges among these assembled individuals. The institutionalized ways in which SEWA Kerala has been able to build solidarity which are probably different to ways in which women informally construct empowerment and build ties among them both in transnational and translocal contexts. Additionally, it is important to pay attention to the ways in which women participate in decision-making processes of the organization and also in the broader context of a caste-based hierarchical society. Thus, it problematizes the relationship between economic autonomy and

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political autonomy. Consequently, it is important to keep questioning issues such as the implication of domestic care work on women workers that limits their work and political participation, as well as the role of social divisions in constructing a feminist solidarity as a part of political process and making women as political subject. SEWA Kerala contributed in organizing women around their right to do paid work outside their home. Organizing women primarily from disadvantaged social and economic groups was a challenging job. However, gradually this initiative took a shape of a social movement with protest marches and petitioning with the government for receiving decent labour rights. SEWA Kerala sees itself as a ‘feminist’ space because it allows women to exercise a role that is not strictly reproductive or familial. Shared interests of women involved may result in a ‘voluntary community’, which many be transferred to greater and more radical political ends. SEWA Kerala works with the women domestic workers, where the women members leave their respective home in early morning travel to their works places and return back home only in the evening. The issue of domestic care responsibilities has not come prominently in the agendas of SEWA Kerala. Child care is still a very private issue though all of the members during our series of discussions, admitted that the issue of child care is one of the most important factors that determines a woman member’s availability to accept employment. However, the rise of sexual abuses within the household has alerted the SMSS members and in a process of developing a strategy to address this. From the discussions with the SMSS members, it has emerged that almost all the members rely on their mothers or mothers-in-law or some elderly women at the household to take care of younger children. The members stated that, “There must be someone in the family to take care of the children”. On the other hand, it was clear from those discussions that there were not many young mothers in the SMSS. They say, ‘Women with young children do not come to work, as many of them belong to nuclear families and no one is there to take care of their children. Once the child is older and started going to kindergarten or school, the women are able to resume their paid domestic work activities’. It is understood that finding some means of livelihood for those women was extremely important. But at the same time, the employment outside the household does hamper their domestic responsibilities and consequently a potential threat of conflict within the family arises

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here. On the question of how SEWA Kerala addresses these issues was important to understand. Apparently, the issue of child care and how it becomes a hindrance for women to join labour force never takes the centre space in the Vanithavedi meetings. The general practice is here to take a break to take care of their children or grandchildren. A SMSS member states, “When a baby (grandchild) is born, the domestic workers take a short break to look after the baby. Otherwise paid postnatal service is expensive in the state. As the SMSS women are already trained to handle a newborn baby, they offer this free service to the families of their sons and daughters. They inform the organization about the duration of this break and take prior approval. The organization understands this need and approves the leave of absence. This is a kind of system within SMSS that we have been following”. (Interview with an SMSS member, Trivandrum, dated 18 August, 2016) The Vanithavedi meetings at the local level address all these issues. The organization understands and recognizes the responsibilities of a women member for her family and the broader community as a mother, motherin-law or grandmother. Women who opt for the paid employment also take care of their respective families. Therefore, they get up early in the morning to finish all the household chores and then leave the home to reach sharp 8 o’clock at the employer’s house. Some houses may give exemptions to reach by 8:30 in the morning, but not beyond that. They go back home in the afternoon after completing all contracted tasks and resume her domestic responsibilities once again. Vanithavedi meetings cover the issue of women’s double work and the double burden that women face. The SMSS members understand the importance of sharing household responsibilities. There is a practice of home visit by the SMSS members. One primary concern of these home visits is to raise the issue of shared responsibility at the household level. One SMSS office bearer states that, ‘We understand that the women are the main agents of social reproduction. They sustain families. They sustain their neighborhood. All the neighborhood relationships are maintained by women. The religious relationships are maintained by women. They are engaged with all kinds of activities. Now the group activity under Kudumbashree has been added as an additional burden on them. The women have to maintain these Kudumbashree relationships, you know, all these beneficiary kind of relationships’. The SEWA movement both at the national level and in Kerala addresses the age-old practice of caste and associated segregation along caste line

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with its unique approach of not registering caste in any of its official deliberation. Therefore, the solidarity that SEWA is practising is definitely across caste lines. In the Malayalee society caste perhaps plays a subtle role, as the manifestations of caste politics both open and hidden are much more complex than it apparently looks like. As far as SEWA Kerala is concerned, it intends to collectivize economically disadvantaged women across caste lines and no records are kept of caste, etc. SEWA’s main effort is to strengthen women’s position in the workplace and not to challenge the capitalist mode of production relations. During the conversations with SEWA members, this was recorded that the disclosure of caste or providing domestic worker from a particular caste group was denied and offer of service was withdrawn when those queries came from the employers. All the members of SMSS are also members of SEWA trade union. Eventually, the movement started raising demands like minimum wages and welfare schemes for domestic workers. Class was already identified as an important political category in Kerala. However, it was not that easy to reiterate the importance of gender. The mainstream trade unions always resisted the functioning of SEWA that was categorized as an agency of domestic workers that works in an apolitical fashion. SEWA Kerala places their strategy of professional training for the domestic workers in the context of integrating their work with trade unionism. This was more to get acceptance as workers for demanding workers’ rights. Continuous efforts of lobbying by various groups, including SEWA, forced the state to notify a minimum wage for domestic workers. In 2011, domestic workers’ welfare scheme was also formed in the state which ensures the workers pension and social security benefits. SEWA’s consistent work at shaping domestic workers’ collective agency is matched by its simultaneous efforts to protect its members’ rights and entitlements within their homes. In a society where women domestic workers are growing in number, and poor women are doubly jeopardized by domestic burdens in the wake of deteriorating family and community networks, and by exclusion from politics and the public, SEWA’s efforts to shape a sense of citizenship are of vital significance. Often the question has been raised that if there has been any transformative effect of this consciousness building. Several of the SMSS members think that SEWA movement could bring a change in the perspective about women’s work in a limited way. At the same time, they acknowledge that the society in Kerala is highly patriarchal in nature. The concept

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of masculinity is certainly very rigid and stereotypical in nature. Macho men are highly regarded in the society. Men doing household chores and taking care of children is not generally welcomed by the society. These contesting ideologies are a real challenge to the movement of SEWA. Even the society accepts women members going out for whole day to work in another household; they cannot accept the fact that men too have domestic responsibilities at the household level. However, this dialogue is presently continuing between SMSS and their household members. SEWA organizers and workers consistently rated ‘politics’ as an outright hostile space. This reveals the story of the hegemonic mainstream political culture of the state and the marginal oppositional civil society that remains mutually exclusive. The decentralization movement of the state promised to effectively address the issues of gender justice and inclusion of Dalits and Adivasis in governance and development process. Unfortunately, many of those issues remain unaddressed. The oppositional politics of SEWA Kerala on the other hand address the issues of poorer women to a great extent. It’s often discussed whether SEWA is an apolitical non-governmental organization or a political organization by the mainstream trade union organizations. This question is raised because Malayalee society in general is highly conscious about the political parties, their ideological affiliations and their mandates. However, they cannot think about a political organization outside the realms of party politics. A protest with slogans and placards in front of the Secretariat symbolizes the political struggle. For them this is the only form of any political protest. Other than that, the society does not recognize any other form of political struggle. However, as SEWA is now recognized as a registered national trade union organization, they have much better visibility in the political realm because of their protest marches and the continuous efforts of dialoguing with the mainstream trade unions with the issues of informal sector workers, apart from all the debates, interactions they are engaged with both at the community level and the household level of domestic workers. Interestingly, SEWA trade union is not affiliated with political party and that also creates confusion among people. Because all mainstream trade unions in India are affiliated with political parties. It is also a general practice to openly support a political party before the general elections. Individual SMSS members are free to get affiliated with any political party. A few

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of the SMSS members even contested elections in the part both as independent candidates and as candidates supported by a recognized political party. SEWA as an organization is able to address political issues at different national and international levels. SEWA takes part in the conferences organized by trade unions and international labour organization. A senior SEWA member feels, ‘This is the relevance of SEWA, from a feminist point of view, from a labor point of view, you know, how do we mix the feminist and the labor point of view and emerge a different perspective from that’.

Conclusions The SEWA intervention is interesting for reasons other than ‘poverty alleviation’. Irrespective of whether it may be categorized as ‘feminist’ or not in the sense of directly attacking the sexual division of labouror wage differentials in the labour market, it is interesting to feminists, who, ‘…are seeking to identify spaces for women in the public sphere that derive from functions and identities other than the reproductive, the symbolic, or the legal, that family, community, and state traditionally grant them’ (Rajan, 2000, 73–74). Rajan argues that identifying women’s work as a possible locus in civil society from which one may begin to think of ‘women’ as a collectivity does not require the idealization of work or the double burden of paid and unpaid care work that working women carry (Rajan, 2000, 74). However, one may note that this could be termed as a ‘meagre and compromised space’. However, there is a possibility that the concurrent transformation and expansion of such spaces may allow ‘women’s exercise of agency to activate their rights and resist community strictures and control’ (Rajan, 2000, 75–76). SEWA recognizes the exploitative dominance of societal norms on the one hand but does not necessarily antagonize the perpetuators beyond a certain limit rather it tends to negotiate on mutually convenient terms. SEWA’s strategy is based on careful consideration of sociopolitical context in which the woman workers live and SEWA itself operates. SEWA addresses women’s bargaining powers within families, though the family continues to be their major source of social and emotional security. The dominance of family imposes limits to the efforts by SEWA to politicize women against patriarchal practices. It is expected that developing of collective forms of social security would effectively reduce

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personal dependence of women on families and would challenge the dominant—mode of power relations and the docile agencies. The entry of domestic workers into politics or local governance is still limited but growing. Acknowledgements The author acknowledges the contribution of Shiny Saha and Jill Tipton (Institute of Social Studies Trust) for conducting the interviews with SMSS members and Sonia George of SEWA Kerala. The contribution of Sheena Bashir (SEWA Kerala) is also acknowledged for conducting a few interviews and translating the transcriptions from Malayalam to English.

References Banerjee, N. (Ed.). (1991). Indian women in a changing industrial scenario. Sage. Bhatt, E. (1989). Toward empowerment. World Development, 17 (7), 1059– 1065. Bhatt, E. (2007). We are poor but so many: The story of self-employed women in India. Oxford University Press. Chakraborty, A. (2005). Kerala’s changing development narratives. Economic and Political Weekly, 40(6), 541–547. Devika, J., & Thampi, B. (2007). Between ‘empowerment’ and ‘liberation’: The Kudumbashree initiative in Kerala. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 14(1), 33–60. Devika, J., Nisha, P. R., & Rajasree, A. K. (2011). A tactful union’: Domestic workers. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 18(2), 185–215. Eapen, M., & Kodoth, P. (2002, November). Family structure, women’s education and work: Re-examining the high status of women in Kerala (Working Paper #341). Centre for Development Studies. Eapen, M., & Kodoth, P. (2004). Family structure, women’s education and work: Re-examining the high status of women in Kerala. In Swapna, M., & Sudarshan, R. M. (Eds.), Tracking gender equity under economic reforms: Continuity and change in South Asia. Kali for Women. Eluri, S., & Singh, A. (2013). Unionizing domestic workers: Case study of the INTUC—Karnataka domestic workers Congress. ILO. https://www.loc.gov/ item/2015515406/. Eme, B. (2006). Espaces publics. In L. Laville & Cattani (Eds.), Dictionnaire de l’autre économie (pp. 358–366). Gallimard. Grover, S., Chambers, T., & Jeffery, P. (2018). Portraits of women’s paid domestic-care labour: Ethnographic studies from globalizing India. Journal of South Asian Development, 13(2), 123–140.

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Guérin, I., & Nobre, M. (2014). Solidarity economy revisited in the light of gender: A tool for social change or reproducing the subordination of women? In Ch. Verschuur, I. Guérin, & H. Guétat-Bernard (Eds.), Under development: Gender. Palgrave Macmillan. Heward, C., & Bunwaree, S. (Eds.). (1999). Gender, education and development: Beyond access to empowerment. Zed Books. Hill, E. (2001). Women in the Indian informal economy: Collective strategies for work life improvement and development. Work, Employment and Society, 15, 443–464. ILO. (2017). Formalizing domestic work (Domestic Work Policy Brief No. 10). http://www.ilo.org/travail/whatwedo/publications/WCMS_559854/ lang-en/index.htm. ILO & WIEGO. (2013). Women and men in the informal economy: A statistical picture (2nd ed.). http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/-dgreports/stat/documents/publication/wcms_234413.pdf. Kabeer, N. (1999). Resources, agency, achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women’s empowerment. Development and Change, 30, 435–464. Kannan, K. P. (1998). Political economy of labour and development in Kerala. Economic and Political Weekly, 33(52), L61–L70. Kannan, K. P. (2002). The welfare fund model of social security for informal sector workers: The Kerala experience (Working Paper No 332). Mason, K. O. (1985). The status of women: A review of its relationship to fertility and mortality. The Rockefeller Foundation. Mukherjee-Reed, A., & Reed, D. (2013). Taking solidarity seriously: Analysing Kudumbashree as a women’s social and solidarity economy experiment. Draft paper presented at the UNRISD Conference—Potential and limits of social and solidarity economy, 6–8 May 2013. Switzerland. Palriwala, R., & Neetha, N. (2010). Care arrangements and bargains: Anganwadi and paid domestic workers in India. International Labour Review, 149(4), 511–527. Rajan, R. S. (2000). Women between community and state: Some implications of the uniform civil code debates in India. Social Text, 18(4), 55–82. Sen, S. (2006). Women and labour in late colonial India: The Bengal jute industry. Cambridge University Press. Utting, P. (Ed.). (2015). Social and solidarity economy: Beyond the fringe. Zed Books. Zachariah, K. C., Rajan, S. I., Sarma, P. S., Navaneetham, K., Nair, P. S. G., & Misra, U. S. (1994). Demographic transition in Kerala in the 1980s. Centre for Development Studies and Gujarat Institute of Development Studies.

CHAPTER 8

Argentina: Collectivizing Care, Reinventing Work and Solidarity Marisa Fournier and Erika Loritz

Introduction The Argentinian case study is constituted by community organizations providing care services—education, recreation, nutrition—to children and young people in poor contexts. These organizations are self-integrated into networks. These community-based care initiatives are non-mercantile and are part of the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE). They are based on the self-organization of women of poor urban sectors and they satisfy the needs of children and young people of their neighbourhoods. Associativity and community care organizations can be analysed from several points of view. For example, we could concentrate on the impacts that they have on the quality of life of children and youth, on the way they link with other social and political actors, on the relationship these organizations establish with families, on the articulation with State policies,

M. Fournier (B) · E. Loritz Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento (UNGS), Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1_8

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on the particular form of internal organization that they have developed, among many other aspects. For the purposes of this research, we decided to prioritize the analysis on the implications that these organization have for women in urban popular sectors. We will focus on the process of collective associativity on care. This process has had very interesting implications in the politicization of women and in the generation of an aggregate demand for the need of a greater State presence for the care of children and young people. Children and young people’s care involves carrying out socially necessary work. Care includes necessities that are not being fully covered by the State, by families, nor by the market in Argentina. This is even more critical in the marginal areas of the Conurbano Bonaerense (the Buenos Aires conurbation). Care needs of children, their food, education and stimulation are certainly vital needs of a community. Access to de-commercialized care services is a historic demand of women in the world. State care services in Argentina are not sufficient, so it is often the communities and their organizations that organize self-managed and de-commercialized care services to respond to the needs of hundreds of families. The community centres that we analysed are enrolled in the process of de-familialization and de-commercialization in a structural way. Women of the marginal neighbourhoods of the Buenos Aires suburbs have organized, without help or previous training, forms of collective care that later became community centres for child-care, contributing effectively to the well-being of families, to the rights of children and youth and the reproduction of the community as a whole. In this paper, we focus on the way these organizations, mainly run by women, satisfy an urgent need in popular neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires: the need for care. By collectivizing care, these women are in some way reinventing stereotyped work and are building new ways of solidarity among peers. In this work, we want to show how collective care is a way of building women’s power and autonomy. We also argue that it is extremely important is to integrate these community associations into the SSE field. The main features of the grass-roots organizations are briefly described in the first part of the text. In the second part, we analyse the meanings given to community care work, intersected by contradictory processes that go from maternalism to “empowerment". Then we share some reflections on the relationship between collective care and the SSE. Finally, we

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conclude explaining the importance of these organizations for the reproduction of life and for the collective repositioning of working women in their lives.

Methodology The objective of this work is to understand the place of women in collective care and the transformations that this type of work generates in their personal lives and in their communities. The investigation is based on methodological and epistemological contributions of feminist research (Damaris, 2001). The voice of women was central. Spaces of reflection and debate were generated under the workshop modality. This gave inputs to debates with community workers about their situation and condition. We opted to value their experiences and knowledge linked to overcoming situations of vulnerability and inequality. During the research, a variety of methods were employed. For the selection of the case study, interviews were done by a strategy of successive approaches that ended in the concrete selection of the study cases. These approaches allowed us to have a panoramic view of the care community organizations that take part in Inter Redes (a large network of community organizations in Conurbano Bonaerense 1 ). In a second moment, we decided to focus on the Red El Encuentro (a regional network) and we did in-depth interviews with coordinators and members of the centres and network. We also participated to various significant events. In a third moment we decided to focus on the Centro Comunitario Belén, where we did interviews and focus groups with educators and families. We interviewed coordinators of the networks that participate in Inter Redes, coordinators and workers of the organizations that participate in Red El Encuentro; women that take their children to Centro Comunitario Belén and workers from this centre. We also did participant observation and focus groups in some centres. We participated in different events with the association: Encuentro Regional de Mujeres, Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres (regional and national congress of women); a SEE forum, a

1 Conurbano Bonaerense is a territory that includes 24 districts where almost one-third of the population of Argentina lives. One of the characteristics of this territory is the high levels of inequality. Among the 12 million inhabitants, 34, 1% of the people do not cover the basic food basket. In addition, 49, 6% of the people under 18 are below the poverty line and 11, 3% below the indigence line (Beccaria, 2017).

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congress of community workers; a childhood and youth congress; and a popular education meeting. For the interview guides design, we tried to understand structural issues such as: what do they do and under what conditions do they do it; as well subjectivity issues: what do they think—and feel —about what they do. The approach was thus oriented to register practices as well as symbolic and political positions. The local research design also included some issues raised by the educators. In the meetings with coordinators we could have access to documental sources and audio-visual material.

Associative Child-Care Centres in the Conurbano Bonaerense Community organizations as well as organization networks that integrate this research are located in the poorest neighbourhoods of the Conurbano Bonaerense, whose work is based on the supply of education, nutrition and recreation services to children and young people from 45 days to 18 years old. In some neighbourhoods, they are the only recreation, educational and nutritional supply available beyond what is offered by the overcrowded schools. This problem is due to the lack of public institutions capable of meeting children’s and youth’s needs (this gap is even bigger for children between the ages of 0 and 5). In addition, public institutions are usually situated many kilometres away. The access to the few public kindergartens is even more difficult considering the lack of public transport as well as the poor urban infrastructure, that make the daily movement of women with many children very difficult. Rapid demographical rise in the last decades in the second and third ring of the Conurbano Bonaerense due to neighbouring countries’ migrations has had an impact in the increased and large inadequacy of the public services offer for the population. The origin of these grass-roots organizations varies. In a first moment, women organized themselves to give an answer to the need for spaces for child-care in the communities while parents were off working. In a second moment, new organizations were created due to the nutrition crisis, consequent to the two 1989 and 2001 crisis. During that second moment child-care focused on nutritional policies in a context of extreme poverty. Beyond the presence of these policies, these community organizations were born “from below” and with a collective logic.

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With time, these community organizations got more complex and grew in many ways: infrastructure, education, planning, and in terms of articulation with public and private actors. In this development, the early network articulation was fundamental. The child-care networks studied meet two criteria: a territorial one (they gather many organizations from the same counties) and a thematic one (they are all based on childhood and youth care). One of the most recognized networks in the conurbano is Inter Redes. This is a major network that groups 6 networks of community centres located in 17 of the 24 counties of the Conurbano Bonaerense. The total number of workers that integrate Inter Redes is 2.850, mostly women. In terms of ages, there is a strong predominance of young people of 18–35 years old (45%), followed by adult women of 36–50 years old (42%). Inside Inter Redes, different ideologies, organization trajectories and political positions coexist. This net functions with periodic assemblies in which the members share management experiences and information about the situation of the centres. They also generate political incidence strategies related to childhood and youth and they have developed projects for public policies for the recognition of the workers of the centres. The work with childhood and youth issues allowed the net to have access to public resources as well as from private foundations and to have an impact on public policies to the sector. Leaders from each of the network participate in this democratic and horizontal space. In Inter Redes they share and make the most of the knowledge and specific abilities that each network has in order to improve children and teenager’s lives as well as the community worker’s conditions. The specific abilities that each net brings go from management abilities to articulation with other social actors with more relative power, among others. This net of nets was born in 1991 and has 27 years of non-stop work. We can say that this continuum is rare in the world of the organizations of SSE in Argentina. Through this networking, women learnt to organized themselves, to teach, to articulate with more powerful actors, to work together, etc. Red El Encuentro gathers 15 community centres in peripheral neighbourhoods of the Conurbano Bonaerense. Among other networks, they take part in Inter Redes. Red el Encuentro started in 1991 because of the need of the community centres to face the social crisis and to receive State support. Today, 300 community educators work in these centres,

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80% of whom are women. Also, 2.800 children and teenagers participate in these centres. Centres of Red El Encuentro work together on various aspects, with the popular education perspective inspired by the principles of Paulo Freire. In these institutions, nutrition, education and games are considered as having the same value. All the workers of the network are considered as educators, from the cooks, the cleaning staff, to the teachers. To define the daily tasks, all centres have an annual planning which is assessed in the middle and at the end of the year. Based on this collective assessment, changes are introduced. Administrative and economic management of each centre is assessed this way as well. Red El Encuentro is a democratic and participative organization. Each centre has coordinators, who are usually the founders or other legitimated members. Besides, each centre has a delegate who is democratically chosen and changes every 2 years. Centres also have area coordinators (maternity, schoolchildren, youth, cook, administration). Each area has a monthly training meeting in the network. In addition, each centre has team meetings every week. In these meetings, they share the news and the decisions are made collectively. These decisions are later-on addressed at the network meetings. Consensus is always prioritized in the decisionmaking process. Being part of the network is essential for each person’s experience. This type of management and decision-making generates a community subjectivity in which the sense of belonging and the collective identity is well rooted. This identity is a process that arises from this type of work. The network is funded by the State and in a smaller degree with resources from private foundations. Belén Community Centre is a member and founder of the Red El Encuentro. It was built by the neighbours with the help of the local church in 1984. The centre is located in a periphery neighbourhood in one on the poorest counties in Conurbano Bonaerense (called José C. Paz). This organization welcomes 300 babies, children and young people (from 2 months to 18 years old). They have a variety of proposals for the promotion of children and youth’s rights. The working areas are nutrition, recreation and education for children and youth. They perform expressive, recreational and educational activities. Like others, this centre was born to meet the needs for care of children whose parents had to leave the house to work. New services like community development were progressively added. The service is free for the families. In 1998, the community radio FM Tinkunaco was founded in the top floor of the Centre and today it is part of the national network of

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community media. In 2010 the public library Paulo Freire was founded one block away from the centre. The young people have their workshops and activities in the library. All the initiatives constitute the Cultural Collective of Barrio San Atilio that works in an integrated way with Centro Comunitario Belén. There are 32 educators (27 women and 5 men) who work at Belén Centre. Most of the workers live in the community or in the neighbourhood. Through its history, the centre has gained in human rights and gender equality awareness. The management and decision-making process is done through regular meetings (similar to the system of Red El Encuentro explained above). Internal democracy resulted in conflicts with the church, which caused the break with the institution. The main sources of funding come from the State and to a minor extent from foundations and private contributions. As regards the families that receive care services in Centro comunitario Belén, we identified a strong presence of single mother families (50%), followed by mothers and children that live with grandmothers. In addition, most families have the same mother but the father varies and the paternal contribution is very irregular. The presence of families where both parents are present is minimal. In terms of employment, 85% of the people have precarious jobs. The low incomes they receive are complemented by the Asignación Universal por Hijo 2 (AUH), a social programme for vulnerable families. 80% of the families receive the AUH as well as other programmes. In all cases the reproductive tasks inside the home are carried out by women, generally mothers who sometimes get some help from other women to solve economic and care needs (grandmothers, aunts, neighbours).

Collective Care: Women in Associative Work The work done in these centres is a very feminized one, with a strong maternal approach. Those who teach, feed and affectively support children and young people are mostly women. From a feminist perspective

2 Asignación Universal por Hijo (Universal assignation per child) is a social program in Argentina, paid per each child under 18 (no age limit for disabled children) to families that do not have social care and that are in a vulnerable situation. To receive the insurance, families must show the health controls and the regular attendance to schools of their children.

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this could sound contradictory. Why focusing on tasks where women have been assigned to for centuries, based on the sexual division of labour? Based on our research, we observed that the work carried out by these workers shows several ruptures with traditional domestic work in many ways. We are talking about women from the same neighbourhoods who were in the first place looking after their children and close people’s ones. The fact is that the particular need resulting from being closed by care services has led to a sort of de-closure, an exit for women out of their domestic scenes, in order to put in common an amount of material, social, affective and symbolic resources to satisfy the reproductive needs. These needs had been understood as common needs, and as such, they required a community approach3 (Gago & Quiroga, 2014). Women workers community-based care initiatives do not escape the general rule of social and sexual division of labour. They are the ones who care in their homes without being paid for and they are also the ones that have jobs linked to care services in the labour market. The opportunities offered by the market for women in urban popular sectors with dependent children are concentrated in care and domestic work in private homes. Many of the women who work in child-care centres have labour market trajectories linked to child-care work in private homes or to indirect care work such as cleaning or cooking (Zibecchi, 2014). At first glance, one might think that the work women do in the community centres has a continuity with the work they were already doing at home or in the market. If we look at the issue from the perspective of the sexual division of labour, this statement is absolutely true. In the community centres, the social and sexual division of labour is reproduced. So why do we say that in community centres these women “reinvent” work? Our research showed us that the community organization of child-care has an enormous power in re-signifying care tasks. Caring in an associative and collective way outside the private homes radically transforms the value of the task and dignifies the workers. When care work is collectivized, it ceases to be an exclusive responsibility of 3 The authors use the concept of “de- closure” or the moment of communitarization and collective appropriation of services, goods, knowledge and feelings in exceptional moments of social crisis such the one lived in Argentina in 2001. In this study, we try to explain what happens after these episodes (1989 and 2001).

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women/mothers in their homes. In these community organizations, selfmanagement of care work is part of a permanent deliberative exercise. They do not care because they are obliged to do so; they do it as a decision that is planned as a group. De-commodification and de-familialization of care (Lewis, 1997; Rodríguez Enríquez, 2007) open a field of multiple conceptual and political ruptures related to: (a) the construction of care needs; (b) the sexual division of labour; (c) the space in which reproduction and care work takes place; (d) care assessment and recognition; (e) the ways and criteria of redistribution of care; (f) care quality; (g) responsibility for care; and (h) the multiple organizational forms in which it is solved; among others. De-familialization can take several forms, all of them focused on institutions and care relationships that develop outside the home borders. Child-care may be provided by: (a) commercial or private extra-family care institutions (kindergartens for which families have to pay for access and permanence); (b) care centres that operate in the workspace of parents; (c) kindergartens offered by the State with free public access; and (d) those offered by social organizations or SSE (nurseries, child-care centres and community kindergartens). In the last two cases (c and d) care is assumed as a matter of social responsibility. In these cases, care is decommercialized. In the first case, care is under the State’s responsibility and in the second case care is provided by community- based initiatives. In both situations, care is located in spaces that go far beyond home and family sphere, the family monetary resources available to access these services and the work situation of parents. The main responsibility in the provision of welfare linked to care no longer rests on women circumscribed to the domestic sphere but it is assumed by State or community institutions (with or without State support), in which there is a strong predominance of women. De-familialization and de-commercialization give the possibility of democratization of families. As Jelin says, the family cannot be democratic “as long as the provision and access to collective services necessary for the daily tasks of domesticity is not democratized” (Jelin, 2010, 74). Also, de-commodification and the de-familialization of care have led to important levels of empowerment among poor women whose chances of personal development are very limited. We face here a contradictory phenomenon in which the increase of personal autonomy is rooted in gender-stereotyped tasks. By working together, they have been able to solve the need for care for their children and the other women’s. But

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also, by working together they have changed themselves. By working together, they triggered empowerment processes that were unthought-of at the beginning. We can find several positive impacts of the socialization of care on women. Firstly, the collectivization of care generates important transformations in the subjectivity of these women. The associative nature of community organizations has generated a sort of political awareness of care as an issue that involves the State and the society as a whole. Collectivization of care and organization of community workers in networks generate the politicization of the work they do. It tensioned the maternal bias in these type of tasks and generated legislative proposals for the recognition of careworkers by the State. This way, care stops being considered as something in the nature of women and that they must do for free. In the associative process, women have gradually started to generate a view of the social scenario that is different from the domestic order and have been able to move towards autonomy: social mobility and the public world cannot be imagined from the barriers that the home imposes. This change of perspective of care tasks has brought about a process of empowerment in personal, familial, communal and political terms. As a consequence of the growing awareness of the women that take part in these centres and because of the change in the self-assessment of the value of their work, they changed the way they consider themselves from “caring mothers” to “educators or community workers”. In this sense, there has been a relevant change in personal and collective subjectivity. Patricia, one of the educators interviewed, explained it in this way, “to grow out of the level ‘caring mother’ and become a community worker is a quantum leap”. There are processes of empowerment and changes in the lives and subjectivity of these community workers in different aspects: personal, family, community, political and economic. In terms of personal empowerment, the community centres are conceived as spaces of personal growth, personal projection, professionalization and strengthening of knowledge and self-esteem. Educators recognize that they have changed their personality in the centre; they are less shy and they have learnt to share their opinions and work with others. In terms of family empowerment, many women have been able to reposition themselves inside their homes thanks to their role as community workers. Many gained more autonomy for the administration of their time and resources and others could manage to stop situations of domestic violence. In terms of community

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empowerment, educators say that they have gained recognition in their neighbourhoods for the task they perform. In terms of political empowerment, as community workers and as members of a network, they question the State and fight for the recognition or their work. They have developed the ability to maintain a dialogue with actors with greater power such as State officials of the three levels of government and church representatives. The organization gave these women unknown power. Although the impact on economic empowerment is less than the others due to the low income they receive, community work has provided them with a series of material and symbolic advantages. Surprisingly, and in a somehow contradictory way, for these workers leaving their houses was one of the first steps to meet other women and know other scenarios, some of which were totally unknown for them. Another implication of the collectivization of care is that they liberate work time for other women so that they can enter the labour market or develop their own business. These collective organizations and the empowerment that it generates breaks with the alienation as well as the domesticity inherent to family relationships. From a feminist and decolonial perspective, this increasing empowerment is born from processes of collective identification. To take care for others in an associative way results in recognition of their work and of themselves: “Now I am somebody”, “This is real work”. Besides, the fact of educating, feeding and supporting combines with the fight for children’s right and their own rights as workers. This “collectivization” of care results in women’s politicization and empowerment. In the day-to-day work of caring for others, generic solidarities emerged. These solidarities allowed them to escape from situations of confinement and violence suffered by them within their homes. The caring task was translated into self-care experiences and practices. Caring for others collectively also leads to self-care for these women themselves. The group, the good treatment, the presence of advisors and monetary incomes were key aspects for the empowerment of these women. It seems that in care and women issues, the approach to perform the tasks is as relevant as the place and the way in which it is developed.

Collective Care and Solidarity Economy To include these organizations in a SEE research from a feminist perspective is challenging in many ways. From a feminist perspective, this is due

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to what we explained above: these associative groups are made up in a 90% by women of poor contexts, marked by a sexual division of labour as well as the assignment of reproductive and care tasks to women. Clearly, the maternal bias is present here. However, as we explained, we could identify that the process of community or associative organization for care has led to a significant empowerment of women. It has also led to their increasing politization. This takes care out of the domestic sphere and places it in a common and public scenario. From the SSE perspective, including associative care in its field is challenging in two ways. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that these organizations do not define themselves as part of SSE even though their practices respond to what this field prescribes, both theoretically and in terms of research and social fight. On the other hand, SSE does not focus on associative care as part of its thinking, research and action field. Social and Solidarity Economy usually pays very little attention to this type of institutions and much less to care work. Both in the field of research and in public policy, Urban Social Solidarity Economy recognizes as its main objects of research or intervention productive microenterprises, cooperatives, factories recovered by their workers, microfinance, social banking, barter networks, fare trade, fairs, local currencies, among others. However, we consider, as we saw, that these organizations of care are part of SSE because: (a) they are popular experiences that put together needs in order to satisfy them collectively and in an autonomous way; (b) they highlight the reproduction of life of the members and their territory in the best possible conditions; (c) they generate work sources based on reciprocity, democracy and distribution; (d) they take decisions based on deliberation and consensus; and (e) they offer alternative proximity scenarios for the struggle for more decent lives and they emerge from the organization of women in their neighbourhoods. All these characteristics and principles are hardly seen all together in the traditional SSE experiences such as associations or cooperatives but are almost always present in all these care organizations. One of the few theoretical references of the SSE that recognizes the centrality of care work for the reproduction of life is José Luis Coraggio. This author defines domestic units as “the basic cell” of Social Economy. He assumes that the domestic units are varied in their conformation and extension but it is within them and from them that social reproduction is possible. At this point, Coraggio (2007) admits that care is one of the

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socially necessary forms of work for life. However, the author attributes to domestic units relationships based on reciprocity, an issue that feminism is dedicated to dismantle. Feminism understands that care constitutes a particular form of work based on interpersonal relationships that provide well-being. It is a type of work that satisfies the most elementary vital needs. Care includes both material needs (eating, dressing, etc.); symbolic needs (education, sharing norms for social coexistence, acquiring a language) and emotional ones (recognition, love). But along with it, feminism highlights the gender and class bias that characterizes care work in terms of recognition, redistribution and remuneration. The ones who care are mostly poor women. Our study highlights this insufficiency, this hole that is present in the Social and Solidarity Economy. Care work, that is to say all those activities that are essential for life such as food, emotional support, health, hygiene, recreation, etc., is not well represented within the field of the SSE. Not including care of children and young people as a central element of the SSE in the cities responds, to our understanding, to the androcentric and mercantilist bias that draws this approach. This bias is evident when we look at the main objects of empirical research or the priorities of State policies or other technical or financial support agencies oriented to the Urban Social Solidarity Economy sector. We argue that SSE will not be truly feminist unless it integrates the reproductive or care organizations in its field. To introduce grass-roots collective care in the SSE field involves reviewing the mercantilist approach that dominates this field. Therefore, integrating associative-based care as one of the nodes of the SSE implies, among other things, reviewing the role of the heteronormative family structure and capitalism. The daily systematic work that women do inside homes for free is the hidden face, the denied one, the basis of the iceberg that sustains commercial relations at local and global levels (Picchio, 1992). It is necessary to dismantle the family structure as it is presented in modern societies. In our opinion, one of the many challenges of the SSE from a feminist perspective should be questioning the modern traditional family. Talking about the family and the sexual division of labour that structures households highlights the free transfer done by women from their homes to the reproduction of society as a whole. In the words of Esquivel: “The contributions of care work (…) a kind of subsidy from those who provide care to those who receive them, has the potential of counteracting, to some

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extent, income inequities” (Esquivel, 2011, 25). Then, she argues that the ones who benefit from care are not only the ones who receive them directly but also the society and the economy as a whole, becoming “a subsidy from homes to the public sphere (State or commercial)” (Idem). This way social reproduction, welfare production and sexual division of labour are placed at the centre of economic and political discussion. In addition, solidarity occupies a central place in SSE approaches. For the organizations of care that we are analysing, solidarity is a fundamental aspect, from the origin of the experience to the daily work they share. SSE mainly challenges certain principles of orthodox economy that structure its thinking on the basis of an individual directed by an egoistic instrumental rationality. In this sense, creating an economic system and an economic thought based on solidarity and reciprocity becomes one of the main worries of SSE. From a feminist perspectives, the most important worries revolve around equality, autonomy, justice and freedom. In the case of women, to prioritize or to take into consideration their own interests over the others is one of fights that feminism defends. The permanent willingness to solve the needs of others has been a problem for women because that willingness might have a high price for them. In this regard, those who are part of these organizations show solidarity towards other families and groups in the territory. The commitment they have for the children and their families is translated into long hours of work that go beyond their timetable. They work more than what they are expected to, they get very low economic retribution and still go ahead, they get involved in the fights for more rights and they participate in meetings and other events in the community. Solidarity takes the form of activism in which personal needs are put aside to find solutions for problems through the organization or the community in general. In these situations, reciprocity or personal benefit is not always clear. The other that you help is someone close to you, with whom you share the same territory and same problems: a neighbour, a brother, a comrade. As we can see, the type of solidarity involved in these organizations is different from philanthropic solidarity as defined by Laville (Laville, 2013). This solidarity among peers is one of the main principles of SSE, in opposition to philanthropic solidarity or solidarity “from above”. When we asked women what they understood by solidarity, we found that there are many ways of understanding it. Some of them understand solidarity by “walking on somebody else’s shoes” and to cooperate for

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the other to get better. Solidarity does not only mean sacrificing personal interests, it also involves the capacity for empathy, the type of empathy shared by people of the same class living in the same territory. For others, solidarity is a word used by those with more money that show charity for those who have less. In the words of one interviewed: “Solidarity is not what defines us, what we do is community work. We get together to solve the problems, to improve the lives of everyone. For others, solidarity can be activated and desactivated. Solidarity is community and community is a way of life, we take it everywhere”. Feminism also brings up an essential issue related to solidarity among women. Most precisely, solidarity practices among people of the same gender that suffer the same oppressive situation and work together to free themselves. To understand the oppression of the other through one’s own experience and to get together to find a way-out of this oppressive situation is one of the most important findings of this research. As regards this, different levels of solidarity can be observed among women: women from community centres organize themselves to solve problems of care for their own children and others, freeing themselves from the enormous task of care in the family life. These child-care organizations have meant more than once the possibility to escape from violent machista situations inside their own homes. To be part of the group worked as a means to denaturalize violence and go ahead with personal autonomy. It is not uncommon for women in community centres to help other women from the neighbourhood to also find a way-out of violent situations inside their homes. As one of the interviewed said: “We save the lives of women and children”. Women organized around care issues are conscious of the contribution they make to other women in their communities that are not organized. The child-care centres allow the women to go out and work without worrying over their kids because they know they are being taken care of. Solidarity among women is not something that we can be taken for granted, it is a process explained by the collectivization of care and the participation of the organizations in regional and national meetings of women. For this to happen, the relationship with the feminist movement was a key factor. Every year some members of the organizations participate in massive events (Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres ) that have been held for three decades in Argentina. They participate in the workshops and then take the discussions to each organization. The relationship

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with the feminist movements and women’s movements has progressively introduced the gender agenda in the child-care organizations.

Conclusions We consider community child-care organizations of extremely poor sectors as alternative ways of reproduction of life from the SSE perspective. We think that the incorporation of collective care as relevant actors of SSE requires to review the mercantilist—productive—androcentric bias that dominates this field. It also requires reviewing the hegemonic perspective that defines nutrition, affective support and education as assistance actions. From our perspective, teaching, taking care of and feeding are productive tasks that generate value and should be considered for policies of promotion of the SSE field. Social policies and the legislation of SSE in Argentina do not include care and gender equality in its institutional designs. The productive bias restricts the potential of SSE institutions. Collective child-care SSE experiences can be an important contribution to other women in the communities to unburden them from care tasks. In the context of the colonial capitalist system, which does not recognize and discredits care tasks, leads to the privatization of life and promotes selfish and individualistic subjectivities, including the community organizations of care in this research is a theoretical challenge as well as a political stake. To consider the tasks of nutrition, education and recreation of children and youth not as assistance tasks but as political and economic issues is a challenge. At a first level of analysis, we can claim that associativity and solidarity among women that share the same class condition and the same territory have developed concrete ways of reproduction of life that are not ruled by capitalist and patriarchal norms. A second level of analysis means reviewing the relationship (of coexistence, conflict, interdependence) with social reproduction as a whole in a context of capitalism, patriarchy and inequality. Studying the social reproduction as a whole allow us to look at emerging ways of life, as the organizations in this research show, and its potential for the creation of new non-capitalist relationships of social reproduction. However, due to the global hegemony of capitalism, the question of to what extent SSE is subsidiary of the reproduction of capital or is a systemic alternative is still open.

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Finally, women associative care initiatives (care for people, care for the territory, care for local identities, and care for the immediate reproduction of life) are also observed in other Latin-American countries. Care has been the source of grass-roots women organizations in their struggle for the reproduction of life in the best possible conditions. In this paper, we tried to show how for women to get together to look after others outside their homes generates important changes in their personal lives and redefines traditional notions of work. It also places poor women in a struggle field for the public recognition of the tasks they accomplish and that relief other women from similar contexts.

References Beccaria A. (2017). La pobreza en el Conurbano Bonaerense, Documento de Trabajo en Observatorio del Conurbano Bonaerense. http://observatoriocon urbano.ungs.edu.ar/?page_id=7286. Damaris, R. (2001). Retour sur les méthodologies de recherche féministes. Document de travail. Soumis à Condition féminine. Canada: Direction de la recherche. Coraggio, J. L. (2007). Economía Social, acción pública y política. CICCUS: Buenos Aires. Esquivel, V. (2011). La Economía del Cuidado en América Latina: poniendo a los cuidados en el centro de la Agenda. PNUD. Gago, V., & Quiroga, N. (2014). Crisis como momento de des-cercamiento. Economía y Sociedad, 19(45). Jelin, E. (2010). Pan y afectos: la transformación de las familias. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Laville, J. L. (2013). Diccionario de la otra Economía. Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento. Lewis, J. (1997). Género, política familiar y trabajo remunerado y no remunerado. Duoda: Estudios de la diferencia sexual (13). Picchio, A. (1992). Social reproduction: The political economy of the labour market. Cambridge University Press. Rodríguez Enríquez, C. (2007). La organización descuidado de niños y niñas en Argentina y Uruguay. Serie Mujer y Desarrollo. Santiago de Chile: CEPAL. Zibecchi, C. (2014). Trayectorias de mujeres y trabajo de cuidado en el ámbito comunitario: Algunas claves para su estudio. Revista de Estudios de Género. La ventana, V (39). México Universidad de Guadalajara.

CHAPTER 9

Alternative Market Systems: Mutual Dependence for Collective Welfare in a Fish Market in Udupi Kaveri Thara

Introduction This chapter explores fisherwomen’s struggles for social reproduction in Udupi, located in the western coast of Southern India. It draws from an ethnography carried out between 2016–2018 amongst women fresh fish sellers in Udupi district, located in Mangalore city in the state of Karnataka in southern India. It examines the political struggles of fisherwomen to protect the retail fish market from incursion of capitalist enterprises and their negotiations for access to social protection and state welfare. These are in essence struggles for social reproduction by fisher women, a majority of whom are small sellers, selling a basket or two of fish each day, eking out a living and sustaining families. This mode of sustenance based selling is inherited through generations of fisherwomen who

K. Thara (B) Kaveri Thara is the pen name of Kaveri Haritas, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1_9

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bartered fish for rice, construing retail trade in fish as domain of subsistence. This alternative mode of economic practice is steadily under threat from accumulative practices that has reconfigured the broader fishing economy in the region. Fish retail within this broader scenario is not insulated from these developments and is beginning to attract men and entrepreneurs with access to capital into fish sales and fish markets. The state is an important agent of this transformation, supporting the capitalist development of the sector, formalising informal markets and increasingly foraying into retail fish sales itself. Within this larger context of capitalism, this chapter explores the struggles of fisherwomen and their partial success in obtaining promises from local government to help protect fish sales from such incursions. I argue that while these negotiated promises are fragile and tenuous, the threat to livelihoods has brought together women who have learnt to build and reinforce political network, using the very metaphors of motherhood to reclaim reproductive rights from a reluctant state. Collective struggles have resulted in the formation of political subjectivities amongst women, extending their activities from vending to that of mobilising politically, reclaiming relations of dependence with a recalcitrant state, thus making the state accountable for social reproduction. This chapter relies on 50 interviews, including 5 life histories; observation and participant observation conducted over a period of eleven months—nine months in 2016—January to October 2016; and 2 months in 2018—June-July 2018. I will be continuing interviews again between December 20,187 and January 2018 (for 5 weeks) and once again in June-July 2018 (for another 6 weeks). Of the 50 interviews conducted at present, 34 have been conducted with fisherwomen who are members of this Association, in addition 16 interviews with staff members of the Association, credit organizations including the MMVSSN and academics working in the vicinity, and staff of the other fishermen’s societies in the area. Apart from observing and often participating in the sales of fish, this research also relies on observation and participant observation of a total of 5 meetings of the Association, one of which was video recorded for the purposes of contributing to the collective documentary film in this project. Everyday observation was carried out to understand time use and the distribution of domestic tasks. I followed fisherwomen from their homes in the early morning as they went to the harbour to purchase fish and transported the fish to the market, observed their market activities and finally followed them home in the evening. Though access to their

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homes was limited, I was able to spend time with a few families at the end of the day during dinner, providing me an opportunity to witness the heavy domestic burden women carry in addition to the long hours they spend selling fish. Apart from the field research, a considerable amount of locally written and published material on the Mogaveera community also informed this research, many of which find mention in this chapter. I worked primarily in the central fish market in Udupi which was in a temporarily allotted traditional market in Beedinagudde till December 2016 and shifted in January 2017 to the new two-storey modern fish market built and provided by the Government. In the spot where the new market is, an informal market had been established in the 1950s as this was centrally located and close to the civil courts, the central bus station, shops and other bus stands in the vicinity. This market came up informally on land belonging to the government when some women began to sell fish here and were joined later by other fisherwomen. In the early 2000s, the government decided to evict the fisherwomen and sell this piece of land to a private developer for the construction of a building housing shops. The fisherwomen resisted this move and refused to move from the premises and after a series of negotiations the government accepted their claim to the market, and agreed to construct a modern fish market to enable them to sell fish on this same spot. I was able to conduct my interviews in 2016 in the temporary, traditional squat down fish market in Beedinagudde and later in the modern fish market in 2017. The majority of Udupi’s fisherwomen belong to the fisherman’s caste in the region—the Mogaveeras and are the lowest of the four castes— shudras, in the caste hierarchy. These women consistently speak of their work as—Jati Kasubu, meaning caste occupation. Fisherwomen have traditionally bartered fish for rice in the past and with the increase in transport and the establishment of informal markets around bus stations, began to sell fish in the region. Fisherwomen consider selling fish as an essential part of their reproductive responsibilities as mothers and speak of selling fish to feed their children. The rhetoric of feeding embeds what is essentially vending work in the reproductive realm of mothering. Even if fisherwomen sell fish and speak of ‘profits’, the larger majority are small sellers selling no more than a basket or two of fish to provide for their families. This notion of providing for one’s children is nourished by an ethics of mothering tethered in what was earlier a matrilineal caste. Mogaveera fisherwomen earlier inherited property from their mothers and were primarily responsible for their children, while Mogaveera men were

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less important to the family. Sally Cole in her study of cod fishing in Newfoundland makes a similar observation that the matrilineal system within the fishing communities wherein women were central to the household and men played minimal roles, played a role in enabling fishermen to work far away from home and to be absent from their families for long periods of time (Cole, 1990). Even though the matrilineal systems in the region have been since long replaced by a patrilineal system,1 narratives of mothers being primarily responsible for both the care and upkeep of their children continue to dominate discourses. In this context, the notion of mothering is not one that is limited to the domestic space of home, but extends to the vending of women in markets to ensure children are fed, clothed and educated. Within this broader narrative of mothering, fisherwomen’s work of vending is socially constructed as an extension of women’s reproductive roles. Customers frequently speak of poor fisherwomen who have to feed their children, and the notion of feeding often spills over into discourses of feeding the community by making fresh fish available at a low cost. The work of fish vending is thus socially constructed as a market activity with the final objective of feeding families. In this sense vending acquires a ‘non-market’ meaning in social discourses, legitimized by the market function that small sellers offer of making available cheap fish to the community. These discourses reveal how the place that social actors occupy comes to bear on the meanings that their activities take on. Here women’s work of vending is less a product of the nature of activities she engages in, but moreso the social status she occupies as a mother and her concrete social interactions (Rosaldo, 1980). Rosaldo and Lamphere point out that, as long as women are universally defined in terms of a largely maternal and domestic role, we can account for their universal subordination (Rosaldo & Lamphere, 1974). As Beneria points out most societies universally assign women with two fundamental aspects of reproduction of the labour force—child care and activities associated with daily family maintenance. She notes that women’s trading activities are often integrated and affected by women’s involvement in reproduction as the market place becomes an

1 Certain communities in the south of Karnataka (commonly referred to as South Kanara) have historically followed Aliyasantana (the lineage of the sister’s son) system. The Aliyasantana system in the region was abolished under the Kerala Joint Hindu Family System Abolition Act, 1975. Older fisherwomen for instance spoke of continuing to inherit property, while younger women under the new laws lost their rights to property.

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extension of the household (Beneria, 1979, 221–222). Seligmann points out that women frequently enter markets as an extension of household tasks they perform, as well as to make possible the economic survival of households and the survival of their children. Though women are socialized to undertake the larger share of work within households to ensure their children’s welfare, in many societies this is not restricted to caretaking but extends to the economic maintenance of children. Women thus enter markets as ‘mothers’ and do not limit their actions of caring for their children to the home. In societies where women are ‘naturally’ considered to be economically autonomous, marketing activities are not unusual. She adds that this attitude towards women’s work contrasts with the negative attitude of most men towards women’s paid work in Latin America and India and the consequent restriction of women to the lowest levels of marketing where they have little opportunity for accumulation of capital (Seligmann, 2001, 4). Women vendors thus ‘move between and knit together household and marketplace activities in intriguing ways’, so that the domestic space of home and the public space of markets interact dialectically, informed by kinship dynamics, gender ideologies, household practices and economies (Seligmann, 2001, 3). Market practices and the economic principles that govern them, in turn, are crucial to the reproduction of households and inform the nature of activities that take place within it. This comes forth sharply amongst the practices of Udupi’s fisherwomen, as the domestic often transforms into spaces of production for the market—with drying and processing of fish at home, while the market becomes an extension of home with familial relations of bonds of kinship between vendors. These bonds that are also cultural and caste based in nature, not only enable mutual support, but also serve to enforce cultural norms of appropriate behaviour within the market place. Selling thus becomes a function of the domestic realm in more ways than just enabling the sustenance of families. For instance in a study of fisherwomen in Kerala Hapke notes how marketing work and women’s mobility is constrained in the market place (Hapke, 1996, 189). In Udupi’s fish markets, the gaze of other women also restricts and structures women’s mobility and the use of the market place. Mohanty points to the link between low wages and the definition of work as supplementary activity for mothers and housewives as reflective of sexual identity and ideas of heterosexual femininity in terms of marital domesticity. Women internalize caste and patriarchal ideologies that define them as non-workers and their identity is as housewives and

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mothers, rather than as workers dependent on psychic, material and spiritual survival (Mohanty 2013). This perception of women’s work defines the value of what is produced. What women produce for their families thus often has little value attached to it, even if it is very much a part of the market system. The definition of women’s work is often in terms of what their production is meant for rather than in terms of its function in the marketplace. However, as we will explore in the case of the Udupi fisherwomen, even if what women produce is devalued, it is precisely their roles as mothers in the market that has enabled them to protect retail vending, even if in limited ways, from incursions (Thara, 2016).

Udupi, a Coastal Temple Town and a Thriving Market for Fish Retail Udupi is a small town on the western coast of south India. Located in the city of Mangalore, State of Karnataka, it is a coastal town home to a reputed temple and thus attracts tourists to both the temple and its various beaches. The district is thus well lined with small restaurants and hospitality services, that have contributed to a thriving retail market for seafood. The district is also becoming an education hub with many private universities in the region, which also adds to the growing demand for seafood. The town boasts of a large harbour (Malpe harbour) where large trawlers compete for space with large and small motorized boats that supply fresh fish each day. Until the 1950s fisherwomen in the region bartered fish for rice with agricultural families in the region in what was known as the Kyeka system. This system that has its roots in the Jajmani system (Fuller, 2010; Wiser, 1936) linked fishing families with agricultural households (known as Kyeka households) and fisherwomen could supply fish to the families they were connected to (not others) in exchange for rice and also provided labour to agricultural families in exchange for rice during the monsoon season when fish was in short supply. Fisherwomen speak of the Kyeka as a subsistence-based exchange in which families were assured of food security and support during financial or other crisis. Fishing families could not aspire to more than basic subsistence in this system and as fisherwomen could not barter fish openly with other families, agricultural families often determined the value of fish, ensuring continued dependence and the servility of fisherwomen to Kyeka households.

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As transportation grew in the region and the first few bus stops and train stations established in the mid-1950s, tourism began to grow in the region spurting the demand for fish. Fisherwomen began to sit down close to bus stops to sell fish and informal fish retail markets began to organically sprout in the city of Mangalore. Slowly fisherwomen left the Kyeka system and began selling fish in these informal markets. The Udupi fish market and the Padubidri fish market where I conducted this ethnography came into existence similarly close to the central bus stations in these small towns.2 These informal markets that sprung up often on stateowned land were auto managed and controlled by fisherwomen, who collectively determined the organization of the marketplace and deliberated on the entry of new sellers. Since the early 2000s, the state has begun to take interest in these informal markets, seeking to evict fisherwomen and negotiating the establishment of formal markets, owned and controlled by the state. The Padubidri fish market was replaced by a state owned formal market in 2012 and the Udupi fish market was formalized in 2017. Fisherwomen in these informal markets collectively controlled and managed the market, determining the entry of new sellers and specifying the terms of sales. So that the markets are inclusive and supportive of all sellers, this included limiting sales of fisherwomen—specifying the number of baskets women could sell, the kind of customers women could supply, segregating big sellers who sell to restaurants from small sellers who sell to individual customers. These norms ensured that all sellers could collectively benefit from the market. In both Padubidri and Udupi, the market thus transformed from a collectively managed inclusive one to a formal market owned and controlled by the state, in which markets are open to all, irrespective of gender, with no restrictions on the amount of fish to be sold and the customers to whom sales can be made. Informal markets were open to entry of women sellers with rare exceptions of male sellers often made when men had no other viable employment available to them. While informal markets were organized on the principle of collective benefits and inclusivity, the formal market is a capitalist one in which the state is less concerned about inclusion and is only motivated by rents paid by sellers for the space allotted to them. This shift has meant a real threat to women who within the new patrilineal system continue to be responsible for families, without any rights to

2 Both Udupi and Padubidri are smaller towns within the larger district of Udupi.

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inherit property and thus little access to credit. Men who are better placed and have access to credit due to property ownership are now freely able to enter fish markets as big sellers, buying and selling large quantities of fish, at lower prices than small selling fisherwomen. In the case of Padubidri, the fisherwomen had allowed the brother of one of the women in the market to sell no more than two baskets of fish in the informal market. On moving to the formal market, this male seller was freed of the control of other fisherwomen and has in the short span of 6 years, become the largest seller in the market, employing two more men and three women under him. This is not the only incursion in the retail fish market. Male fish sellers, specially from the Muslim communities in the region, are increasingly occupying the retail market space, by engaging in mobile fish sales, transporting fish in autorickshaws (three-wheeler transportation vehicles), motorcycles and mini vans, to different regions, from home to home and also to apartments in the region. These sellers have resulted in lower number of customers in the retail fish market. While women have also sold fish from door to door, carrying fish baskets on their heads and walking from home to home and travelling in local buses, the quantity of fish they can sell is very minimal as compared to these male mobile sellers. A larger threat is from capital intensive fish retail shops. The central city of Mangalore for instance witnessed growing large fish retail shops offering attractive prices and home delivery to residents in the city, thus resulting in the slow disappearance of informal markets. Similarly, Udupi District has also witnessed such incursions post 2000. The Udupi fresh fish sellers’ association—called the Udupi Hasi Meenu Marathagarara Sangha was founded in 2010 as a response to the efforts of large fish shops to set up business in Udupi and neighbouring district of Kundapura. While the dominant majority of fish vendors belong to the Mogaveera community, those who clean fish in markets often come from other castes and increasingly from non-fishing migrant scheduled caste groups (castes outside the Hindu fold entitled to affirmative action). Women from other castes (most of them migrant and from non-fishing communities) are also involved in transporting, sorting, cleaning and preparing seafood for consumption. The Association consists only of fish vendors and fish cleaners working in fish markets, but do not include those working in the harbour. With the fear of losing their livelihoods to large shops with access to capital and storage facilities, women selling fresh fish mobilized and

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formed an association, which today comprises of 1631 fresh fish selling women. The Association brings together fisherwomen from 36 fish markets in Udupi district3 and relies on its strong political, social and cultural ties in the district. In 2010 when a fish shop was set up in Kundapura, fearing the loss of women’s employment and in a bid to support an occupation that has traditionally been that of women in the region, the Association made an appeal to the then Home Minister,4 requesting him to refuse licences to any new fresh fish outlets in Udupi District as it would affect the livelihoods of over 10,000 fisherwomen directly selling fish and about 30,000 women indirectly associated with the sales of fresh fish. As fisherwomen are supported by other women who help them carry fish on the harbour, the sales of fish often involve more women than just those selling fish. In response to their protest, the Minister promised the Association that he would ensure that no new outlets for sale of fresh fish would be permitted.5 The District Commissioner issued a ‘government order’ to this effect, and while this temporarily suspends the threat, the lack of a more permanent resolution in the form of law or policy means that this order can be reversed at any point in time by the government. Apart from the threats of private vendors and the increasing number of men attracted to fish retail, the state itself has started establishing ‘hitech retail fish outlets’ in various parts of the city. The Karnataka Fish Development Corporation (KFDC) set up a large fish retail shop in Chillimbi, a small town located in Mangalore city. Fisherwomen of Chillimbi protested against this retail outlet and though the KFDC decided to open no more new outlets in the city, it has continued to operate its retail

3 The women from fishmarkets that are active members of the Association include fishmarkets in the sub-districts of Karkala, Kapu and Brahmavara. It also includes fishmarkets within Udupi city such as: Udupi-Beedinagudde market, Brahmavara, Santhekatte, Moodubelle, Shiva Machakal, Ambagilu, Kadiyali, Hoode, Udyavara Bolargudde, Hejemaadi Kodi, Manipal, Kemmanna, Padubidri, Barkur, Ucchila, Mooluru, Saligrama, Gudde Angadi, Parkala, Pethri, Doddanagudde, Aadyur, Aadi Udupi, Kodavooru, Kalyanapura, Shankarapura, Ermal Bala, Mudarangadi, Honnala, Perudoor, Thottam, Katpady, Malpe Bandar, Hangar Katte and Kodi Bengre. In all it covers 36 fish markets that take active part in the Association’s activities. Interview with Ashwini, administrative assistant at the Association, dated 12.03.2016. 4 http://wif.icsf.net/en/samudra-news-alert/articledetail/42985-Fisherwomen’s.html? language=EN. 5 Interview with Baby Salian dated 9.12.2015. Also see: http://www.bellevision.com/ belle/index.php?action=topnews&type=593 consulted on 10.03.2016.

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outlet in Chillimbi.6 In this protest too fisherwomen’s leader attacked the KFDC chairman stating that he had come to occupy his professional status ‘only because women in his family took care of him by selling fish. But now, he has dipped his hands in our rice bowl and has cheated the entire fishing fraternity’. The Chairman of the KFDC himself coming from the fish community, the setting up of a fish retain shop that threatens fisherwomen’s livelihood is once again depicted as a threat to women’s roles as mothers, reproducing families and thus communities7 The entry of the state into fish retail is not surprising as state institutions such as the KFDC are also in search of profits. Fish retail is becoming a lucrative venture for both state and private players specially in the context of new demands from consumers looking for increased hygiene, packed fish and door delivery. These extra services demand higher investment that fisherwomen do not have access to. Within this context of capitalism and accumulative practices, women rely on the state to protect them from competition. In their struggles they have relied on a vast array of resources to mobilize political support. The following section examines their struggles in terms of their political potential to enable women’s livelihoods. A Common Cause: Mobilizing to Continue Putting Food on the Table Udupi’s fisherwomen have been able to collectively mobilize political support to protect retail markets through an array of political strategies. In an earlier article, I have examined the manner in which they have used discourses of poverty and livelihoods to garner the support of the state (Thara, 2016). The head of the fisherwomen’s association Baby Salian explained in an interview that they had demanded that the state protect the livelihoods of poor women, who would otherwise have to depend on the state for their living. The discursive framing of fisherwomen as poor and vulnerable to poverty has framed fisherwomen as within development discourses of poverty reduction and hence the action of the state preventing corporate fish shops in the region is projected as preventing an increase in poverty amongst the fishing community, that the state would then have to address. Fisherwomen have also used political and caste 6 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mangaluru/Fisherwomen-to-hold-protestrally-on-Nov-25/articleshow/5258095.cms; see also https://www.daijiworld.com/news/ newsDisplay.aspx?newsID=68812. 7 http://thecanaratimes.com/epaper/index.php/archives/1596.

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networks to their advantage. Though the larger majority of fisherwomen are small sellers eking out a livelihood, a small number of fisherwomen are big sellers selling to restaurants in Udupi. These big sellers have over time acquired not only economic capital but also political and cultural capital through their work. Fisherwomen have relied on such big sellers as representatives to help muster political support for their association. The agreement that fisherwomen have obtained from the state is one that needs constant reminders. Despite the state’s agreement to not provide permits to large fish retail shops, the Association has had to organize periodic protests when permits or licences are issued by other departments, in violation of the order of the Deputy Commissioner. The battle to keep fresh fish shops from opening in the region is a continuing one. Following the mushrooming of shops in and around Udupi, in 2014 once again the Association launched a protest before the Deputy Commissioner’s Office in Udupi, protesting the issuance of permissions by Gram Panchayaths to shops that have come up in Udupi, Brahmavar, Sastan, Kota, Saligrama, Saibarakatte, Hebri and Kundapura, despite the acceptance by the District Commissioner’s office to refuse permits to fresh fish shops. Once again as a result of this protest, the then Udupi-Chikmagalur Member of Parliament, Shobha Karandlaje, assured them that she would discuss this with the Deputy Commissioner of Udupi to provide instructions to the Gram Panchayaths.8 With these frequent protests fisherwomen continue to apply pressure on the local administration to ensure the protection of their occupations. Apart from political and cultural networks, fisherwomen have been able to ensure sustained struggles due to a strong cohesion between fisherwomen and a sense of solidarity amongst them. While the formal association was formed only in 2010, women’s collective management and control of fish markets has played a role in building strong solidarities between women, especially those vending in the same market. With the establishment of the formal association, that brings under its fold 36 markets in Udupi, solidarities between women across markets in the region have enabled their struggles. One of the prime factors that has enabled solidarities amongst women is a shared caste identity. As Nancy Fraser points out, collectives often consist of identity groups and thus the distinct goals of redistribution and recognition which are mutually 8 http://www.udupitoday.com/udtoday/news_Udupi-Women-fish-sellers-urge-MP-Sho bha-not-to-allow-fish-shops_4706.html consulted on 10.03.2016.

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contradictory need to be addressed (Fraser 1995). Collectives such as these form examples of the empirical coupling of these claims as fisherwomen in the region are traditionally caste based but are now also including women from other castes (non-fishing castes—such as Scheduled Caste groups). Their claims from the state are thus for redistribution as well as recognition. Caste and kinship relations between women in the market and between markets have enabled solidarities that go beyond the scope of the association. Solidarities forged between women serve various purposes both in and outside the market. Within the market it allows women to support each other in their everyday activities of managing the fish market, regulating customers and ensuring equitable access to resources. Outside the market solidarities between women enable support between families during times of need and crisis. These ties of caste and kinship enable informal access to credit as well as social capital in the form of political and social ties and networks, that women often share with other women in the market. The market is thus not spatially restricted to the place of selling but is embedded within broader social structures and relations that ensure women’s ability to attract and keep customers and negotiate with political representatives and state institutions. Problems that arise within the market are thus easily resolved and peace is maintained between sellers and cleaners, as well as between fisherwomen and customers. The constitution of the formal association has opened up a formal space of deliberation during monthly meetings held in the association’s office in Udupi. These meetings serve to diffuse tensions within markets by addressing conflicts and differences of opinion between women sellers. Women have a growing realization that any differences between them can be used to the advantage of third parties, and the monthly association meetings enable collective decision making to prevent conflicts that can threaten peace and cohesion within markets. While these meetings are often attended by men from the fishing community—who act as interested supporters—women dominate this space of discussion and deliberation, actively engaging in decision making by voicing out their opinions. These meetings have also served to heighten the political consciousness amongst women of the threats they face from other players. While women rely on representatives within the association to enable decision making, caste and kinship relations and solidarities amongst women also help keep in check the power of these representatives, ensuring they are answerable to the collective. The most important outcome of women’s struggles to

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protect their livelihoods is their self-constitution as political subjects. Even if women have not been very successful in having their demands met by the state, the existence of the association and the spaces of deliberation it has opened up, allows women to see themselves as possessing certain rights vis-a-vis the state. A few fisherwomen themselves also engage in accumulative practices. For instance, big sellers in the market who sell to restaurants in the area, come to imbibe capitalist practices themselves, purchasing large boats with the profits they make and consolidating their incomes to become big entrepreneurs themselves. While big and small sellers seem to co-habit in markets, through accepted norms that regulate their work and enable inclusive markets, this does not imply the lack of conflicts between these two groups. Small sellers are often desirous of the lifestyles of big sellers, often aspiring themselves to be able to rein in higher profits. In this sense capitalism that has benefitted the few in the market has aroused the desires of the larger majority who are unable to compete with these few in terms of access to economic, political and social capital. As small sellers revealed, mere access to credit could do little to increase their sales, as the large number of small sellers meant that customers were distributed amongst larger numbers of women, thus capping demands and restricting sales. Small sellers thus find themselves trapped as they simultaneously depend on collective norms that limit their sales, and desire being able to sell more to make higher profits. Tensions between big and small sellers are often ironed out, as small sellers realize the benefits of being represented by big sellers, and thus often make compromises in the larger interest of collective benefit. However, it is true that while small sellers gain from these solidarities, big sellers too can claim a space in the market through the strength of numbers that small sellers provide, which bolsters their position against the state. While the collective objective of ensuring the protection of the market has kept these groups together, it is not clear if in future such solidarities will continue in formal state owned and controlled markets, where collective norms may collapse as they have in the case of the Padubidri market. The Association has also enabled women to access credit and other welfare benefits provided by the state. Women access credit through a range of institutions including the Meenu Maratagarara Vividoddesha Souharda Sahakara Niyamita, Udupi (MMVSSN, meaning Fish Sellers Varied Interests Assistance Society) with which the Association shares a close partnership. The Association is also closely linked to the S.K. &

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Udupi District Co-operative Fish Marketing Federation, a government federation of fishermen and women, which provides financial and other forms of support to both men and women undertaking fish sales, fishing or related activities. The Federation channels credit through MMVSSN herein referred to as the Society which was formed in 2011, a year after the women’s Association was founded. This Society was meant to ensure credit at low interest rates, to release fishermen and women who were entangled in bonds of indebtedness with private money lenders extracting very high rates of interest. Through membership in the Society they now have access to credit at bank lending/preferential rates, as well as assistance in marketing seafood, access to subsidized fuel and ice for storage of fish, access to state welfare schemes including microcredit loans, statesponsored housing, and supply of safety equipment to fishermen at sea.9 What is interesting is that while the state enables access to low interest credit, the loans provided are small. For instance, the MMVSSN provides a maximum of INR Rs. 50 000 (around 565 euros) to fisherwomen. Apart from credit facilities, the Directorate of Fisheries also provides them access to certain subsidies to encourage entrepreneurship amongst fisherwomen—for example Bhatta and Rao in their study of women’s livelihoods in coastal Karnataka refer to subsidies for undertaking ornamental fish breeding and marketing and training programs to reinforce and improve their abilities to prepare processed products such as dried fish, fish pickles and wafers. They also refer to government funds provided to encourage fisherwomen in fish processing activities, providing small funds for women to buy fish, salt and ice for their activities. They also point out the limited funding provided under these schemes that do not allow fisherwomen to do more than marginally improve their access to credit. Other welfare benefits provided to low-income groups are also channelled to fisherwomen through the Association. For example, one such scheme is the Mathsyashraya housing scheme, under which several fisherwomen have been able to access free housing provided by the state.10

9 http://www.fishmark.in/activities.html consulted on 10.03.2016 Interviews with Prakash Suvarna, Secretary—, dated 25.01.2016, 26.01.2016, 18.02.2016 & 10.03.2016 and Baby Salian, Director of the Association, dated 18.01.2016. 10 Interview with Prakash Suvarna, Chief Executive Officer of MMVSSN, on 10 March 2016; also http://www.fishmark.in/activities.html, accessed 10 March 2016.

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While the Association has been able to achieve limited success in protecting livelihoods of fisherwomen, it has been relatively less successful as compared to other coastal states, in negotiating the recognition of fisherwomen as workers in the region. Fisherwomen’s work as vendors is constructed more as a business by the state that limits its welfare functions to access to credit. Fishing communities in Tamil Nadu and Kerala through long histories of political struggle (Dietrich, 1995; Dietrich & Nayak, 2006) have been able to negotiate the status of worker with entitlements to social security from the state. The Tamil Nadu Fisherman and Labourers Engaged in Fishing and other Allied Activities (Social Security and Welfare) Act 2007 is a comprehensive law providing for social security to everyone employed in fishing and fishing-related activities irrespective of gender, including: beach workers, cleaners, sellers, harbour workers, etc. This law provides for: accident relief in case of death or injury; missing fishermen; death while fishing; natural death; funeral expenses; education of children; marriage expenses; delivery or miscarriage or termination of pregnancy; and old-age pension. A similar law—The Kerala Fishermen’s Welfare Fund Act 1985—has been adopted in Kerala which applies to fish workers irrespective of gender and includes beach workers, vendors, cleaners, peelers, head loaders, curers, etc. in fish work and allied activities. This law provides for: distress relief due to natural calamities; injury or disablement; loans and grants for marriage, death of dependents and unforeseen expenditure; loss of houses and fishing implements; old-age pension; education and part-time employment of children; social education centres including libraries and reading rooms; sports, games and medical facilities; nutritious food for children; and employment opportunities for the handicapped. It however does not provide for maternity, delivery and miscarriage, as provided under the Tamil Nadu law. Comprehensive laws such as the one adopted by Tamil Nadu which provide for the needs of both women and men should be adopted to enable fish workers to achieve the development goals ratified by the Government of India. The non-recognition of fish workers, male and female, as workers by the state of Karnataka, means that such welfare benefits elude them. The lack of social security particularly for women means that women remain dependent on men in their families, despite being principally responsible for household budgets and reproduction of families. This means that fisherwomen often have to work longer, especially if they have ailing or injured fishermen in their families.

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Tied to the Market---Friendships, Independence and Autonomy Selling fish is not an easy occupation, specifically for the majority of fisherwomen who are small sellers. Unlike large sellers who have regular customers and dependable sales, with few peaks and lows, small sellers selling to individual customers are more vulnerable during low catch periods and non-fishing periods such as during monsoons when the state bans fishing. During these periods, big sellers continue to make stable even if lower sales, as restaurants continue to purchase smaller quantities of frozen fish to meet demands of tourists, while individual customers prefer to consume other meat products. As big sellers are higher in class, they are able to insulate themselves well during periods of low catch or monsoon bans, while small sellers with low incomes and low savings are less insulated. Despite the many hardships of their work, fisherwomen speak of selling as something they look forward to. The market is a space that comes to mean many things for them. It is a space that is precarious, a space in which one can lose money, make losses, but also a space in which a decent livelihood can be made. As one fisherwomen explained, when she takes a holiday, she keeps thinking of the others who have gone to work, that they made some money, that she could have made some money too. Their sense of achievement is closely tied to being able to sell fish and eke out a decent living—independent of relations of power such as those of an employer and employee. While the capitalist market provides no protection from risk or losses, the market still provides women with support from other women. Linked to each other through kinship and communal ties, women selling in Udupi’s market make close friendships and relationships that seem to provide respite from the ravages of capital. Even if they compete with each other to sell fish, often trying to empty their baskets before their friends, there is a sense of security in the relationships they make here. Women support each other in times of need, helping others in the market sell their fish when they are absent. Sociality within the market is often configured around conspicuous consumption such as the purchase of clothing, kitchen gadgets, etc. Apart from consumption, women take immense pride in the fact that selling in the market has enabled them to educate their daughters, preventing their daughters from the drudgery of selling fish.

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The market also offers autonomy. Selling fish is still the most lucrative occupation for all these women, all of whom choose to sell rather than do any other sort of work. In all of the interviews, women spoke of being ‘free’ as sellers, ‘free’ to come to the market at the time they wished to come, ‘free’ to leave at the time they wanted to, ‘free’ to take a day off, without asking anyone for their approval. Even if they finally exercise with great restraint their right to take a day off for leisure, the fact that they have this option is valued enormously. Even if there are anxieties around making profits and the fear of losses, women consider this work as ‘free’ labour, in which one is accountable only to oneself. As one of the women asked me about my own job, if I had to apply for leave to take a day off, and when I said yes, she responded: In this work, I am my own master, I am happy that this is my own business, I don’t have to work under anyone else.

This freedom is not only from the hierarchies or caste, but also from other forms of power, control and dependency. While wage work often provides similar or sometimes higher earnings, women prefer selling fish to other types of work. On the one hand, one can view this work as autonomous in terms of the absence of vertical relations of power, while on the other hand their work is embedded in other relations of dependence. Women sellers in the fish market depend on each other for the work they carry out. Many of the older fisherwomen often serve to train younger women in the market. The friendships that are fostered and strengthened in the market thus form relations of interdependence. Women value the financial independence that the market offers. The ability to both earn and spend the money they earn the way they wish to allows these women a sense of control over their own lives. They spend the majority of what they earn on their families, often independently managing their finances. In a sense this does not seem to provide them autonomy, and yet the manner in which women spoke of their control over finances indicated a perception of autonomy—of being able to allocate money towards children’s and family needs, without being dependent on their spouses. Women value the ability to spend money by themselves, even if this is a small part of what they earn, without having to depend on

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male incomes or authorization. Their status as earning members is reinforced through conspicuous acts of consumption, which they enjoy and recognize as a privilege that homemakers do not enjoy.11 However, this sense of personal autonomy they experience in controlling their expenditure also comes with a price. Despite their role as primary breadwinners within families, women are also responsible for domestic work and other reproductive roles within the family. One of the fisherwomen explained to me that it takes a lot of work to make the small amounts of money she makes at the end of her day. She has to wake up very early each morning at 4 and bathe, cook and clean her home before she leaves to the harbour at 7 to buy her fish. Tiffin boxes have to be packed for her children and herself, and everything has to be ready for the evening meal when she returns after work. After the auctions she arrives at the market early each morning and leaves everyday in the evening before 5 if she is lucky and has managed to sell all her fish. If not, she sits till late at night until it her basket is empty. Very rarely she will pack fish with ice, to sell next morning. It’s a lot of hard, physical work. Our lives, Mogaveera lives are very difficult, it is so difficult that if we recount it, even God will feel sad. We have to work and make a life like the others, bring up our children... what to do?

When asked how women managed with young children, they often spoke of other women—neighbours, sisters, mothers, daughters, family relations, helping them care for their children while they sold fish. In one case, a woman spoke of how she entrusted her children to her neighbour who salted fish at home. Her older child a daughter also learned to dry fish from this neighbour and went on to become a dry fish seller. To compensate her neighbour for caring for her children, she often purchased 11 During post-Diwali (the festival of lights in India) sales, women often gathered together to visit saree showrooms to buy themselves sarees and blouse pieces, often spending large sums of money at one go. On accompanying these women on several of these sprees, it became clear that their status as earning and spending members of the community is recognized by shops that not only welcome them, despite the strong odour of fish they carry with them, but also spending a lot of time displaying the wares and making them feel comfortable, offering seating, hot drinks and displaying sarees for great lengths of time. Their status as earning members, who thus also have money to spend on their own needs is highly appreciated by these women. As one woman mentioned to me during one such trip, it feels great not to ask a man for money to buy oneself sarees or blouses.

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her dried fish, helping her make a living too in the process. Without exception all the children in this community were taken care of by women and it is unheard of for fathers to take care of their children, even if they are out of work and stay home. In some cases, their spouses were injured and could no longer go fishing on boats and despite being able to handle some of the domestic work at home, did little or nothing at home, sometimes helping children with their school work and often spending most of the day in front of television sets. Men who could travel would contribute by picking up children from school or colleges, and buying vegetables for the home—two acceptable domestic chores that men can safely participate in, without transgressing cultural norms in Udupi. Given this situation women have to handle both productive and reproductive activities and often suffer from sleep deprivation and lack of any time for leisure. I followed 3 women on their daily routine, from early in the morning (between 4 am and 5.30 am) when they woke, bathed, prayed, cooked, packed tiffin boxes for themselves and their children and left to the harbour to purchase fresh fish, to the market and then back again in the evening, sometimes early at around 6 pm and in two cases at 8 pm when they returned to heat up the food for dinner, prepared the vegetables and soaked lentils for the next day, washed clothes and dried them, before finally going to bed—at the earliest at 10 pm. In all these 3 cases, children were school going and in two cases the men were stay at home dads. In all three cases, none of the men contributed to cooking, and though all the 3 fisherwomen spoke of their husbands helping out in the kitchen—this was often limited to heating up food and getting the children to eat, if she came home too late in the night. This means that fisherwomen pay the price for autonomy with fatigue and little time for leisure. The only free time they spend is during the lull of the afternoon in markets when customers become far and few, when women relax a little, older fisherwomen lying down for a nap and younger fisherwomen, gather together to do some afternoon shopping, visit temples or attend weddings or other events. Women also gain little from their work, shouldering responsibility without consequential privileges within patrilineal families. Due to their ability to earn, women are often financially exploited by their spouses, often investing in the entrepreneurial activities of their spouses and frequently incurring and paying for the losses. As women’s earnings disappear in household budgets, male income is gainfully used to purchase property, gold and other investments that are often made in men’s names.

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This ties women to male members for the rest of their lives, making them economically dependent on men, even when their contributions to household budgets were crucial to make such investments possible. In indirect ways women’s work and earnings enable male entrepreneurialism, resulting in women’s livelihoods sustaining capitalist accumulation. Within the patriarchal context, as property and the gains of business income accrue in the name of male members, women and women’s work enable accumulation without the right to a claim in such accumulation. As male earnings are redirected back into the business, women’s breadwinning activities in hidden ways sustain capitalist enterprise. As I mentioned earlier a small minority of big selling fisherwomen also engage in accumulative practices, investing in large motorized boats and increasing the size of their vending activities in the process. The logics of capitalist accumulation is thus not absent within informal markets controlled and managed by women, and even if rules and norms collectively adopted enable inclusive markets, this may change in the future specially when markets are formalized and come under state control. Within the free market spaces of formal markets, small sellers may eventually lose their bargaining power which could eventually threaten the subsistence mode of vending they currently engage in.

Conclusion The concept of Social and Solidarity Economy practices has little purchase in the Indian context. Most work such as the one detailed here is often grouped under the large umbrella term ‘informal economy’ by Indian scholars. The state recognizes the distinction between formal and informal work, grouping all non-market transactions: that fall below the threshold for direct taxation or licensing; and/or that involve mobile exchange and production (Harriss-White, 2003). While all informal economic activities may not be carried out for collective good, some may possess a collective logic and may be located in social norms or values that oppose the rationale of modern capitalist markets. For example, certain cooperatives that function on the basis of collective goods and collective ownership in India. Informal economic activities not only lack the status of work, but also lack any state support or protection and are thus autonomous or independent from the state, similar to SSE initiatives that claim autonomy from the state. The informal sector often accounts for the bulk of employment in several countries. Barbara Harriss-White notes that the ‘India

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of the 88%’ is often termed as the ‘local economy’, the ‘real economy’ distinguishing productive activity from financial capital implying authenticity and distinguishing it from the inauthentic top of the economy (Harriss-White, 2003). As Kabeer points out, activities such as care and non-market production that enable subsidies or savings in expenditure come under this large umbrella of informal work (Kabeer 2008). The specific overlapping of informal economy and SSE (however small this may be) and the location of poor women often from marginalized groups in this work, calls attention to the ways in which intersecting identities locate women from certain groups in certain forms of precarious work. This ethnography thus provides a critical analysis of solidarity economy practices that are often celebrated in literature as emancipatory, suggesting that a more nuanced detailing of such alternative practices may throw up complexities in terms of their fragility and their concrete links with accumulative practices. In the case of Udupi’s fisherwomen, the paradox of such alternative practices emerges in the manner in which small sellers are both dependent on collective norms that prioritize the collective benefit of small sellers, while at the same time trapping them in smallscale vending. This work teases out the tensions between wanting to protect one’s livelihood and the desires for class mobility that accumulative practices have offered big sellers in the market. As men enter the fish market, they too adopt accumulative practices (such as in the Padubidri market and the Kinnigoli market). The desires and frustrations of small sellers outlined in this chapter, thus raise critical questions on whether women choose to adopt SSE practices or are constrained to do so for lack of alternatives. Secondly, it reveals the potential of SSEs to aid or support capitalist forms of accumulation, rather than resist or subvert it. It is not a coincidence that women sell fish in markets while their spouses have moved on from being fishermen to owning fishing and fish processing establishments. Women’s responsibilities as primary breadwinners within families enable the accumulative practices of fishermen who have moved on from being workers on boats to becoming boat owners or entrepreneurs running fish and allied industries in the region. Women’s management of household budgets allows men to reinvest their income, increasing the size of their businesses and accumulating property that reinforces patriarchal authority without households. While some women have also managed to gain from capitalistic practices, the larger majority work in the benefit of capitalism, while being excluded from its benefits.

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In terms of identity and belongings, this case offers fertile ground for reflection on the manner in which identity often enables collectivization, as similar experiences and similar lives as well as cultural and symbolic ideologies, enable women to come together. On the other hand, this case also reveals the potential of such collectives to be inclusive of other groups and their ability to ensure both recognition and redistribution through secular associations. The definition of SSEs must thus be open to the possibility of identity-based groups, drawing from empirical realities, as long as these groups are open rather than closed exclusive systems. Here an emphasis on empirical realities, is a methodological one in which practice must continue to inform our understanding of this concept which must be nourished by diverse contexts and situations, as well as forms of belongings, to include forms such as caste and communal identities. This bottom-up empirical lens will thus help avoid the dangers of a top down, decontextualized, depoliticized notion of SSEs, which may therefore be very distant from ground realities.

References Beneria, L. (1979). Reproduction, production and the sexual division of labour. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 3(3), 203–225. Cole, S. (1990). Cod, god, country and family: The Portuguese newfoundland cod fishery. Maritime Anthropological Studies, 3(1), 1–29. http://cat.inist. fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=6154693. Dietrich, G. (1995). Women’s struggle for production of life: Public hearings of women workers in informal sector. Economic & Political Weekly, 30(26), 1551–1554. Dietrich, G., & Nayak, N. (2006). Exploring the possibilities of counterhegemonic globalisation: The fishworkers’ movement in India and its global interactions. In Another production is possible: Beyond the capitalist canon (Vol. 2, pp. 381–416). Verso. Fraser, N. (1995). Recognition or redistribution? A critical reading of Iris Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference. Journal of Political Philosophy, 3(2), 166–180. Fuller, C. (2010). Misconcieving the grain heap: A critique of the concept of the Indian Jajmani system. In R. K. Das (Ed.), Sociology and anthropology of economic life I: The moral embedding of economic action (Vol. Das, pp. 56–80). Oxford University Press.

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Hapke, H. M. (1996). Fish mongers, markets, and mechanization: Gender and the economic transformation of an Indian fishery. Graduate School of Syracuse University. Harriss-White, B. (2003). India working: Essays on society and economy (Vol. 8). Cambridge University Press. Kabeer, N. (2008). Mainstreaming gender in social protection for the informal economy. Commonwealth Secretariat. Mohanty, C. T. (2013). Women workers and capitalist scripts: Ideologies of domination, common interests, and the politics of solidarity. In M. J. Alexander & C. T. Mohanty (Eds.), Feminist genealogies, colonial legacies, Democratic futures (pp. 1–29). Routledge. Rosaldo, M. Z. (1980). The use and abuse of anthropology: Reflections on feminism and cross-cultural understanding. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 5(3), 389–417. Rosaldo, M. Z., & Lamphere, L. (1974). Introduction. In M. Z. Rosaldo, L. Lamphere, & J. Bamberger (Eds.), Woman, culture, and society (pp. 1–16). Stanford University Press. Seligmann, L. J. (2001). Women traders in cross-cultural perspective: Mediating identities, marketing wares. Stanford University Press. Thara, K. (2016). Protecting caste livelihoods on the Western Coast of India: An intersectional analysis of udupi’s fisherwomen. Environment and Urbanization, 28(2), 423–436. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11047-018-9687-9 Wiser, W. H. (1936). The Hindu Jajmani system. Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd.

CHAPTER 10

Agroecology and Feminism in Vale Do Ribeira (Brazil): Towards More Sustainable Forms of Reproducing Life Isabelle Hillenkamp and Miriam Nobre

Introduction This chapter describes the process of building a network of agroecological women farmers in the Vale do Ribeira region with the support of the Brazilian feminist NGO, SOF (Sempreviva Organização Feminista), since 2015. Located in south-eastern Brazil, Vale do Ribeira became known first for its minerals, then for its water resources, biodiversity and arable land. Since colonial times, these assets have been the target of different systems of appropriation, which have exerted strong pressure

I. Hillenkamp (B) French Institute of Research for Development (IRD), Centre for Social Science Studies on African, American and Asian Worlds (CESSMA), Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] M. Nobre Sempreviva Organização Feminista (SOF), São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1_10

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on workers—who went from being slaves in the past to “family farmers” in the present—and natural resources. This situation is worsening due to the combined effect of the new mechanisms for the commodification and financialization of nature and government actions that favour the interests of old or new economic elites. In the midst of a widespread crisis in the reproduction of human, animal and vegetal life, we examine the practices of this network of women who draw their inspiration from agroecology. Agroecology aims to develop knowledge, techniques and relations of production and consumption that redefine the relationships between men, women and nature in a socially and ecologically sustainable way. Thus, agroecology is not merely about organic agricultural production; it is a political proposal for change whose content and radicalness may vary. In the case of Brazil, rural movements conceive agroecology as “counterhegemonic” to the agribusiness model, as it denounces the dependence on the market, social inequalities and environmental damages associated with this model, while promoting practices and social relations that foster greater autonomy and sustainability (Luzzi, 2007). It was within these rural movements that the feminist approach to agroecology emerged. It asserts that to achieve the goals of autonomy and sustainability, a twofold transformation is required: (i) of our relationship with nature and (ii) of gender relations (Siliprandi, 2015). Feminist agroecology advocates for the development of agroecological knowledge and production owned by women, the monetary and non-monetary valorization of women’s work and their political recognition as farmers. To achieve this, solidarity—that is, voluntary interdependencies—is required at different levels (among local groups, networks, regional and national movements) and in different spheres (socio-economic and political). In Brazil, agroecology is associated with solidarity economy, although not all groups systematically adopt the solidarity economy enterprise (empreendimento de economia solidária) as their form of organization. The National Information System on Solidarity Economy created the “solidarity economy enterprise” as a category, defining it as a collective, permanent and supra-family form of organizing economic activity.1

1 This category was created by the National Information System on Solidarity Economy as a criterion for accessing public policies for solidarity economy enterprises. For more information, see: http://sies.ecosol.org.br/sies.

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Feminist agroecology is also based on a broader understanding of the economy. It affirms that the economy must be centred on the reproduction of all resources that are necessary for life. It takes the production and consumption of food as a starting point and aims to democratize all power relations involved. This vision promotes a collective, supra-family and permanent way of organizing the economy, but it is not limited to only this. It also goes beyond the linear conception of capitalist production and accumulation and the critical issues associated with it, especially the articulation of capitalist and domestic modes of production (Delphy, 1998). Feminist agroecology aims to go beyond this by establishing a new type of social relations based on solidarity and by taking into account, in practice and in theory, the circular nature of the economic system and its conditions of reproduction (Federici, 2013; Carrasco, 2014). Based on these premises and on the inseparability of theory and practice, this study has been conducted as action-research—that is, as a process to produce knowledge, research gives priority to “action” and seeks to contribute to it. Action here means social change triggered by the constitution of the network of agroecological women farmers in Vale do Ribeira and the broader political, ideological and organizational conditions that this requires. This action-research was based on a partnership between SOF and the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD). A member of the Brazilian feminist movement, SOF, contributes to civil society by building alliances with left-wing social organizations and actively participating in the construction of a feminist political agenda. It also runs projects for women. As such, it has the two faces—the movement-activist one and the technical-professional one—of what Sonia Alvarez (1999) called the “political hybridity” that is typical of feminist NGOs in Latin America. Its work in Vale do Ribeira dates back to 2015, when it won a public tender to provide Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (ATER) on agroecological production to women farmers. This work continues until today (2021) thanks to other funders (British Council, National Secretariat for Solidarity Economy and Espace Femmes International, a Geneva-based NGO) who stepped in to provide support when the government ended funding for the programme in 2017. To implement ATER, SOF began working with 240 women farmers organized in local groups in 12 municipalities in Vale do Ribeira. It provided ongoing support for these groups by organizing a number of training and collective knowledge building activities, among other

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things.2 During the research period (January 2016 to March 2018), five major activities brought together women farmers from the 12 municipalities and members of responsible consumers’ groups (see Part III below). In addition, between 2017 and 2019, as part of the project funded by the National Secretariat for Solidarity Economy, women farmers in Vale do Ribeira have been participating in joint training and marketing activities with the Association of Women of the Solidarity Economy of São Paulo (AMESOL), which brings together urban women active in the handicraft and food sectors. These meetings provided an opportunity to discuss the official “solidarity economy enterprise” category. Women became more aware of the gap between this category and their practices, as the latter are determined by the needs of social reproduction and based on more flexible and sometimes more precarious, but no less important, relations of solidarity.3 In Vale do Ribeira, our action-research focused on Barra do Turvo, a rural municipality with approximately 8,000 inhabitants and home to seven of the groups supported by SOF (each one has 6 to 15 women) and an important agroecological producers’ association, Cooperafloresta. For the research, participant observation was used, as well as conversations and interviews with women farmers, some husbands or family members and key informants in Barra do Turvo (local authorities, social workers, members of Cooperafloresta and of the rural workers union and researchers at the Forestry Institute). Ethnographic research was also conducted in two communities and eight focal groups and feedback sessions were held in different communities. Participant observation of the agroecological and feminist movement at the national level was also used and interviews with women leaders from different regions were conducted. Three broader research meetings (an introductory and a midterm meeting with the international research team, and one to present the action-research’s findings) were also organized. The first part of this chapter describes the context of Vale do Ribeira. It outlines the crisis of social and environmental reproduction in the 2 A detailed account of the methodology that SOF used in Vale do Ribeira can be found in Feminist practices for economic change: Women’s autonomy and agroecology in the Vale do Ribeira region, São Paulo, SOF, 2018. 3 A detailed account of this last project will be published in Economia Feminista e Solidária: ações para o fortalecimento da autonomia econômica das mulheres, São Carlos, Edufscar.

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region and the processes that agroecology, especially feminist approaches to agroecology, introduce. The second part describes the emergence of feminist agroecology while situating it within the history of rural women’s movements and their allies in Brazil and in relation to broad trends in public agricultural policy. The third and final part analyses the formation of the network of agroecological women farmers, which was initiated by SOF in Barra do Turvo, the practices it adopted and how it responds to the local challenges to building more sustainable and fairer ways of reproducing life.

The Context of Vale Do Ribeira: Overlapping Conflicts Involving Land, the Environment and Gender The Unsustainable Reproduction of Life According to statistics, Vale do Ribeira is home to 7,037 family farm establishments (IBGE, 2006), 24 Guarani indigenous communities (Centro de Trabalho Indigenista, 2015), 66 quilombos 4 (ISA, 2016), as well as big farming estates (fazendas ) and very large properties with little or no agricultural activity (latifundio). This mountainous region covers an area of 1.7 million hectares, has the largest continuous area of Atlantic forest in Brazil and is rich in natural resources. It also has the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) in the state of São Paulo. Concentration of land ownership is high and still on the rise (Bim, 2012).5 Portuguese colonists arrived in the region as early as the sixteenth century in search of minerals. During the colonial period, the region

4 According to the Brazilian Anthropology Association, the term quilombo refers to “every rural black community that regroups descendants of slaves living as subsistence farmers and whose cultural manifestations have strong ties with the past”. To obtain state recognition as quilombo, a community must go through several stages; none of the quilombo communities in Vale do Ribeira mentioned in this chapter have completed the process. 5 According to the 2006 Agrarian Census, small and medium-sized properties (less than 50 hectares), which account for 81% of the total, occupy 20% of the area, while the very large properties (more than 500 hectares), which represent 1.8% of the total, occupy 44% of the area.

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went through several economic cycles (first, a boom in mineral production, then in rice) based on the exploitation of black slave labour, before falling into recession in the second half of the nineteenth century. Slave owners left the region and the slaves, officially freed by the 1888 Abolition Act, founded their own communities. According to the accounts of the descendants of slaves in Barra do Turvo, they lived in almost autarkic conditions until the 1970s. This changed gradually in the late twentieth century, when Vale do Ribeira became the target for large-scale modernization projects (dams, mining and monoculture). Black communities gained access to new roads and became increasingly exposed to environmental degradation (deforestation, water pollution, soil depletion and the emergence of new plant diseases) and often violent land conflicts. In the late 1960s, three natural parks were created as the result of the efforts of an incipient conservationist movement, but also because of the military dictatorships’ interest (1964–1985) in using the parks as a tool for controlling the territory, as that was where members of the rural guerrilla movement had gone into hiding.6 In general, the parks were created according to a conservation model that excludes all human presence, including the communities that care for the ecosystems (Bernini, 2015). Even today, tensions between the state and the communities are far from being resolved. During the “re-democratisation” period of the 1980s and later in the 1990s, waves of poor people arrived in Vale do Ribeira. Most were peasants from other regions who had migrated to the outskirts of the big cities (São Paulo and Curitiba) in the 1960s or 1970s and were later forced to leave due to the economic crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. They bought plots of land on the informal market, which were often located within the parks’ territory, and formed new neighbourhoods, notably along the main highway (BR 116). Although state control of the parks had been relatively lenient until the 1970s, it intensified in the 1980s, leading to frequent police interventions in the new communities, as they were considered “invaders”. At the national level, the re-democratization process culminated with the approval of the so-called citizen Constitution in 1988. The Constitution recognized the right of previously established black and

6 See the report of the Truth Commission of the Legislative Assembly of the State of São Paulo, which addressed the repression of the guerrilla movement in the Vale do Ribeira region at: https://www.al.sp.gov.br/noticia/?id=358871.

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indigenous communities to claim official recognition. It also made collective ownership of land possible (although the restrictions of use imposed by the parks remained in force) and gave the communities a new political identity. The Local Communities’ Strategies to Secure Their Livelihoods Since the late 1990s, the local communities formed by descendants of slaves or by newcomers have been developing different strategies to protect their livelihoods in the face of growing environmental and land conflicts and pressure. One was the creation of the Cooperafloresta farmers’ association (Associação de Agricultores Agroforestais de Barra do Turvo e Adrianópolis) in 1996. With the support of the rural workers’ union and an agronomist from the State of São Paulo Department of Agriculture, members of the association adopted a technique that combined the quilombos’ traditional practice of organizing working bees (puxirum)7 with the practice of planting a diversity of plants as an alternative to pasture degradation and to environmental restrictions on agricultural production in conservation areas. These efforts have been strengthened by exchanges with Ernst Götsch, a Swiss-born farmer living in the state of Bahia who is renowned for his expertise in managing “agroforestry systems”, which combine tree species with vegetable crops and animal raising. Thanks to the use of this technique, participatory organic certification systems and collective commercialization, Cooperafloresta has become the largest association of agroecological farmers in Vale do Ribeira: it initially brought together approximately 100 families (Steenbock et al., 2013). Cooperafloresta has not, however, included women in its decision-making structures, even though according to various testimonies, women have played a key role in its creation and in managing the agroforestry systems (Telles, 2018). As one of our key informants put it, for Cooperafloresta, “gender is not an issue”. In the early 2000s, conflicts broke out between a new Cooperafloresta technician and the inhabitants of some black communities. These communities withdrew from the association and focused on obtaining official recognition as quilombos to guarantee their right to remain on 7 In the puxirum system, a group gets together to work on one member’s field to carry out tasks such as clearing an area, planting, harvesting. The working bee is held on a different member’s land each time.

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their territory. The election of President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva at the end of 2002 and the promulgation of Decree no. 4887 of 2003 that “regulates the procedure for the identification, recognition, delimitation, demarcation and titling of land occupied by the remaining members of the Quilombos” created favourable conditions for implementing this strategy. These communities began a long process of political mobilization (still underway today) to affirm their identity as Afro-descendants and their seniority in the territory in order to obtain the definitive title for their land. They also continued to work with agroforestry (as they had before joining Cooperaforesta), which is, in their view, a sustainable form of agriculture and way of life and thus, another element that legitimizes their demand for land. Finally, also at that time, various poor communities in the region joined forces to demand that their land be excluded from the area of the Jacupiranga Park. This was because two-thirds of the municipality of Barra do Turvo falls within the park’s area, which, according to the communities, is what prevents them from making a decent living from their work. In 2008, although they did not succeed in having its status withdrawn, the government did respond by reclassifying the park as a “Mosaic” of conservation units (Mosaico de Unidades de Conservação do Jacupiranga, herein referred to as the Mosaico). Thanks to this change, different uses of resources became authorized and new channels of dialogue between the communities and the Mosaico’s management were created (Bim, 2012). While this change has reduced tensions, it did not eliminate the idea that local communities are a threat to natural resources. Since 2016, land and environmental conflicts have escalated again due to the approval of legislative bills that allow for the privatization of the management of parks in the State of São Paulo and to the promotion of financial mechanisms, such as the TEEB8 Project for the Integration of Ecosystem Services into Public Policy.9

8 The TEEB project is centred on monetary valuation of nature and argues that assigning an economic value to ecosystem services—such as regulating the hydrological regime or carbon storage in vegetation and soils—enhances awareness on the impacts of human consumption and investment decisions on nature. 9 http://www.mma.gov.br/biodiversidade/economia-dos-ecossistemas-e-da-biodivers idade/projeto-teeb-regional-local.html.

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However, even though the communities formed a political alliance against the Mosaico’s authorities, the owners of fazendas and latifundios and the promoters of the so-called green economy, they maintain economic relations with their opponents. People in local communities sell their workforce as daily labourers (in the case of men) or domestic workers (in the case of women) to the owners of big fazendas and even to other community members. We observed that some families who own land give preference to wage labour to seek monetary income, which is generally motivated by their desire to purchase consumption goods (car and/or appliances). Particularly in the newer poor family farming neighbourhoods, few families survive solely on their own production. They use income from agricultural or non-agricultural wage labour and social benefits, which are often obtained through arduous efforts to overcome discrimination and bureaucratic obstacles (see Part III), to complement their own production to make ends meet. The families’ views on income sources vary: some value farming on their own land more and consider other sources of income as mere supplements; for others, production on one’s own plot of land is secondary to wage labour or social benefits. Finally, the differences in the political and economic benefits given to the newly recognized quilombos and to other “family farming” neighbourhoods are a source of tension. During the official recognition process, quilombos must organize and create their own associations as a prerequisite for the process. Other family farming districts, however, do not necessarily have an association or, when there is one, it is not always representative or legitimate. Part of some family farming neighbourhoods have been established within the Mosaico’s conservation areas (which, according to park regulations, cannot be inhabited) and/or on land claimed by big landowners; in both cases, they face threats of expulsion. Secondly, quilombos benefit from affirmative action policies, including ones that facilitate access to the government food acquisition programme (PAA, which buys agricultural products from family farming). To illustrate these differences, quilombos participated in the programme up until 2018, whereas other neighbourhoods in the region only had access until 2017. In some cases, groups of people from the politically “orphaned” family farming neighbourhoods—which may include individuals who identify themselves as “black”, “white” and “mixed-raced”—try to gain recognition as a quilombo in an attempt to take advantage of the special benefits for the legally recognized “traditional” communities. Tensions among communities are also accentuated today by the stricter conditions for

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occupying the Mosaico. In 2017, the Forum of Traditional Communities and Peoples of Vale do Ribeira was created with the goal of defending their right to land and resources. As for the family farming neighbourhoods, they are subject to various influences, notably big farmers who try to convince them to join their lobby to get the negotiations with the Mosaico cancelled in the hope that all farmers (big or small) will receive compensation from the state. A Feminist Approach to Agroecology as a New Local Strategy In this context marked by conflicts between (conservative) “modernization”, which supposedly fosters development in the region, and the defence of traditional, community-based ways of life that intend to use the land and resources sustainably, gender inequalities and women’s voices and work tend to go unnoticed. These inequalities are, however, significant in the region. They are based on a sexual division of labour that generally assigns women the responsibility for domestic work and caring for people, animals and crops close to the house (yard, garden, henhouse, etc.) and men, agricultural and non-agricultural work that involves displacements to more distant areas (to pastureland, mountain ranges, markets, etc.). This division is justified by alleging that men should perform the “heavy” tasks, while women are to do the “light” work. The tasks that men and women actually carry out, though, vary locally and this division is determined more by social than biological factors (Paulilo, 1987). The sexual division of labourgives less value to women’s work, as it generates little or no monetary income and is therefore largely invisible (Telles, 2018). It also translates into a greater workload for women: national indicators suggest that rural women work an average of 55.3 h per week, compared to 47.7 h for men (IPEA, p. 33, apud Hora & Butto, 2014, 38). This division is based on the social representation that associates femininity with modesty and submission and masculinity with virility and the need for men to constantly put on displays of their physical strength and authority (da Costa & Marin, 2018). The testimonies of the women farmers in our study highlight the symbolic and physical forms of violence that are used to maintain this division, such as control over the women’s mobility, the depreciation of their work and their knowledge and domestic violence.

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In Vale do Ribeira, gender inequality is worsening for several reasons. One key factor is the deficit in quality daycare and educational facilities in rural communities: 95.9% of daycare facilities and 82.4% of pre-schools in the region are located in urban areas.10 Furthermore, the norms of femininity conveyed by mass media over-sexualize women’s bodies by imposing Western beauty standards, which dictate that women must be thin, look young forever, have fair skin and straight hair and wear short, tight and often uncomfortable clothing. This not only increases the risk of sexual assault, but also leads women to feel alienated from their own bodies. As some of the women interviewed put it, “I realized that I’m not in touch with my feelings very much” or “talking about myself is a bit complicated”. The feminist agroecology approach introduced by SOF encourages women to take a stand in the mains conflicts in the region. It values ecologically and socially sustainable forms of production and social organization (including family farming) and seeks to create alliances with groups that defend the ways of life of traditional communities and oppose exclusionary forms of “modernisation”; it also pushes for the transformation of gender relations. Subtle changes began to appear, as our efforts to develop and value women’s work and agroecological food production started to bear fruit and thanks to our strategy of seeking to build alliances with local actors, namely Cooperafloresta, the rural workers’ union and the municipal government. This initial, low-key approach helped ensure that the changes would be locally accepted. However, as we shall see below, all this is now evolving into a broader process of change, in which gender relations are being renegotiated and women are taking part into local conflicts.

The long road taken by feminist agroecology in Brazil The feminist agroecological approach introduced by SOF in Vale do Ribeira in 2015 has its origins in a larger and much longer process that united women farmers, NGO staff, (former) public officials and university professors from different regions of Brazil. The lengthy process, which led

10 Data taken from the 2015 Educational Census. These figures are likely to increase as a result of the closing of rural schools since the decade of 2000.

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to the affirmation of feminist agroecology as a political subject, must be taken into account in order to understand the conditions for its expansion in regions such as Vale do Ribeira. From Social Rights and Land Reform to Gender and Family Farming The roots of this process can be found in the criticism of the “conservative modernisation of the countryside” model that was initially promoted among “small” Brazilian producers by technical assistance and rural extension (ATER) policies from the 1940s on and later reinforced by the military dictatorships in the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout this period, the model was challenged by so-called democratic and popular fronts seeking to advance two main agendas: agrarian reform and rural workers’ social and economic rights. These demands were defended first by the Peasant Leagues (Ligas Camponesas ) created in 1955, which were later dismantled during the military dictatorships. The demands were then taken up by the new rural unionist movement led by the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG), which was founded in 1963 and later assumed a leading role in the new syndicalism movement of the 1980s. Other important rural movements—namely the Movement of Landless Rural Workers, MST, founded in 1984—also emerged in the 1980s and took up the struggle for agrarian reform and rural workers’ rights. In the 1980s, rural women began to mobilize as part of the rural unionist movement and for access to social rights (primarily maternity leave and retirement pensions). They created their own organizations, such as the Peasant Women Movement (MMC, created in states in the south such as Santa Catarina as early as 1983 and unified at the national level in 2003) and the Movement of Rural Women Workers (MMTRNE, present in every state in the north-eastern region since its creation in 1986). Some joined mixed organizations, such as CONTAG and MST (Nobre, 2015; Filipak, 2017). In the 1990s, the rural women’s movements broadened the targets of their mobilizations to include two interrelated issues: the place of women in production and the production models themselves. Also in the 1980s, a new branch of this popular and democratic movement developed when a group of agricultural engineers formed a network to promote “alternative agriculture” (Luzzi, 2007). Then, in

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the 1990s, rural movements converged to defend “family farming”— a term that brings together rural actors with different experiences and social positions ranging from traditional gatherers (forest people) to high-skilled farmers. The federal government adopted the term in 1995, when it created the national family farming credit programme, PRONAF. Pressure from rural women’s mobilizations and international donors to include gender in development projects in the late 1990s gave rural organizations momentum for their work on alternative agriculture. A new field emerged, which was initially called “family farming and gender”. Feminist Agroecology in “progressive” Public Policies In 2002, rural movements and NGOs joined forces to create the National Agroecology Coalition (ANA), which was to focus on coordination, political lobbying and communication with society. ANA seeks to introduce agroecology in urban areas through it alliances with other organizations, such as the Brazilian Forum of Solidarity Economy (FBES), with whom it works on the issue of building social markets. Women activists from rural movements, NGOs and universities gradually organized a cross-cutting working group within ANA as a space for women’s self-organization and for questioning all forms of gender inequality within the coalition (where it was hardly acknowledged) and all its thematic working groups. Also at that time, the debate on food sovereignty and agroecology began to emerge in some feminist movements, notably the World March of Women (Masson & Conway, 2017), whose international secretary was based out of SOF during the 2006–2013 period. Under the Workers’ Party administration (during the mandates of Presidents Lula and Dilma), in office from 2003 to 2016, relations between the government, rural movements and NGOs, and the agribusiness lobby were redefined. During this period, rural movements and NGOs benefited from the creation of an unprecedented number of spaces of participation (councils, forums) in which various agricultural development policies were discussed, defined and managed. These policies included new public procurement programmes for family farming products, rural credit, rural workers’ documentation and a new “public and universal” modality for ATER and agroecology. While these policies did strengthen “family farming”, the advances have been limited by the government’s decision to maintain a two-pronged agricultural model—made up of one line of programmes for smallholder farmers and another for the large-scale

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agribusiness sector—which gives priority to the interests of big farmers and landowners (Sabourin, 2014). One victory for rural women during this period was the creation of the Directorate for Rural Women Policies at the Ministry of Agricultural Development (DPMR/MDA), which had its own team and budget.11 ANA organized regional and national meetings to debate the National Plan for Agroecology and Organic Production (PNAPO) and the ATER Agroecology Policy. During ANA’s internal debate on these policies, its Women’s Working Group struggled to have measures to address gender inequalities included in these new policies. In the case of the ATER Agroecology Policy, this group finally succeeded in having quotas adopted to ensure women benefitted from the policies: 50% of beneficiaries and 30% of technicians must be women and 30% of all resources must be allocated to women. Another action developed by the ANA Women’s Working Group was the promotion of research that gave greater visibility to rural women’s knowledge and work, such as the agroecological notebooks (see below). These policies and actions allowed the executing entities—including NGOs that are members of ANA—to develop their work in new territories, as was the case of SOF in Vale do Ribeira. These policies were undeniably important advances, especially when compared to the absence, up until then, of specific policies for rural women. However, in the eyes of some activists, they were only “temporary”, and “limited” and “bureaucratic”; in other words, they were experimental, rather than permanent and universal policies. Between 2004 and 2013, the ATER Women policy benefited 56,400 women and had a budget of R$32.3 million (about US$ 10 million). Some modalities of implementation were inappropriate both for NGOs, which were forced to meet criteria that normally apply to public enterprises, and for women farmers, as they had to acquire a “declaration of aptitude” (DAP) required for family farming policies. Obtaining a DAP poses considerable difficulties, especially because of discrimination against women farmers. In addition, relations between some rural movements or NGOs with the government, including activists who held management positions in the DPMR, were sometimes tense. The movements adopted a subtle game of “pressure and solidarity”. The alliance of rural movements maintained an autonomous position and a strong mobilizing capacity, as seen in the 11 Between 2003 and 2013, the DPMR had a budget of about R$300 million (US$93 million) (Hora & Butto, 2014, p. 28).

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Marcha das Margaridas and in mobilizations led by women from Via Campesina, which was to keep pressure on the government. Nevertheless, virtually no progress was made on the demand for land reform, and the policies benefitting family farming and women farmers were not institutionalized to ensure that they would continue in the case of a change in government. Feminist Agroecology Versus Neoconservatism Following the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, one of the first measures that Michel Temer took after seizing office in May 2016 was to eliminate the Ministry of Agrarian Development. Although some policies and the main spaces of “participation” were formally maintained, their dynamics changed. Some rural movements and NGOs stopped participating and the ones who continued on say that their voice was not heard by the government. In the case of ATER, policy implementation was redirected to private companies. Rural movements and NGOs from ANA considered themselves part of the opposition to Michel Temer’s “illegitimate” government. Temer then passed a constitutional amendment (EC 95/2016) that froze government spending at the 2017 level for the following 20 years. This will cause further deterioration to the conditions for social reproduction, such as the low coverage of early childhood education (from zero to three years) and the reduction of the public expenditure/GDP ratio. Furthermore, with no prospects for expansion, the current insufficiency of public services will only get worse, especially when one considers that population growth is still estimated at 11% for the 20-year period. Extreme right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro began his term in 2019 with an aggressive discourse against the so-called gender ideology, which promotes sexual education at schools, the rights of the LGBT population and a leading role for the feminist movement. The responsibility for officially recognizing indigenous communities and quilombos ’ land and for agrarian reform has been attributed to the Ministry of Agriculture, which is controlled by representatives of large landowners and the agribusiness sector. The new government also stripped the environmental policy of any effectiveness or meaning; for example, it does not include any measures to stop deforestation. During his campaign, Jair Bolsonaro promised to end “activism” and through the recently adopted Provisional Measure No.

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870/2019, he gave the Office of the Government Secretary control over NGOs activities, even the ones that do not receive government resources. Despite the increasingly hostile environment, one could say that the main outcome of the political struggle of rural women and their allies for the recognition of feminist agroecology during this period has been their consolidation as a political subject engaged in a struggle against agribusiness and “conservative modernization”, on the one hand, and gender-blind agroecology, on the other. We hypothesize that this position in the conflict has led them to take a strong anti-systemic stance based on a radical critique of capitalist and patriarchal society and to raise the need to go beyond a mere productivist vision of agroecology and adopt a broader vision centred on the sustainable reproduction of life.

Feminist agroecology in practice in Barra do Turvo Building Solidarity: Concrete Answers to Common Issues Based on this broader political vision, SOF began its intervention in the Vale do Ribeira region by contacting local organizations and leaders about forming groups of women farmers. Women were encouraged to form groups at the neighbourhood level, as spaces for self-organizing, and to formulate specific demands and proposals that reflected their local situation. The origins of women’s groups in Barra do Turvo vary. In two quilombos, one group was formed on the basis of kinship and the other, from Cooperafloresta’s working bees (puxirum). In one family farming neighbourhood, a group was constituted by the women at the community tree nursery—a mixed place (men and women) where community members grow and sell native plants as part of the state reforestation policy. In another one, a well-organized group of women was already in place as the Children’s Pastoral Commission—a ecumenical, social organization promoted by the Catholic Church to monitor children and pregnant women’s weight and vaccinations and to improve nutrition. Yet another group of women was formed from the members of an informal mixed collective that mobilized to fight against the Mosaico. Finally, in two family farming neighbourhoods with little or no land, women used to meet to work on handcrafts together; these meetings were promoted

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by one woman who lives in the privately owned Centre for Forest Involvement located on a large plot of land. The women who first formed the groups were mostly in the 40 to 50 age group. Later, younger women got involved, as they were attracted by the groups’ dynamics and the opportunity to get out of their homes. Finding concrete answers to the series of issues that the women raised helped consolidate the groups. These issues included: how to grow different plants, make natural fertilizers, treat wastewater, increase sales, gain access to land, process food to avoid losses, do the accounting, use the Internet to communicate with the consumers’ groups, issue tax receipts, convince men to help with certain tasks, organize work with young children and help women dealing with controlling husbands to participate, among others. SOF responded to the groups’ demands and proposals by organizing different activities such as visits to other participants’ farms and community work bees for tasks such as building raised garden beds, mandala gardens, septic tanks or managing agroforestry systems. It also prepared the women to present their demands to the town hall or other institutions, provided them tools such as the “agroecological notebooks” and helped build a network with consumers’ groups in other regions, among other things. Women were encouraged to use the agroecological notebooks (an initiative of the ANA Women’s Working Group) to record their agricultural production for a year. They separated the annotations into four categories: production for self-consumption, donation, exchange and selling. At the national level, the notebooks revealed that the average monthly production per woman farmer ranged from R$683 (in September 2017) to R$940 (in March 2018), which is close to the legal minimum wage in 2018: R$954 (approximately US$250). Family consumption accounted for 51% of the total number of records in the notebooks and 28% of total production when assigned a monetary value. As for the diversity of production, in the state of Bahia, for example, an average of 33 products per woman farmer was registered.12 The notebooks have been essential for giving visibility to the diversity of plants grown and to women’s production, especially the products that are not sold; this amount is grossly underestimated, even by the women themselves. As one woman 12 This is according to the preliminary data presented during the national seminar “Feminism and Agroecology: Rethinking an economy based on the agroecological notebooks” held in Recife from November 12 to 14, 2018.

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put it, “Many women said they couldn’t do anything or did not want to do anything. They discovered that they had things on their land that they thought they didn’t”. The network of conscious consumers’ groups consists of six selfmanaged groups of consumers, most in the outskirts of the city of São Paulo, who buy vegetables, fruit, food, natural medicines and plants offered by six of the women groups from Barra do Turvo once a month. This network aims to create a market controlled by the women farmers— that is, one where the women determine the type and quantity of products that they can supply, after they deduct the amount needed for family consumption and donations from their total production, and they set the price, which must be affordable for the working class. Redefining the producer–consumer relationship is not easy. It requires consumers to commit to feminist agroecology, which means going beyond the desire to consume organic food. As the relations between the consumers and the women producers are based on trust and these consumers have a certain level of political awareness, certificates to prove that the products are organically produced are not necessary. Consumers must also have a better understanding of the women farmers’ working conditions and the quality or logistics problems that arise occasionally. Confronted with such difficulties, one consumers’ group in the nearby city of Registro temporarily suspended its purchases. It eventually opted for a simpler way of functioning: the consumers and women farmers agreed to a weekly market where the women farmers take turns going to Registro to sell their products at the market. Also, integrating new consumers into existing groups is a slow process. On the women producers’ side, working with the network forces them to redefine relations within and among the groups to avoid internal competition and focus on working together to build shared opportunities—a change in perspective that is all the more difficult to achieve due to the recent cancellation of the public procurement programmes for family farming products (such as the PAA) and the fact that the consumers’ groups demand for their products is still limited. Logistics—which includes everything from organizing supply, receiving and distributing demand among themselves, collecting the products and transporting them to a central drop-off location in São Paulo—can also be a limiting factor for the network’s growth. Until now, their ability to overcome logistics problems has depended on the availability of human resources from SOF and volunteers who help manage the

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network, as well as the truck provided by the Barra do Turvo municipal government. Despite these limits, thanks to this system, a diversity of products— over 200 fresh or processed items—that are normally consumed only in rural areas have gained both symbolical and monetary value. Between October 2017 and March 2018, the average monthly sales figure was R$182 per women farmer or about half of the average per capita income in the municipality.13 Selling outside their neighbourhoods was something new for many women, especially the ones living in the family farming districts, and it helped make their husbands and neighbours value their work more. They now have to deal with neighbours (men and women) who want to “copy” them and who are drawn mainly by the cost/benefit relation for organic production, which they see as a market niche. To avoid this, some groups established conditions for the inclusion of new women in the group, such as previous participation in all collective activities and the “awareness-building activities” organized by SOF. Overall, building concrete answers to a broad spectrum of specific demands has proved to be instrumental for the development of solidarity within the groups. Solidarity is not just a “value” adopted or defended by (poor) women farmers, but rather the result of concrete action and the rules created in the actions. The SOF technicians’ solidarity with the women, shown through their strong commitment to helping them organize and solve issues (often well beyond regular work hours), has also been a source of inspiration. The women farmers have stated repeatedly that they see SOF technicians as being “different” from people from other NGOs. Obviously, the process of consolidating the groups is not linear. When discussing and implementing collective responses, the women are constantly confronted with difficulties, which has led some to abandon their groups and some groups to suspend their activities, at least temporarily. Some women stopped participating because they preferred to use pesticides or herbicides in an attempt to reduce the amount of work needed in the short term, despite the negative impacts of these products. One group split into two because of dissatisfaction with the way the results of their work were redistributed among members. In most

13 R$390 according to the Atlas do Desenvolvimento Humano no Brasil for 2010 (op.

cit.).

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cases, how well the groups function depends on the ability of at least one member or a small number of women members to act as local leaders. New Meanings and Renegotiating Gender Relations The methodology that SOF used in the region sought to make the connections between the different issues being discussed. For example, SOF technicians associated the introduction of new crops to the debate on the diet promoted by the agroindustry sector, its effects on human health and its ties to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. By connecting these issues, they shifted from a narrow understanding of agroecology focused on production techniques and sales to a broader vision and practice that looks at people as a whole and social relationships and seeks to build more democratic and sustainable forms of reproduction of life. A core group of women farmers from the network was formed through this politicization process, who now defend the principles and broader vision of feminist agroecology and play a leading role in local organizing. A new subjectivity—one that recognizes women as farmers and workers, creators of market and non-market value and holders of rights—has thus emerged. Of course, this subjectivity does not eliminate other logic or justifications for action, especially in the current political and economic context of rapidly deteriorating living conditions. Women (and men) continue expressing or reproducing the existing social, economic or political differences. Unequal power relations do not disappear immediately. Some families, especially young couples, prefer to work as day labourers on conventional farms to earn an income that gives them access to consumption goods, rather than “investing” in agroecology. The promotion of a healthy and diversified diet based on production for self-consumption does not stop people from purchasing industrialized food, as it is an indicator of social status. Even so, power relations, particularly between genders, are beginning to be renegotiated in the region at different levels. At the family level, many women have received their husband’s help for their work—for example, to prepare the orders for the consumers’ groups. The women’s participation in SOF’s out-of-town activities, including seminars that lasted several days, set a precedent in the organization of their family’s daily life, as other family members had to do the domestic work in their absence. In one of the quilombos, allocating the responsibility

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for care work to women is now being questioned by the local association’s woman president, who emphasizes that it is in the interest of the whole community for women to participate in collective responsibilities, including political ones. In general, the groups gradually expanded their activities and their role in their neighbourhoods changed, as they began to take on responsibilities for local development and collective needs such as the water supply, road maintenance and sales logistics. The promotion of women’s work has also led to changes in the municipality of Barra do Turvo. Before the network was formed, agricultural policies for women at the Municipal Secretary for Economic Development were limited to offering a few mobile chicken coops. At the town hall and the Farmers’ House, women farmers clearly suffered discrimination when trying to access official documents. For instance, tax receipts were issued in their husband’s name even though the women had carried out all the productive and administrative work. Similarly, in its support for family farming, the local rural workers’ union focused on increasing production for sale, while diminishing or disregarding the “soft things” grown by the women in their “backyards”. Today, the women farmers and the SOF team are received differently at the Farmers’ House and the Secretary for Economic Development. The municipality provides the truck and driver that deliver their products to São Paulo, even though this arrangement must constantly be renegotiated to be maintained. Local authorities took an interest in the production figures highlighted in the agroecological notebooks and, surprised by the amounts, they proposed to rent privately owned land for the group of women and other people in the community wanting to farm in the family farming district that is most desperately lacking land. At the same time, policies targeting women still broadly focus on social assistance and value only their motherhood, as access to benefits depends on their children’s school attendance and vaccinations records, thus placing full responsibility for child care on the women. There are also the so-called productive inclusion policies that promote individual entrepreneurship and push women into presumedly “female” activities (beauty, fashion and cooking). None of these policies question the sexual division of labour. At a broader level, consolidating solidarity-based community organizing by building a network of existing groups in Barra do Turvo and other municipalities in Vale do Ribeira is an ongoing process. SOF played an initial role in this process by creating regular opportunities for

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women to meet, identifying common issues and common answers and by encouraging new women to join. This helped build a sense of belonging and collective action, which is reflected today by the regular invitations between neighbourhoods to participate in activities such as fairs or seminars. However, this incipient dynamic is sometimes hampered by differences in official recognition (traditional communities versus family farming neighbourhoods, as mentioned earlier) and between women in terms of access to land and resources. Another challenge is related to the inclusion of new women and groups, which requires building new common opportunities by expanding the consumers network, for example. SOF aims to gradually move away from the role of a support NGO towards that of a partner in building a common social movement rooted at the local level and that coordinates with allies at the national level. Through this process, the development of the network of agroecological women farmers has reached a point where they must now take a new step to strengthen their relationship with the other struggles that define this territory. In quilombos, inhabitants point out that the women’s groups will continue if they have the capacity to play an active role in local territorial management—for instance, by reinforcing “traditional” knowledge and finding more ways of trading their products so that they can include more women, especially the younger ones. Family farmers, for their part, stated that the women’ initiatives must help create or rebuild relations of reciprocity and strengthen a sense of community. Originally introduced on the edge of the local conflict between “tradition and modernity”, feminist agroecology in Barra do Turvo is now being called on to take a stance in the different conflicts that exist and assume the consequences of doing so. This will create new economic and sociopolitical responsibilities for the women’s groups at the community level, as well as the need to build new alliances in order to challenge the existing differences and conflicts.

Conclusion The crisis of social reproduction—manifested as deforestation, territory grabbing, violence against women and other elements that deny the women and the inhabitants of poor communities the right to determine their own way of life—creates an urgent need for academic and political debate and action. Our action-research shows that the transition towards

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feminist agroecology in Barra do Turvo is an ongoing process. It began by redefining agricultural production and food, then valuing and recognizing women’s work and advanced further with the renegotiation of gender relations in different spheres (family, community, market and, to a lesser extent, the local government) and the growing participation of women in local politics. This process has been built on solidarity, which has been strengthened around common and concrete objectives. This dynamic has developed through experiments with and the adoption of new practices and the consolidation of changes to social relations that aim to give women greater autonomy and foster ecologically and socially more sustainable forms of reproduction in all areas of life. These changes—though in some cases still embryonic—have been possible because they have been introduced through a national process led by rural women’s movements and the ANA Women’s Working Group in particular, which uses its recognition and extensive structure to ensure that feminism has its place in the agroecological movement. However, at the local level, the process relies on small groups, a small number of local leaders and the financial and human resources provided so far by SOF, and it must overcome the differences among women. Our actionresearch accompanied women farmers in the family farming and quilombos communities at a time when social mobilizing and public policies helped them expand their life chances and alter social reproduction patterns, but also while these favourable conditions were being dismantled by the advances of the market sector, such as the financialization of nature, and the growing power of conservative political groups in the country. In light of the new challenges, it makes more sense to focus on strengthening local alliances and ensuring that regional and national organizations that defend commons and territories mobilize on the women’s agenda. This experience also reveals a particular, dialectical way of weaving the relationship between the two poles of action represented by a politicoideological construction, on the one hand, and economic and productive practice, on the other: a bi-directional movement translates political vision into practice and reinterprets practice in the light of this vision. This movement is based on the life-world, especially that of women farmers and technicians, where practices inspired by feminist agroecology are being developed. This life-world constitutes the heart of the dialectical relationship between the general and the particular and the space where the plurality of identities and experiences can connect to bring together mobilizations for the democratization of society. This dialectic is key for

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the consolidation of a subject capable of “universalising the conflict”, in the sense that Jacques Rancière uses this term (2012)—that is, of incorporating both new people (women farmers, their daughters and neighbours, but also some husbands, male neighbours, etc.) and new issues. Thus, economic practices in the substantive sense (market and nonmarket, monetary and non-monetary) are what shape the experiences of the life-world and constitute the source of subjectivity and political construction. This result deserves to be highlighted, as it is in stark contrast to the assumptions of critical theory (Habermas, 1984) that place the economy on the side of systems—and not of life-worlds— and by doing so, denies its role in political subjectivation. Finally, our action-research suggests that the possibility of strengthening feminist agroecology by increasing its scope and internal coherence lies in this bidirectional movement, which itself requires different conditions in order to occur: personal (commitment), collective, organizational, financial and ideological. To strengthen the agroecological feminist political subject, these experiences must be systematized and shared. Our action-research sought to contribute to this systematization based on a dialogue between different lines of heterodox economic thought, namely feminist economics and socioeconomics. The lessons were observed and described as they were perceived by most of the rural women involved in the process. Despite the recent political developments in Brazil, the women and their communities will continue to resist, defend the commons and more sustainable forms of reproducing life and cultivate alternatives. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Karen Lang for her valuable work in editing the English version of this text.

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Steenbock W., da Costa e Silva, L., Ozelame da Silva, R., Rodrigues Almir, S., Perez-Cassarino, J., & Fonini, R. (2013). Agrofloresta, ecologia e sociedade. Kairós. Telles, L. (2018). Desvelando a economia invisível das agricultoras agroecológicas. Master Thesis in Rural Economics, Federal University of Viçosa.

CHAPTER 11

Concluding Thoughts: Connecting Women’s Struggles. Reorganizing Social Reproduction, Democratizing Solidarity Economy, Reframing Value Isabelle Guérin, Isabelle Hillenkamp, and Christine Verschuur

In the current context of financialization of capitalism, impoverishment, increasing inequalities and crisis of social reproduction, voices and claims for changes here and now, without waiting for a general upheaving,

I. Guérin (B) · I. Hillenkamp French Institute of Research for Development (IRD), Centre for Social Science Studies on African, American and Asian Worlds (CESSMA), Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] I. Hillenkamp e-mail: [email protected] C. Verschuur Anthropology - Sociology and Gender Center, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1_11

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are rumbling. Under certain conditions, the power of the powerless is growing. Solidarity economy (SE) practices participate to this movement, without, however, escaping the pressure of the dominant system and the contradictions it may induce. Realistically appreciating the transformative potential of solidarity practices requires rethinking the notions of work, economy and politics and integrating a renewed and feminist understanding of social reproduction. Social reproduction, as developed in Chapter 1 of this book, enfolds all the activities, social relationships and institutions necessary for the reproduction and maintenance of life, now and for the future generations. Solidarity practices constitute one response to the crisis of social reproduction, through the collective and democratic organization of the delivery of necessary goods and services—like healthy food, childcare facilities, environmental care, social protection, as the examples in this book illustrate. At a theoretical level, these practices make up spaces where new social relationships are trying to be constructed, which are neither “domestic” nor capitalist, but based on voluntary forms of interdependencies and guided by equality and democracy. These practices entail concrete actions and interrogations based on decision making through deliberation processes but also on mobilization, resistance or public action—thereby contributing to rethinking politics. These initiatives embrace the concerns of many feminist movements, convinced that the struggle against the patriarchal and capitalist system requires revisiting the very nature of economy and politics. The feminist analyses of concrete SE practices in India and Latin America discussed in this book renew the discussions on the economy, women’s work, social relationships and social reproduction; on the constitution of political subjects and the articulation with the State. They shed new light on the understandings of solidarity and of the territory, a space where women and local communities face serious threats but where, at the same time, their practices can unfold and rearticulate the politics of everyday life. While difficulties and risks are indeed present and no progress can be assumed a priori, women’s grass-roots resistances constitute a key path to constructing alternatives from a position of exploitation and devaluation. Through subaltern women’s work and actions, the noplace of exclusion and periphery may become a territory of struggle. Their emerging practices may reconstitute forms of organization and resistance combining autonomy, communality and territoriality, in defence of life

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and of rights. The analyses presented in this book also show how integrating a critical feminist perspective of SE practices can contribute to the renewal of public action and policies for the reproduction of life. We argued in our introduction that solidarity economy can offer transformative and sustainable paths for feminist social change, but only if it includes a reorganization of social reproduction. This implies constructing new social relationships, neither domestic nor capitalist ones, but based on solidarity, internal democracy and the construction of networks of actors and other forms of connexion and collective organization. It also requires putting gender, race, caste and class equality at the forefront of political debates, at all levels, from the household to the communities, the market and the State and changing the patriarchal and racist values underlying social relationships. It finally also requires understanding the articulation of the different forms of economy, domestic, capitalist and solidarity, which explains how the whole system works. What is the position of the examined SE initiatives with regard to the present organization—and crisis—of social reproduction? In this critical context, to what extent do they suggest changes in the unequal power relations in activities, in social relations and institutions? Some SE practices studied here are spaces where the burden of activities for social reproduction is better recognized or revalued. Some case studies show that SE practices encourage changes in the distribution and the value of reproductive work inside the households. Some are spaces where the unequal distribution of this work between families, associations, the market and the State is put into question. Some offer rays of hope as spaces where different social relationships are being constructed. Solidarity-driven grass-roots women’s organizations may emerge as paths towards resisting capitalism and constructing a different, more egalitarian, feminist and sustainable system. Despite their singularities, all the case studies presented in this book shed light on common trends and processes. Drawing on their findings, we present below some relevant conditions under which these changes either offer promising avenues or may not succeed. However, this does not mean trying to identify what “works” and what “does not work” anywhere and at any time. Initiatives are rooted in singular historical and institutional trajectories. Gender power relations are intertwined with a multitude of other forms of power , which vary greatly according to space and time. What works here may not work elsewhere. What worked yesterday may not work today or tomorrow. What we have studied here relates to processes and

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not to “good practices”. Women’s voices and experiences illustrate the complexities and contradictions inherent in solidarity economy practices: no linear changes, but ebbs and flows; no easy and final transformations but an entanglement of endeavours to combat patriarchy, resist capitalism and move towards better lives; never-ending struggles with no promise of victory. Understanding why and how they may not be successful contributes to take possible alternatives seriously (Tilly, 1990).

Women’s Work and Social Reproduction: Collective Responses in the Midst of an Ever-Going Crisis Our research shows the scale of the crisis of social reproduction and its huge and concrete social, economic, but also political, environmental and ethical extent. The crisis has diverse effects but also recurring features. Feminist studies have identified since long social reproduction as a key issue to understand capitalist development and how it prospers thanks to the unequal sexual, social and racial division of labour, and as a result of the maintenance of a domestic economy. Our research shows that unpaid work, mainly performed by subaltern women, functions as a “shock absorber” of the consequences of the economic, social and environmental crises, and remains a massive and still unrecognized part of all work. In rural areas, subsistence agriculture relies heavily on small family agriculture, and particularly on the work of female peasants or wage labourers, who face growing difficulties and often decreasing support from public policies. Urban or transnational temporary migration of generally young workers, either mainly male (in the case of Bolivia for instance), or involving both men and women (in the case of Brazil or Tamil Nadu, for example)—increases the burden of work of women living in rural areas. This in turn feeds the urban economy. Access to certain basic infrastructures and “modern” equipment may simplify certain domestic tasks but it also creates new tasks and new constraints, due to dependence on the market, which is sometimes extremely rapid in comparison with other periods of history (see Chapter 4, Changalpet), and the need to acquire new skills (budget management, children’s education). Wild extractivism and other indirect causes of destruction of mineral, vegetal and water resources primarily penalize subaltern women (like the Dalit women in Changalpet or peasant women in Vale do Ribeira), who

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are more dependent on these resources for their daily work and the survival strategies they are considered responsible for. In the process of modernization of the craft sectors, the women are excluded and loose access to more valued activities and resources. In urban areas, marginalized women are particularly submitted to a combination of low provision of decent jobs, precarious housing and environmental conditions, long distance to go from home to work and weak transport facilities, lack of infrastructure and public services and high levels of violence. Gender as an organizing principle makes women feel themselves responsible of taking care of the daily life and needs of close persons in those peripherical, abandoned and neglected spaces. To ensure that life goes on, women resist, join and experiment various forms of collective initiatives, where they put together work (e.g. childcare, farming, food preparation) and/or resources (e.g. fish, water, sand, seeds, biodiversity, energy, knowledge). Besides these activities, they also reimagine social relations and institutions, all necessary for social reproduction, but outside the realms of the household and the market. This is one of the major results that we want to highlight. In this regard, the practices discussed in this book have many differences but share this essential feature. The women involved in these groups struggle to construct other social relationships in order to create fairer and more sustainable modes of organization of social reproduction. As seen all along the book, these initiatives challenge the artificial division between “production” and “social reproduction”. They enlarge the meaning of social reproduction to a broader vision of life, both human and non-human. They translate their vision to some degree of communalization of social reproduction activities, organized through principles of internal democracy. Some experiment alternative modes of appropriation of work, which in turn require a revaluation of women’s work as a whole, whether through quantification or symbolic forms. They do not claim a dominant principle of exchange, be it market, redistribution, reciprocity or householding. Like any form of economic practice, they combine these different principles, but they try to subordinate them to the principles of equality and democracy. The social relations that emerge from these experiments are neither “domestic”, nor capitalist, nor State-led, but driven by solidarity. These solidarity groups are not necessarily harmonious places, free from conflict, rivalry and inequalities, whether based on patriarchy, class, race, caste, place or age. They nevertheless offer a space where alternative

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social relationships are being constructed, where the meaning of work is being reframed and where the articulation of “domestic” and capitalist social relationships is being challenged. As explained in Chapter 1, maintaining the domestic economy articulated to the global capitalist economy is necessary to feed its prosperity. Challenging this harmful articulation requires that gender relations are questioned and that the collectives involved attempt to work without providing the unpaid work that subsidizes the capitalist economy. However, this also requires other conditions, listed below. As observed elsewhere (Kabeer et al., 2013), the women involved in solidarity groups struggle for recognition—from public authorities, sometimes from employers, and within their households and communities—and for redistribution measures. They claim for a status as worker and for decent work—with social protection, minimum wages—they demand agricultural policies, market regulation, environmental conservation and/or protection from violence against women. All initiatives described here have been able to obtain concrete results in terms of legislation and policy making in some of these domains (see Chapter 2 for a summary). The extent to which these changes have been obtained depends in particular on the alliances that have been constructed with similar groups, with feminist or women’s movements, social movements, unions, or with NGOs, locally, nationally or transnationally. Their actions and advocacy involve a constant struggle to raise awareness of social reproduction work and/or resources and to recognize its value. This process is encouraged among the women by the fact of working in a collective and thus creating spaces to discuss sensitive issues among themselves and with allies. These processes may include reflecting on the power relations in their social environment, namely with men. This may include employers and public authorities at different levels, malebased or mixed organizations (unions, associations, social movements). As various cases illustrate, contesting openly intra-household relations is quite challenging, especially when “families […] continue to be their major source of social and emotional security” (Chapter 6, Kerala). Challenging power relations is of course a long-lasting process. Some methodologies illustrate the type of actions that contribute to the recognition of value. An example is given by the exercise of quantification of the value of products—as we read in the case of the cadernetas agroecolócias in Brazil, produced in domestic and in solidarity-driven economies and exchanged under different forms (Chapter 9). Recognizing value may

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also be the result of collective discussions on value and valuation: what is the quality of food, soils, water or care services and more broadly, what makes up the quality of work and what is the meaning of life, at different levels. These collectives are also stepping stones to empowerment processes. These might be economic empowerment processes in the substantive sense—processes of gaining personal and collective power over the provisioning of goods and services necessary to life, whether the means are monetary and market-based or not—but also and foremost collective empowerment processes at the social and political level, where women can constitute themselves as subjects of rights. At the same time, these initiatives face a recurring difficulty: the gendered division of labour is extremely difficult to question, either at the household level (as various Indian cases and the Bolivian case recall), the organizations’ level (as the Community Centres in Argentina, the Tamil Unions or the local associations in Bolivia and Brazil illustrate), or at the global level. When solidarity practices are not articulated with feminist movements and/or a politicization of social reproduction, power relations remain difficult to challenge, reproductive work is a constraint to achieve equality and reinforces patriarchal norms. These norms are maintained by eminently patriarchal States (see below), a situation that may be reinforced with the rise of powerful conservative political governments (as we write these lines, May 2020). Ultimately, in some cases, the (relative) collective and personal empowerment that women experience through these groups is still at the expense of an overburden of reproductive workload. While unchallenged sexual division of labour may limit women’s participation to political spaces, as we have seen in some cases, women may also purposely use their “maternalized image” in their claims, as they know this is the only way to achieve their objectives (see Chapter 5, Bolivia). In other cases, like in Vale do Ribeira (Chapter 9, Brazil), some changes in the sexual division of work may be observed, with men starting to collaborate in preparing food or caring for young children, so that women can participate in meetings and collective activities. As one woman said, “it’s not only men who are changing, we are changing also”. In the Argentinian case (Chapter 7), socializing care issues is considered by the women as transformatory. Indeed, even if the activities remain very gender-stereotypical, the fact of achieving and managing these activities in a collective way makes a change. We may thus simultaneously observe an increase in women’s reproductive workload, some

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changes in the sexual division of work, and changes of the meaning and value given to this work. While we observe paths of emergence of new social relationships, in the end, and even if structural results are achieved through legislative measures and/or the adoption of specific policies, we may not speak of a radical transformation of capitalism: rather, the main result of these solidarity practices is to offer possibilities for change through spaces of resistance to capitalist and domestic economies. These spaces, articulated in varied forms to capitalist and domestic economies, offer opportunities, depending on their willingness but also ability to openly challenge the social relations of reproduction. They show varied degrees of robustness, and this in turn depends upon their comprehension, will and abilities to construct changes, and their capacities to build alliances with other groups, organizations and movements. Whatever their achievements, these experiences may be considered by the women themselves as invaluable, unlocking collective understandings of women’s rights and the value of their work and opening paths for the constitution of political subjects.

The Emergence of Solidarities and the Constitution of Political Subjects A second result concerns the conditions under which these initiatives emerge as collectives and the role of solidarities in this process, considering that solidarities do not form in a vacuum, but that they result of gradual, often chaotic and still fragile processes that all chapters describe in detail. “Solidarity among women is not something that we can be taken for granted, it is a process explained by the collectivization of care and the participation of the organizations in regional and national meetings of women” (Chapter 6, Kerala). “Solidarity is not just a ‘value’ adopted or defended by (poor) women farmers, but rather the result of concrete action and the rules created in the actions” (Chapter 9, Brazil). The construction of a common cause and collective identities is central here. Several factors prove to be decisive: – Territory. We use the term territory in its broad sense, both as a concrete and a symbolic space. Territory is a place that embodies material interdependence, family relations, memory and culture,

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affective and spiritual relations (Escobar 2008). As our case studies illustrate, territories have become a significant aspect of social movements’ action. The crisis of social reproduction is also a crisis of territories, threatened in their own reproduction, whether through the depletion of ecosystemic resources, extractivism, migration, lack of infrastructures, violence, the vanishing of collective identities or new threats to collective rights (like quilombola and indigenous communities in Brazil). Women, mostly because they are less mobile (like in India or Bolivia) or bound to a location (depending on urban social networks to survive, for instance in the Argentinian case), or because they have internalized that they are supposed to ensure the reproduction of the labour force in the immediate environment, are more concerned about the threats to the survival of their own territories. “Rights of livelihood and residence are interlinked” (Chapter 3, Tamil Nadu). Several initiatives studied here share the fact that they are based on a feeling of belonging to a particular territory and defend the existence and sustainability of this territory and its human, social and environmental resources. In some cases, marginalized women’s groups attempt to connect in the process of building a political subject capable of redefining the territory and of engendering different, more inclusive and egalitarian social relations. In this sense, the territory constitutes the basis of the construction of solidarities, of a new collective political subject. The territory also constitutes the basis for the construction of a new collective political subject. However, such processes are of course not automatic, as threats to the territory can also reinforce local hierarchies, especially when these hierarchies are also associated to forms of protections. – Dynamics of social differentiation. Besides sharing a territory, women have multiple collective identities, both inherited and acquired, that intersect and reinforce each other. The building of voluntary forms of solidarity connects with pre-existing forms of collective identities and solidarity based on neighbourhood and work experience, but also kinship, caste, ethnicity or religion. While most initiatives are shaped by some specific shared identities, it is interesting to note that some also build bridges, sometimes in a very pragmatic way, to foster alliances across various collective identities (see the case of women fish sellers in Udupi, India, Chapter 8). This broadens solidarities, confers legitimacy and subsequently helps advance solidarity associations’ objectives. In the Indian context, in which caste remains a

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very powerful organising institution, most collectives have succeeded in forging solidarity relations that transcend caste belonging and this is worth noting (Chapters 3, 6, 8 all in India). When this is not the case, the very fact that non-Dalit women (and men) allow Dalit women to mobilize for a cause that directly threatens caste hierarchy is already a significant achievement (Chapter 4, India). – Building a common cause. Collective identities and belonging to the territory are built around common causes, which, we observe, are woven around three main issues: (i) women’s collective recognition of their oppressed condition, at least one of its multiple facets, and their collective experience of this condition; (ii) the awakening of the willingness to change and to struggle; and (iii) the collective framing and construction of concrete possibilities for change. By making political connections with other women and their experiences, by doing a political and critical analysis of their concrete, personal problems and lifeworld, and by trying to build political solutions, women are becoming feminists (Narayan, 1997). They recognize a common cause, whether it is to improve the working and living conditions of women’s care workers in the informal economy (Chapter 6, Kerala), “to defend their identity with pride” for women manual workers in Tamil Nadu (Chapter 3), to “continue putting food on the table” for the fish sellers in Udupi (Chapter 8), to defend a feminist view on agroecology for the peasants in Vale do Ribeira (Chapter 9, Brazil), or to claim their status as “educators or community workers” and not as “caring mothers” for the community care workers in Buenos Aires (Chapter 7). Their ability to construct a common cause and collective identities out of individual subjectivities changes their experience into a political and feminist one, even though this term is not always used. It is truly this common cause that allows to transcend preexisting differentiations such as caste (Chapters on Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Udupi). It is this common cause that makes it possible to create solidarity between distinct social classes and between urban and rural. This is the case of the “responsible consumption” urban groups, constituted by workers from the urban periphery of Sao Paulo who buy products from women peasant groups at fair prices (Chapter 9). The strength and purpose of solidarity associations may be determined by the capacity of women to achieve this level of collective consciousness. Obviously, not all the factors necessary to reach this level are always present. For instance, in the Bolivian case,

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for different reasons (see Chapter 5), the denunciation of domestic violence during discussions in women-only SE initiatives does not convert into collective action, women do not recognize themselves as subjects of rights nor consider private issues as structural issues affecting them by the fact of being women. One of the important results of this research has been to understand that the methodologies at work to construct strategic alliances between women’s solidarity-driven groups and social movements, and namely feminist movements, are essential to the constitution of political subjectivities and for bottom-up political transformations, (see below). – Deliberative practices. SE initiatives are spaces where women can freely express themselves on their constraints, share sensitive issues and imagine collectively the horizons of possibility. This requires particular forms of collective management and different power relations, with an emphasis on horizontality and internal democracy. These informal spaces play the role of what Nancy Fraser qualifies as “subaltern counter-publics” (Fraser, 1990). Deliberation participates to the construction of ideas and collective proposals and the politicization of so-called private issues. Articulated with broader spaces of negotiation with various institutions and at various levels (individual employers, municipalities, prefectures or districts but also ministries, male-dominated unions or cooperatives, international organizations), they are crucial to transform the collectives into vehicles of structural and institutional change. – The emotional aspect of mobilizations. SE women’s initiatives constitute spaces where negative emotions and affects—like crying, anxiety, fear or anger—as well as positive emotions and affects—the pleasure of being together, laughing, dancing, feeling beautiful, liberation of the bodies—may be expressed. These emotions all together contribute to the liberation of speech and the acquisition of a critical consciousness, to feel strength and mutual support, to raise consciousness, to voice the claims and shape mobilizations, to constitute oneself as subjects of rights. They are part of lifeworld in the sense of Jürgen Habermas (1997), where communicative rationality unfolds and where resistance to colonization is built subjectively. The case studies in Tamil Nadu and Vale do Ribeira, Karnataka or Buenos Aires illustrate this dimension, that is typically valued in feminist studies or by researchers working with participatory action-research methodologies.

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– Strategic alliances. SE initiatives depend enormously on the construction of alliances, with social and feminist movements, trade unions, NGOs, political parties, researchers, locally and internationally and this for at least two main reasons. First, when the struggles are fragmented or local populations are heterogeneous, working with external entities is a way to associate diverse or even diverging causes, at least partially, and overcome some divisions (Kabeer et al., 2013), i.e., to connect without necessarily integrating, out of respect for democratic plurality. In this sense, turning to third parties (NGOs, Unions, “Incubators”, Universities, etc.) is inherent to the model of radical and plural democracy. Second, public action and lobbying necessarily require broader alliances that allow to exert influence and power. The case study in Brazil illustrates the importance of this second factor, but also the difficulty of putting it into practice and sustaining the results. During the governments of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff (2003–2016), rural women’s collectives at different levels allied themselves with feminist NGOs and movements, as well as with rural movements. These alliances enabled them to obtain policies that were unprecedented in terms of support, but which were obtained at the cost of strong internal resistance in the agroecological movement and family farming organizations, and which disappeared after the end of these governments. In order to respect and value women’s voices, knowledge and priorities, these two kinds of alliances require constant negotiation efforts, and the tactical use of public partnerships (Chatterjee, 2015). Alliances with committed men are also crucial but they are not devoid of difficulties (see Chapter 2). Even though solidarity is a driver of these initiatives, they are neither necessarily emblematic nor best-practices of what is characteristically considered “solidarity economy” by experts of decision makers (see below the gender bias of SE policies). Besides, “solidarity economy” is not commonly used in some contexts or is used in a gender-blind and biased way in other contexts. To what extent should we then continue using this expression? Even though the term solidarity may be used in an ambiguous, naïve or fuzzy way, we propose to keep it adjoined to economy as this sparks to aspects of the organization, the social relations, the values and the visions that are considered important by the women’s collective practices that we studied. Although another emic and maybe better word

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might come up some day, solidarity is useful to express consideration to the vibrancy of this effervescent movement and its capacity to build relations and mode of appropriation of women’s work that are not based on exploitation, whether domestic or capitalist. While subaltern women may not be victorious in the search of more egalitarian social relationships and alternatives to capitalism, or while they may only be healing the destructive effects of capitalism, their experience in constructing these spaces driven by solidarity is invaluable.

The Paradoxical Relationship with the State The collectives we studied are, finally, all in constant struggle with the State. They devote continuous efforts in lobbying and pressuring governments—from the local to the national level—to fulfil their obligations to protect the rights and livelihoods of the population. This process is carried out through intermediaries, such as non-governmental organizations or unions and through broader alliances, such as social movements, feminist, agro-ecological, women worker’s movements; through direct negotiations and/or through street protests, marches, demonstrations and encounters. Under certain conditions, solidarity initiatives may play an important role in challenging the State and in shaping the public policy agenda. Given that States are always complex, multiple and multilayer entities, they may succeed in some of their claims, and they may fail in others. In exploring the multiple strategies and articulations between solidarity initiatives and the States, we come to various conclusions. Some are rather general and refer to the usual difficulties of relations between civil society and the State, others are more specific to women’s groups and the issue of social reproduction. – Apart from managing commons, and notwithstanding lobbying for new laws and new schemes, solidarity initiatives spend considerable time and energy to demand that the State fulfils its responsibilities, i.e. that information is transmitted, that public programmes are delivered or that infrastructure functions. When the State provides part of the coverage of social reproduction, the complexity of the measures, their opacity and the multiple dysfunctions of the services require specific work, provided by women, and most often unpaid and unrecognized. Requiring the State to play its role in social reproduction is a form of female responsibility, and a component of social

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reproduction work. When some functions have been delegated by the State to third sector organizations (community organizations, NGOs, foundations, churches, or even social enterprises) or are in fact assumed by them, women’s performative work extends to these organizations. In the women-led unions from Tamil Nadu, some leaders estimate that “they spent at least half their time and energies in pursuing welfare schemes for workers from the boards” (Chapter 3). Other case studies also insist on their time-consuming and incessant role as mediators with the State, which Kaveri Thara describes as “political work” (Thara forthcoming). – At the same time, solidarity initiatives desperately need the State in different ways. For instance, public funding of community workers involved in community-based care organizations in Argentina is a condition for their existence. Public buying schemes for small farmers in Brazil is a condition for their survival, to absorb their marketed production and the Bolsa Familia is essential to provide minimal incomes, even though these sort of schemes have a maternalistic bias (Destremau & Georges, 2017; Hainard & Verschuur 2005). Social rights for fisherwomen in Udupi depends on the State and is a condition of the sustainability of their economic activities in monsoon times. While in some contexts, particularly in India, initiatives avoid or limit any form of subsidy in order to preserve their autonomy (Chatterjee, 2015; see also Chapter 4, Changalpet), public procurement or licensing, minimum wages and social protection measures are indispensable for the sustainability of these initiatives. This dependency is a permanent source of fragility. – The gender and productive bias of social and solidarity economy laws and programs. When they exist (or existed) (in Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina), SE public policies and legal recognition are narrowly conceived, with SE focussed on productive organizations (cooperatives, some associations, social enterprises) and support primarily financial sustainability and entrepreneurial management. Such characteristics do not apply to SE initiatives that aim to transform social relations from a feminist perspective. This narrow conception is characterized by a “productive bias” that places reproductive activities in a secondary position to activities that centre on job creation and financial sustainability. In its present form, and echoing observations done in other parts of the world (see, for instance, Guérin et al.,

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2011), SE policies are most often hardly compatible with a feminist agenda. – The nexus between the State and private capital is sometimes an insurmountable obstacle, that condemns women engaged in common management of resources to failure. In the case of Tamil Nadu, for example, while the women had got the State to regulate sand extraction, it turned out that State regulation has strengthened the pillage of natural resources through strong mafia-like nexus between the State and private capital (Chapter 4, Changalpet). – States are, fundamentally, patriarchal States. The limited attention in public policies to social reproduction issues reflects the deeply rooted structural bias inherent in capitalist societies that view women’s work as a service to the community rather than labour. As feminist analysis has long shown, public policies are often paternalistic and informed by a gendered worldview. As such, they reaffirm the hierarchies in the organization of (re)productive activities that characterize capitalist societies and sustain existing gender norms. The case studies presented here are no exception and, if changes are not brought about by feminist organizations such as in Argentina or Brazil, public policies strengthen further these maternalistic approaches. Even progressive governments have shown these productive and patriarchal biases, clientelist logics, co-optation and alliances with corporative interests. However, the political changes observed in all the countries where our case studies are based, all but Argentina governed now (early 2020) by conservative governments, have a negative impact on the SE initiatives, due to the disappearance of subsidies and social protection measures. In these contradictory and complex scenarios, the relationships of the analysed initiatives with the State are of permanent tension and negotiation, including in the case of governments that have been considered progressive. While one can observe effervescent initiatives that are bubbling up and multiplying in autonomous and creative ways, the lack of State support and the productive bias in the conceptualization of SE may let them be as fragile as soap bubbles. What is clear is that State’s co-responsibility in the provision of all services, means and infrastructures that are necessary for social reproduction is not being fulfilled (Salazar et al., 2012). Claims to the State to accomplish these responsibilities should be pursued, as these should not rest on families, associations, nor

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SE initiatives alone without due recognition and reward. At the same time, some public policies, in their attempts to scaling up SE initiatives, run permanently the risk of co-optation and exploitation, fading away or wearing out, ultimately losing their raison d’être. When initiatives manage to withstand the test of time, staying true to their original goals is a daily struggle. The evolution of the Peruvian kitchens (Anderson, 2015) and Indian and Kenyan Self-Help-Groups (Johnson, 2015; Sudarshan, 2015) reveal striking similarities, characterized by collaboration, confrontation and co-optation by different entities or networks, be they public authorities, political parties or religious entities. Our conclusions suggest that the pathways out of fragility and to amplify the movement rest on the connexions of these multiple initiatives, leaving them with autonomy that might be reinforced by alliances with governmental or non-governmental organizations, as long as they are not co-opted by them. This needs political environments that allow the constitution of networks and discursive fields to sustain the confluence of dispersed initiatives, and the recognition of the need to reorganize social reproduction. Feminist and solidarity NGOs can be nodal points (Alvarez, 2009) through which the dispersed fields become and remain articulated. Subaltern women in these collective practices are constituting themselves as subjects of history, illustrating the power of the powerless, although these processes might be considered insignificant or ephemeral. In this process, they are contributing to reframing the meaning of work, constructing solidarity-driven social relationships and combatting their subordination. They are building spaces of resistance to financialized capitalism and its devastating effects on the environment, the bodies, the territories, the social fabric, economy and politics. These are spaces where social relations of reproduction may be questioned in ways that do not reproduce gender, class, caste and race inequalities. Even if they are not successful in their attempts to change the economy and the politics, even if they encounter multiple resistances, if their trajectories are chaotic and their results are sometimes ambivalent, these spaces constitute paths to unlock imaginaries. They are valued experiences, where the powerless consolidate and extend their spaces of resistance, where gender may be questioned and where social reproduction can be reframed, reorganized and revalued.

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References Alvarez, S. (2009). Beyond NGO-ization? Reflections from Latin America. Development, 52(2),175–184. Anderson J. (2015). Missed opportunities, mixed messages and lessons learned: Collective kitchens in marginal urban communities in Peru. In I. Ch. Verschuur, I. Guérin, I. Hillenkamp (Eds.), Une économie solidaire peutelle être féministe ? Homo oeconomicus, mulier solidaria (pp. , 221–242). L’Harmattan. Chatterjee, M. (2015). Organising social protection through solidarity of women workers: Experiences of the Self-Employed Women’s Association, SEWA in India. In Ch. Verschuur, I. Guérin, & I. Hillenkamp (Eds.), Une économie solidaire peut-elle être féministe ? Homo oeconomicus, mulier solidaria (pp. 243–256). L’Harmattan. Destremau B., & Georges, I. (2017). Le care, nouvelle morale du capitalisme. Assistance et police des familles en Amérique latine. Karthala. Escobar A. (2008). Territories of difference: Place, movements, life, redes. Duke University Press. Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text, 25(26), 56–80. Guérin I., Hersent, M., & Fraisse, L. (2011). Femmes, économie et développement, Entre résistance et justice sociale. Erès/IRD. Habermas, J. (1997). Droits et démocratie. Gallimard. Hainard, F., & Verschuur, Ch. (2005). Mouvements de quartier et environnements urbains. La prise de pouvoir des femmes dans les pays du Sud et de l’Est. Karthala—ENDA. Johnson S. (2015). Exploring conceptions of the social and solidarity economy: informal financial groups in Kenya In Ch. Verschuur, I. Guérin, I. Hillenkamp (Eds.), Une économie solidaire peut-elle être féministe ? Homo oeconomicus, mulier solidaria (pp. 95–123). L’Harmattan. Kabeer, N., Sudarshan, R., & Millward, K. (Eds.). (2013). Organising women workers in the informal economy. Zed Books. Narayan, U. (1997). Dislocating cultures. Identities, traditions and third-world feminism. Routledge. Salazar C., Sostres F., Wanderley F., & Farah, I. (2012). Cuaderno del Cuidado. Integrando los Derechos de las Mujeres y la Infancia. La Paz, Conexión, CIDES-UMSA. Sudarshan, R. (2015). Organising, gender, and solidarity: Some reflections on Indian experiences. In Ch. Verschuur, I. Guérin, & I. Hillenkamp (Eds.), Une économie solidaire peut-elle être féministe ? Homo oeconomicus, mulier solidaria (pp. 123–138). L’Harmattan. Thara, K. (Forthcoming). In search of home: Citizenship, law and the politics of the poor (under peer review with the Cambridge University Press). Tilly, L. (1990). Genre, histoire des femmes et histoire sociale. Genèses. 148–166.

CHAPTER 12

Afterword: The Cross-Fertilization Between Feminism and the Solidarity Economy Jean-Louis Laville

Today there is an international infatuation with a grouping most often called the social and solidarity economy, evidenced by the fact that, since the start of the twenty-first century, more than thirty countries on different continents have adopted public policies or laws in this area. Of course, there are numerous ambiguities attached to this institutionalization, but all the same it represents a change in relation to the debates focused in the twentieth century on the respective importance of the market and the state. This at least partial recognition has been made possible by the existence of non-capitalist enterprises and organizations with the status of associations, cooperatives or mutuals. These have been brought together under a single label—that of the social

J.-L. Laville (B) Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM), Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] Collège d’études mondiales - Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme (FMSH), Paris, France © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1_12

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economy—because they adopt a number of common rules: the limitation of profit-making, the constitution of a sustainably collective capital, equality of the vote among members. This set of rules was challenged by a proliferation of civil-society initiatives that appeared at the end of the twentieth century, emerging first of all in South America and in Europe and then elsewhere under the name “solidarity economy”. Critical feminisms, in particular materialist ones, share with the social and solidarity economy (SSE) the key idea that domination is exercised largely through the dominant economic model. This observation is even more pertinent today with neoliberalism, which—as theorists have clearly identified—gives primacy to the principle of competition even if this means moving towards a “limited democracy” (Hayek, 1983). Furthermore, numerous social and environmental demands have been rejected on the basis that they would run contrary to the economic laws to which “it is necessary to adapt” (Stiegler, 2019). Once we recognize the radicalization induced by neoliberalism, we can see that it is the very future of democracy that is under threat if we do not deconstruct orthodox representations of the economy. It has fallen to feminist approaches to economics to address this question and highlight the hierarchization inherent to the “capital-centric” imaginary that valorizes market production to the detriment of social reproduction, which encompasses the activities of caring for others and domestic work. Studies that consider the work done by women within the household have demonstrated its importance. As an equally undervalued economic form, the social and solidarity economy should thus logically—we might suppose—come together with feminism to assert the complexity of real economic practices against the homogenizing and totalizing discourse of generalized competition. But there remains a distinct lack of mutual understanding between the two. The first part of this contribution will go over the reasons for this mutual ignorance. This will enable us, in the second part, to develop an integrated theory that both takes advantage of their complementarities and envisages a new dialogue between South and North in order to do so.

The Reasons for Mutual Ignorance The first reason impeding the convergence of critical feminisms with the social and solidarity economy dates back to the second nineteenth century, to take up Hobsbawm’s expression (1978, 1980) which contrasts

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this era “of capital and empires” with a first nineteenth century, “the era of revolutions". This reason resides in the very genesis of what will become the theories of social movements and of the social economy, respectively. Separate Theories In this second nineteenth century, the worker’s movement was considered the central social movement that would unite those struggles capable of overcoming capitalist power. After the dissension of the First International, the popular Marxism that took hold following the Second and Third Internationals—under the impetus of Engels, who sought to found a scientific socialism—was largely characterized by the combination of an economic determinism and a political fetishism. Its economic determinism lay in an evolutionist perspective that distinguished successive historical phases, synonymous with human and civilizational progress. In this account, the revolution appears as inevitable from the moment when the development of the productive forces proves sufficient—and it is supposed to open onto a final stage of human progress. Economic determinism and political fetishism are thus in league with one another. The centralization of the workers’ movement is supposed to increase the efficacy of mass organization, and taking hold of state power is supposed launch a liberation as sudden as it is definitive through the structural modifications it enables. This messianism holds up the goal of a new society and thus logically devalues all attempts prior to this great disruption, just as it eludes democratic conflict and compromise. During the same period, social economy crystallized separately around another variant of economic determinism—“enterprisism”. This was characterized by the belief in non-capitalist enterprises supposedly capable of spreading by example. The cooperative model was held up as the principal vehicle of transformation, but at the cost of neglecting the necessity of political mediation. As such, feminist critiques of capitalism, such as those of Federici (2012), can be expanded to social economy, which endorses a productivism fed by a growth in enterprise as the sole vehicle for social change. This conception maintains the illusion that the multiplication of cooperatives will be enough to generate the desired transformation in relations of production, which casts into the shadows all those relations that belong to the domestic sphere. Finally, social economy enterprises—which are different to begin with—prove incapable of modifying the system; what we see is more their gradual normalization. They

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are subject to the phenomenon of institutional isomorphism, which leads them increasingly to resemble the capitalist enterprises with which they are in competition in the same field. Unlike social movements, social economy restricts the political dimension to matters pertaining to the internal organization of enterprises. Recent Developments The mutual ignorance of social movements and social economy is thus an old one. But it also has more recent causes. In the second half of the twentieth century, the new social movements sought to do away with the economic determinism that had so hobbled the workers’ movement. The desire to distinguish themselves from the previous economism led to what observers have called a cultural turn— or, in other words, to focus on demands related to identity. There is thus the risk—and this is the concern raised by Fraser (2015) about the Western feminist movement—of culturalism taking root. The emphasis on identity-based dimensions may drift, she says, towards “dangerous liaisons” (Eisenstein, 2005) between the feminist movement and the new capitalism. Feminism may abandon questions of inequality and thus be instrumentalized by this “new spirit of capitalism” (Boltanski and Chiappelo, 1999), which takes up the discourse of authenticity, of respect for differences and of self-realization. It may also turn away from economic questions on the basis that, while they structured the contestations of yesterday, they are now obsolete. While analyses of social movements seem for this reason to neglect the economy as a whole, the social economy specifically is understood with reference to the emergence of solidarity initiatives, arising for some actors in these movements who would like to enrich their repertoire of action by establishing concrete initiatives in their everyday lives. This effervescence calls for negotiation with the authorities, and the outlines of a strategic compromise emerge with the aim of strengthening this negotiation: the social and solidarity economy approach proposes that the most established entities of the social economy be grouped together with the most contestatory tendencies of the solidarity economy. But while this compromise is empirically useful, it cannot remove all trace of the theoretical differences. On this level—that of academic research—we have just mentioned the inadequacy of the conception of social economy caught up in enterprisism, which leads it to advocate the success of cooperatives on the market,

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resulting in fact in the tendency of these organizations to become normalized. But we must also note that a particular form of solidarity economy approach has aligned itself with the expansion of the social economy. We see this with Paul Singer in Brazil, who—in his first books, as well as when he became Secretary of State—advocated a version of the solidarity economy composed mostly of cooperatives characterized not only by their special status but also by the implementation of internal selfmanagement. This version was supported by the unions and consolidated through employee takeovers of companies during capitalist restructurings. The mutual ignorance of the recent period thus results from the culturalism of some Western feminisms centred on differences and identities and little concerned by economic questions, on the one hand, and the persistence of a productivist imaginary in numerous representations of the social and solidarity economy, on the other. This imaginary is, however, undermined by the multiplicity of actual practices and it is to the credit of Singer and his team to have embraced very different collectives (communities of descendants of slaves called quilombolas , coco farmers, rubber workers, artisanal fishermen, shellfish collectors and myriad craftspeople, embroiderers, beekeepers, growers of medicinal plants, …). During 15 years, Singer and his team in the Ministry for the Solidarity Economy in the Brazilian federal government were able to remain open to all these variants of a popular economy— particularly those that came from the least industrialized regions of Brazil.

From Mutual Ignorance to a Shared Endeavour But this diversification of initiatives has too often been considered only at the margins of public policy, which has remained primarily focussed on cooperatives—for example those that came out of the takeovers of industrial companies by their workers. It is necessary to go further, however: diversification also calls for a theoretical reformulation of the solidarity economy—one that leaves the orbit of social economy. This can be done with the epistemologies of the South, which recommend a sociology of absences and emergences. The sociology of absences “aims to show that what does not exist is actually actively produced as non-existent, that is to say, as an unbelievable alternative to what exists” (Santos, 2012, p. 52). Non-existence takes the form of what is ignored, taken as backward, inferior, local and particular, unproductive and infertile. When they are made

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visible, some phenomena—such as the domestic work of women—can then be integrated into thinking about what is at stake in a whole series of emerging initiatives. Complementary to sociologies of absences, the sociology of emergences “consists in replacing the emptiness of the future according to linear time (an emptiness that may be all or nothing) by a future of plural and concrete possibilities, utopian and realist at one time” (p. 54). It “enlarges the present by adding to the existing reality the possibilities and future expectations it contains” (p. 56). The aim is to highlight the emancipatory traits of alternatives so as to strengthen their visibility and credibility. Without renouncing rigorous and critical analysis, it seeks to consolidate initiatives rather than undermining their potential, as is usual when experiments are condemned on the grounds of their contamination by the dominant system. From this perspective, we may posit a congruence between feminism and the solidarity economy when they are both embedded in epistemologies of the south—that is, when we talk about the aspects of reality that have been invisibilized so we can then better identify the significance of current emergences. The two conceptualizations can thus offer another way of envisaging the economy and politics while critiquing their separation, which is too readily endorsed by western-centric approaches. Rethinking the Economy The orthodox conception of the economy is centred on the creation of market-based wealth. This has been challenged neither by marxists nor by developmentalists. They, like those who champion the social economy and new social movements, have supported the productivist conception of the economy; either in order to adhere to this in the case of the former two or to give priority to struggles conducted outside the economy in the case of the latter two. Only the social-democratic version of marxism has managed to accept that in addition there exists a non-market economy arising from state redistribution that corrects the undesirable effects of the market dynamic, thus legitimizing the interventions of the welfare state. But the activity corresponding to the non-monetary economy has been hidden. This is a sign of our neglect of the roles played by slavery and domestic activities in an international division of labour established at the end of the seventeenth century—one that enabled the production of important commodities for the Industrial Revolution—such as cotton, sugar, tobacco, tea—and all food-producing cultures. Smith omitted this

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non-remunerated work among the reasons he gave for the wealth of nations, and Marx barely analysed their significance. The modern economy was also constructed on the ignorance of the process of reproducing life, in particular that other form of unpaid work, care—considered by Fisher and Tronto (1990) “as a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can lie in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web” (1990, 40). This definition encompasses a social ecology (health) and an environmental ecology (protection of nature) (Larrère, 2017, 32). It suggests that the negation of these two aspects of reproduction, like their separation, has its roots in the notion specific to modernity that the thinking subject is externally positioned in relation to his body; in relation to others, since he is able to make decisions autonomously without moving through any kind of intersubjectivity; and in relation to nature, whose laws he must establish in order to tame and discipline it. Knowledge through reason thus becomes synonymous with mastery and omnipotence. Taking up the discussion of care, economists, like Carrasco, Ferber and Nelson, Folbre, and philosopher, Larrère, have criticized this dominant view, which neglects the activities of provisioning whose end is not gain but rather the preservation of life and the concern for well-being. On the contrary, they have asserted that, to reintegrate the dimensions of race and gender into the economy, it is crucial to consider all forms of production—those that make room for monetary flows as well as those that occur through non-monetary flows—and “to reinsert production into reproduction” (Larrère, op. cit., 31). The renewed perspective on the economy thus initiated can be consolidated by setting out the plurality of economic principles as formulated by Polanyi (2011): these refute the idea that the economy is solely formal, that is, based on calculations of utility by each participant; they claim that the economy can be understood in a substantive way, that is, as centred on the satisfaction of needs through social interactions whose nature is circumscribed by institutionalized processes. According to them, we can add to the market and to redistribution—which, as noted above, have shaped the institutional framework of the twentieth century through the opposition and synergy between market and state—the principles of reciprocity and of householding. Reciprocity is a specific mode of interdependence of activities and the use of resources that establishes a

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deliberate complementarity between persons and groups (Servet, 2013, 193). Householding ensures the production and sharing of resources with a view to satisfying the needs of a closed—but not necessarily autarkic— group (Hillenkamp, 2013, 222). These two principles have been hidden precisely because they exist largely in the non-monetary economy. By combining feminist and Polanyian insights, we thus see that the official story about the economy is truncated because it rests on the absences of the non-monetary economy. These include both production activities extorted through violence in the case of slavery, and reproduction activities that rely strongly on reciprocity and householding. Rethinking the Political Echoing economic reductionism—which rejects all but the formal economy—is political reductionism. This consists in restricting the political domain to the mechanism of elections, which enable the selection of representatives who exercise the role of political authorities benefitting from a monopoly over legitimate violence in democracy, according to Weber. Now, authors such as Arendt and Habermas argue that politics cannot be limited to delegation; it is also the means by which societies are able to establish rules of living together—and this depends on a public sphere in which modes of deliberation and decision-making based on citizen engagement can be carried out. Just as the solely productivist view of the economy ignores some of its components, our view of democracy is amputated when it neglects the public sphere. This concept is important: it allows us to move “beyond certain confusions that have harmed many progressive social movements and political theories associated with them” for example, this “longstanding [inability] of the socialist and marxist tradition’s dominant tendency to fully recognise the importance of the distinction between state apparatus, on the one hand, and public arenas for the expression and association of citizens, on the other” (Fraser, 2005, 108). Habermas’ contribution, decisive for the concept of the public sphere, deserves to be clarified because it has been elaborated several times. The first in 1962—largely influenced by Arendt—is pessimistic: in becoming permeable to the private domain, the bourgeois public sphere has lost its critical substance and become susceptible to manipulation (Habermas, 1997 [1962], 186) through media that lead to its vassalization. His conceptual reformulation in 1990 (Habermas, 1997 [1990],

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I–X) was prompted both by commentaries on his work and by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The historiography of the nineteenth century (Calhoun, 1992) and the popular resistance at the end of the twentieth century led to a positive re-evaluation of the power of civil society. Habermas recognized the need to pluralize his approach and to distinguish among those public spheres subject to integration into the systems and those that re-emerge as autonomous public spheres. Honneth (2013) suggests that their roots can be found in denials of recognition, which attack democratic principles and drive engagement in collective action. Rather than anchoring the communicational dimension in language alone, he links it back to struggles against injustice and disrespect. For his part, Negt (2007) moves from the identification of plural public spheres to study oppositions between bourgeois spheres and plebeian or proletarian spheres. It is while outlining post-bourgeois public spheres that Habermas encounters associations. In order for intersubjective solidarity to recover its own regulatory power, faced with the economy and the state, it is necessary—Habermas says—to consider “the associations around which autonomous public spheres can crystallise” (Habermas, 1997, p. XXXII). Associations thus cannot, from a theoretical and practical point of view, be likened to mere private organizations. As detailed studies of associations (Laville & Sainsaulieu, 2018) show, they take on a political dimension. They end up addressing questions of meaning and of the legitimacy of collective action during discussions that take place within them; and they can be structured so as to transform an institutional framework even if it is unfavourable to them. If “society cannot be reduced to a simple amorphous mass”, then this is thanks to this associative fabric which forms the substrate “of this plural public, so to speak, that emerges from the private sphere, constituted of citizens who seek to give public interpretations to their experiences and to their social interests and who exercise influence on the institutionalised formation of opinion and will” (Habermas, 1997, 394). It is this phenomenon that is central to eco-feminist mobilizations in particular, which—as Larrère (2017) says—“bring private life into public”. However, according to Fraser, this publicization cannot come about unless people who previously had no access to public speaking can come together in order to consolidate their voice through learning among a group of peers, which the presence of protagonists with higher social status and more accustomed to speaking out risks preventing. For

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Fraser, the movements of African-Americans and women demonstrate this because they function “as spaces of withdrawal and regroupment [but also] as bases and training grounds for agitational activities” (1990, 68). She also describes such collectives as subaltern counter-publics in order to emphasize how they must form separately in order first to strengthen their positions before pitting these against those of other groups better endowed with recognized knowledge. With this in mind, Fraser clarifies the ways in which the autonomous public spheres she is talking about—which emerge by making public certain previously undiscussed questions—appear. Rethinking the Mediations Between the Economy and Politics Reviewing economic and political absences provides arguments that allow us to better grasp the specificity of emergences collected under the label solidarity economy, many of which come out of women’s initiatives. In order to clearly identify their importance, we must first recover the forgotten memory of realities that have been invisibilized. It then becomes possible, supported by this contestation of the dominant history, to conduct research in the present that does not retreat into reductionisms but rather remains open to both economic and political plurality. This is how a link can be established between the sociology of absences and emergences, and how the perspective of the epistemologies of the South leads to the methodological decision to carry out two phases of work: first, the task of re-reading the past, and second, a detailed description of current initiatives. This “strong” description must be coupled with”a weak theory” according to Gibson-Graham’s provocative recommendations—in other words, we should detail the particularities of practices without masking them with preconceived conceptualizations. If we respect this approach, which sheds light on the stories of emergences by uncovering the extent of preceding absences, the specificities of solidarity-based initiatives will become clear, as long as we consider the two spheres—the economy and politics—together, along with their interactions. Addressing private questions in public helps shift from inegalitarian to more egalitarian ways of implementing the economic principles of householding and reciprocity. Debates conducted among groups of women generate challenges to the forms of domination exercised in the domestic

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sphere and favour a reorientation of householding towards the renegotiation of gender roles (Hillenkamp, 2019; Hillenkamp & Nobre, 2018). Comparable developments may bear on reciprocity traditionally anchored in inherited allegiances. Democracy allows us to move beyond communities we are born into; it makes it possible to join communities we have chosen—communities involving a reciprocity in which freedom of allegiance can go hand-in-hand with equality among willing participants. The principles of householding and reciprocity can take on very diverse guises: they may be hierarchical or egalitarian. Here we come up against the ambivalences of modernity, which generates unprecedented discrimination—as we noted earlier—but also carries emancipatory potentialities. This “Janus face of Modernity”, to use Puleo’s term (2017), necessitates a dual strategy: fighting against “the new forms of oppression and exploitation” that it gives rise to, and simultaneously demanding fulfilment of the “ideals of liberty and equality that it promotes”. Even if these are not realized, subaltern groups can demand them so as to rail against the inequalities and exclusions that see them trampled over, as Lefort remarks. This is what they do when they structure themselves as counter-publics, Fraser adds. In doing so, Fraser clearly identifies that there are two facets to these counter-publics: one centred on mutual aid, the other on struggle. Yet she remains focused on the agonistic register, in line with Western critical theory. This is why it is important to expand our focus to make room for solidarity-based public spheres in the proximity services field (Laville & Nyssens, 2000)—spheres more dedicated to attempts to improve daily life and less focused on discursive opposition to the system. By identifying such spheres, studies on the solidarity economy converge with feminisms from the South fighting against the elitism of a feminism from the North obsessed by making political demands. In their view the women of the South are not victims as their sisters in the North believe, but they are involved in more praxeological associations and their resistance is engaged in asserting the value of their own lived experience, as well as in using their voice to facilitate emancipation (Mohanty, 1988). It is thus also a change in perspective that enables us to notice a politics more open to everyday concerns—one that involves the development of economic activities like in the people’s canteens in South America and West Africa, the local food networks in Senegal, the collective kitchens in Peru, the Women’s Self Employment Association in India, etc. (Guérin et. al., 2019). Integrating such initiatives into the category of transformative

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activities, and placing them at the heart of analysis, we must start from the observation that associations supporting popular public spheres— in contrast to bourgeois public spheres—address economic questions because they relate to those problems that are felt to be the most urgent.

Conclusion In adhering to a sociology of absences, this contribution has sought to highlight the consequences of invisibilizing social reproduction in economics and the public sphere in politics. Beyond those mentioned throughout the text, a final invisibilization remains: that of developing a Promethean view of social change obsessed both by class struggle within sites of production and by taking state power. It belongs to a paradigm of uprooting, in the sense that transformation is seen as a rupture that facilitates the dawn of a new man, all-powerful and self-sufficient (Azam, 2016, 293). In this framework, emancipation is an exit from a prior state of dependence, of heteronomy, and an arrival at a final state of full and complete self-fulfilment, that of a perfect wholeness, of an entirely fulfilled essence. The sociology of emergences gives us the means to escape this paradigm. Rather than remaining obsessed by this “man finally returned to himself”, taking a detour via the detailed description of feminist initiatives such as those of the solidarity economy leads us to think about democracy and fraternity as “present here and now” (Nancy, op. cit.) as long as emancipation and social protection are considered together. We can rejoin Fraser here; building on the double movement of commodification and social protection highlighted by Polanyi, she suggests a triple movement by introducing a third term, emancipation. Taking into account those dangerous liaisons mentioned above between movements that define themselves as cultural and commodification, she recommends “a new alliance between social protection and emancipation”. This intuition should be extended by considering solidarity-based initiatives, because they are trying to construct this alliance. Our task is not to pin an economism or a culturalism onto these initiatives, but rather to decipher their ambiguities between innovation and normalization. If we move in this direction, then separations are replaced with hybridizations between actors’ logics, the paradigm of uprooting is substituted by the paradigm of transition, which pushes us towards a research programme that converges

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with “transformative social innovations” and the “Multi-Level Perspective on Sustainability Transitions” (Fossati et al., 2019). This focus split between transformative innovations and the transition leads us to underline the proposition that emerges from the feminist and Polanyian contributions to understanding the solidarity economy: it consists in linking together the critical approach and possibilism. Two separate worlds of research have formed: one around social movements that denounce the multiple forms of domination and reproduction yet which can only envisage these being overcome through purely demandmaking action, the other asserting the value of the micro-assemblages emerging from economic initiatives. These two worlds are insufficient, the first because it condemns all emergences with an economic dimension and thus ends up in a radical critique of the existing system but without any concrete possibility of moving beyond it; the second because it ignores the formatting of local economic action by the structures pressing down on it. Both the solidarity economy seen from a Polanyian perspective and critical feminisms converge towards the recommendation formulated by Hirschman (1971, 1986, 1995) that possibilism should be added to critique (Laville, 2011)—a possibilism that takes account of the multi-dimensionality of concrete activities, adopting repertoires that are simultaneously political, cultural, economic, environmental, etc. The plea for another system cannot argue from the position of a superior rationality, but must more modestly be conducted on the basis of an “order of populations and people” (Peemans, 2002) as well as better information about the interactions between politics and economics. This proposal has been taken up with force in the contribution already cited by Guérin, Hillenkamp and Verschuur, enriched by a focus on significant feminist points of view in solidarity-based initiatives. It encourages a transdisciplinary research programme based on “a critical and possibilist analysis” that continues to analyse “the solidarity economy through the prism of gender” (2019).

References Azam, G. (2016). Menace de chaos écologique et projets d’émancipation. In J.L. Laville & J. L. Coraggio (Eds.), Les gauches du XXI e siècle. Un dialogue Nord-Sud. Le Bord de l’eau. Boltanski, L., & Chiappelo, E. (1999). Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme. Gallimard.

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Author Index

A Agarwal, B., 94 Anderson, J., 34, 40, 43, 252

B Benería, L., 4, 34, 38, 39 Bisilliat, J., 34

C Cattani, A.D., 36 Charlier, S., 34 Chatterjee, M., 34, 248, 250 Combes, D., 39 Cook, S., 33 Coraggio, J.-L., 32, 33, 180 Cunha E., 32

D Degavre, F., 34, 37, 45, 267 Delphy, Ch., 39, 213 Destremau, B., 36, 40, 250

Devreux, A.-M., 39

E Eme, B., 32, 33, 146 Escobar, A., 245 Esquivel, V., 4, 39, 181, 182

F Farah, I., 3, 122, 124 Federici, S., 39, 42, 46, 120, 121, 213, 257 Fournier, M., 3, 34 Fraisse, L., 32, 49, 250 França Filho, G., 32 Fraser, N., 40, 89, 98, 122, 197, 198, 247, 258, 262–266

G Gaiger, L.I., 33 Gibson-Graham, J.K., 33, 46, 55, 264

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1

271

272

AUTHOR INDEX

Guérin, I., 3, 32, 33, 49, 88, 98, 100, 146, 250, 265, 267 Guétat-Bernard, H., 34 H Habermas, J., 49, 105, 234, 247, 262, 263 Hainard, F., 34, 250 Hart, K., 33 Heintz, J., 33 Herrero, Y., 43 Hersent, M., 32, 34, 49, 55, 250 Hillenkamp, I., 3, 32–34, 37–39, 49, 88, 136, 137, 262, 265, 267 Hirschman, A., 36, 88, 114, 267 K Kabeer, N., 33, 40, 41, 55, 66, 83, 100, 154, 207, 242, 248 L Laville, J.-L., 4, 32, 33, 35, 37, 182, 263, 265, 267 Lemaître, A., 32 León, M., 34 M Meillassoux, C., 39 Millward, K., 32 Mohanty, Ch., 40, 99, 191, 192, 265 Molyneux, M., 40, 53, 113 N Narayan, U., 51, 246

Nobre, M., 3, 34, 222, 265

P Polanyi, K., 35, 38, 39, 83, 261, 266

R Rodríguez Garavito, C., 36

S Sassen, S., 65 Saussey, M., 34 Servet, J.-M., 32, 39, 262 Singer, P., 32, 33, 259 Sostres, F., 3 Sousa Santos de, B., 36, 37, 45, 88, 114 Sudarshan, R., 33, 34, 41, 66, 252

U Utting, P., 33, 146

V Verschuur, C., 3, 33, 34, 36, 39, 40, 49, 88, 89, 250, 265, 267 Viveros Vigoya, M., 39

W Wanderley, F., 4, 32, 124, 137, 140

Y Ypeij, A., 34

Subject Index

A Agriculture, 31, 41, 42, 89, 93, 96, 102, 113, 114, 120, 121, 124, 125, 129, 136, 137, 217, 218, 222, 223, 225, 240 Agro-ecological movement, 248 Agroecology, 6, 34, 44, 212, 213, 215, 220–224, 226, 228, 230, 232–234, 246 Alliance, 53, 54, 100, 101, 106, 110, 111, 114, 135, 213, 219, 221, 223, 224, 232, 233, 242, 244, 245, 247–249, 251, 252, 266 Alternative, 2, 32–34, 36, 46, 55, 66, 80, 81, 85, 92, 105, 106, 112, 139, 140, 150–152, 180, 184, 207, 217, 222, 223, 234, 238, 240, 241, 249, 259, 260 Articulation, 38, 41, 102, 113, 140, 147, 169, 173, 213, 238, 239, 242, 249 Association, 33, 41, 42, 44, 50–52, 90, 120–124, 126–133, 136,

137, 139–141, 148, 149, 156, 170, 171, 180, 188, 194–201, 208, 214, 215, 217, 219, 231, 239, 242, 243, 245, 246, 250, 251, 255, 262, 263, 265, 266 Autonomy, 39, 47, 53, 82, 112, 129, 134, 135, 156, 160, 161, 170, 177, 178, 182, 183, 202–206, 212, 233, 238, 250, 252 B Body, 6, 33, 49, 65, 68, 82, 90, 112, 122, 127, 130, 132, 221, 247, 252, 261 Body-territory, 252 C Capital, 33, 43, 45, 46, 106, 145, 184, 191, 194, 197–199, 202, 207, 256, 257 private capital, 43, 44, 89, 90, 109, 110, 114, 251

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1

273

274

SUBJECT INDEX

Capitalism, 2, 36, 38, 42, 43, 55, 65, 89, 93, 98, 110, 181, 184, 196, 199, 207, 237, 239, 240, 244, 249, 252, 257, 258 Care, 5, 31, 34, 42, 45–48, 50, 52, 53, 69–71, 77, 84, 85, 97, 126–128, 131, 134, 135, 141, 147, 152, 161, 162, 164, 165, 169–185, 190, 204, 205, 207, 216, 231, 238, 241, 243, 244, 246, 250 Caste, 36, 39, 45, 47, 51, 52, 55, 65–67, 70, 72, 78–80, 89, 90, 92, 99, 100, 102–104, 107, 108, 112, 113, 147, 160, 162, 163, 189, 191, 194, 196–198, 203, 208, 241, 245, 246, 252 Class, 3, 36, 39, 45, 50–52, 55, 65, 67–71, 83, 84, 89, 92, 102, 103, 105, 107, 108, 149, 152, 159, 163, 181, 183, 184, 202, 207, 228, 241, 246, 252, 266 Collective, 3–5, 34, 35, 37, 40–43, 45–47, 49, 50, 52, 53, 69–71, 82, 88, 91, 97, 101, 102, 107, 108, 112, 120, 123, 128–132, 134, 139, 141, 146–148, 150, 151, 157, 158, 163, 165, 170–172, 174–179, 181, 184, 188, 193, 197–199, 206–208, 212, 213, 217, 226, 229, 231, 232, 234, 238, 241–249, 252, 256, 259, 263–265 Colonial, 184, 211, 215 Commercialization, 217 Common, 6, 33, 39, 40, 42, 45, 46, 54, 88, 95–100, 104, 108, 113, 120, 129, 135, 138, 139, 141, 176, 180, 232–234, 239, 244, 246, 249, 251, 256 Communalization, 42, 241

Community, 32–34, 39, 40, 42, 43, 46, 50, 66, 68, 69, 84, 89, 91, 99, 120–127, 129, 132–135, 137–139, 141, 147, 156, 160–165, 169–180, 182–184, 189, 190, 194, 196, 198, 201, 204, 205, 214–221, 225–227, 231–234, 238, 239, 242, 245, 246, 250, 251, 259, 265 Community centre/community care centre, 42, 45, 46, 52, 170, 173, 174, 176, 178, 183, 243 Consumption, 2, 33, 44, 65, 82, 85, 194, 202, 204, 212, 213, 218, 219, 227, 228, 230, 246 Crisis, 1, 2, 33, 83, 84, 112, 172, 173, 176, 192, 198, 212, 214, 216, 232, 237–240, 245 D Dalit, 72, 79, 80, 87–90, 92, 94, 95, 99–105, 107, 108, 112–114, 164, 240, 246 Deliberation, 50, 51, 71, 105, 122, 163, 180, 198, 199, 238, 247, 262 debate, 50, 51, 105 dialogue, 50 Democracy, 2, 32, 40, 47, 48, 55, 109, 175, 180, 238, 241, 247, 256, 262, 265, 266 antidemocratic, 89 democratization, 177 Development, 2–4, 6, 32, 33, 40, 52, 82, 88, 92, 102, 106, 111, 120, 123, 131, 135, 136, 141, 142, 150, 151, 153–159, 164, 173, 174, 177, 195, 196, 201, 212, 213, 215, 220, 223–225, 229, 231, 232, 234, 240, 257, 265 crisis, 2, 240 sustainable, 52, 92

SUBJECT INDEX

unequal, 240 Discrimination, 67, 95, 113, 219, 224, 231, 265 Domestic/domesticity, 34, 38, 39, 41, 44–48, 50, 51, 55, 66–72, 74–78, 81, 83–85, 94, 102, 108, 112, 121, 126, 127, 130, 131, 134, 145–148, 152–164, 166, 176–181, 188–191, 205, 213, 219, 220, 238–242, 244, 247, 249, 257, 260, 264 Domestic work, 43, 44, 46, 68, 71, 84, 105, 123, 147, 149, 152–154, 161, 176, 204, 205, 220, 230, 256, 260 reproductive work, 204 Domination, 33, 35, 37, 256, 264, 267 E Economics, 2, 4, 6, 31, 32, 35–40, 44–46, 48, 52, 54, 55, 65, 66, 77, 83, 92, 98, 111, 112, 120–123, 130–133, 136, 137, 139–141, 146, 148–152, 154, 155, 158, 160, 161, 174, 175, 178, 182, 184, 191, 197, 199, 206, 212, 213, 216, 218, 219, 222, 230–234, 240, 241, 243, 250, 256–259, 261, 262, 264–267 Emancipation, 37, 39, 40, 107, 265, 266 Emotion, 106, 107, 114, 247 Employment, 67, 71, 73, 74, 82, 83, 94, 96, 112, 125, 140, 145, 147–149, 154, 157, 161, 162, 175, 193, 195, 201, 206, 265 Empowerment, 37, 40, 92, 97, 114, 157, 160, 170, 177–180, 243 Environment, 2, 34, 109, 226, 242, 245, 252, 261

275

Environmental care, 6, 238 Epistemology, 5, 36, 37, 54, 88, 259, 260, 264 Equality, 3, 40, 47, 48, 52, 55, 66, 79, 80, 105, 122, 141, 151, 158, 175, 182, 184, 238, 241, 243, 256, 265 egalitarian, 47, 265 Ethnicity, 36, 113, 147, 245 Exclusion, 72, 156, 163, 238, 265

F Family, 34, 39, 40, 44, 47, 50, 70, 71, 75, 76, 79–81, 84, 85, 89, 94, 96–98, 102, 103, 107, 120–127, 129–131, 133, 134, 137–141, 147, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, 159–163, 165, 166, 169–171, 174, 175, 177–179, 181–183, 189–193, 196, 198, 201, 203–205, 207, 212–215, 217, 219, 221, 227, 228, 230, 232, 233, 239, 240, 242, 244, 251 Farming, 92, 215, 219, 241 family farming, 219, 223, 225, 226, 228, 231, 232, 248 small-scale farming, 92 Femininity, 39, 191, 220, 221 Feminism, 44, 45, 53, 149, 159, 181–183, 227, 233, 256, 258–260, 265, 267 Feminist anthropology, 39 decolonial, 5, 39, 179 ecofeminism, 263 economy, 5, 35, 38, 55, 181, 213, 238, 256, 262 neoliberal, 256 studies, 5, 6, 39, 40, 47, 94, 239, 240, 247

276

SUBJECT INDEX

Feminist movement, 53, 54, 159, 183, 184, 213, 214, 223, 225, 238, 243, 247, 248, 258 Finance/financialization, 2, 31, 85, 114, 203, 212, 233, 237

G Gender discrimination, 95 inequality, 6, 36, 39, 54, 65, 106, 122, 220, 221, 223, 224 parity, 138, 140 policy, 52, 124, 138, 248 Generation, 2, 32, 50, 73, 82, 88–91, 94–96, 99, 100, 104–108, 112, 113, 170, 238 intergenerational, 160 Grass-roots, 3, 66, 67, 69, 76, 80, 83, 120, 133, 135, 159, 170, 172, 181, 185, 238, 239

H Householding, 38, 40, 48, 55, 241, 261, 262, 264, 265

I Indigenous/indigeneity, 124, 132, 133, 135, 137, 215, 217, 225, 245 International labour organization (ILO), 34, 147, 152, 153, 165

L Labour, 32, 39–41, 43–45, 52, 55, 70, 74, 95, 120, 121, 124, 126, 148, 150, 152–156, 158, 161, 162, 165, 176, 177, 179–182, 190, 192, 203, 216, 219, 220, 231, 240, 243, 245, 251, 260

Leader/leadership, 41, 49, 50, 54, 66, 72, 76–80, 90, 91, 100, 102, 105–108, 110–112, 114, 123, 126, 134–138, 158, 160, 173, 196, 214, 226, 230, 233, 250 Lifeworld, 49, 50, 69, 233, 234, 246, 247 M Market/marketing, 33–35, 38–40, 45–48, 55, 83, 92, 98, 120, 121, 125, 128, 130, 139, 146, 154, 158, 165, 170, 176, 179, 188–200, 202–207, 212, 214, 216, 220, 223, 228–230, 233, 234, 239–243, 255, 256, 258, 260, 261 Masculinity, 39, 112, 164, 220 Meaning, 99, 148, 170, 189, 190, 199, 225, 241, 263 meaning of life, 126, 243 meaning of value, 244 meaning of work, 4, 5, 50, 242, 252 Method/methodology, 52, 66, 90, 109, 122, 171, 214, 230, 242, 247 Migration, 42, 121, 123, 125, 172, 240, 245 Motherhood, 231 N Network, 3–5, 39, 44–47, 51–53, 92, 99–101, 104, 109, 114, 127, 130, 138, 141, 149, 158, 163, 169, 171–174, 178–180, 197, 198, 211–213, 215, 222, 227–232, 245, 252, 265 Non-governmental organizations (NGO), 44, 47, 50–52, 82, 88, 90–92, 97, 100–102, 106,

SUBJECT INDEX

108, 110, 111, 123, 129, 130, 135–137, 139–141, 164, 211, 213, 221, 223–226, 229, 232, 242, 248–250, 252 Norms, 38, 49, 53, 91, 94, 98, 104, 112, 134, 138, 149, 155, 165, 181, 184, 191, 193, 199, 205–207, 221, 243, 251

P Patriarchy/patriarchal, 3, 47, 49, 53, 54, 78–80, 85, 90, 101, 107, 110, 146, 149, 155, 156, 163, 165, 184, 191, 206, 207, 226, 238–241, 243, 251 Peasant, 6, 44, 113, 125, 132–138, 216, 222, 240, 246 Peasant unions, 120, 121, 123–125, 127, 128, 132, 133, 136, 137, 140 Plural democracy/democratic plurality, 248 Plural economy, 33, 40, 47 Politics/political/politicization, 2–6, 32, 35, 36, 42, 46, 48, 49, 51–54, 66, 78–80, 83, 88–90, 92, 95, 99–102, 104–111, 114, 120–123, 125, 129, 131–141, 145, 147–151, 153–155, 157, 158, 161, 163–166, 169, 170, 172, 173, 177–179, 182, 184, 195–199, 201, 212, 213, 217–219, 223, 226, 228, 230–234, 238, 240, 243, 246–248, 250–252, 257, 258, 260, 262–267 Possibilism/possibility, 5, 32, 35–39, 53, 96, 105, 122, 128, 130, 131, 135, 139, 140, 165, 177, 183, 208, 234, 246, 247, 260, 267 Poverty, 46, 156, 165, 171, 172, 196

277

Power/powerless, 3, 4, 36, 37, 48, 54, 82, 90, 95, 102, 104, 108, 111, 122, 134, 136, 138, 140, 141, 145, 156, 158, 160, 165, 166, 170, 173, 176, 179, 198, 202, 203, 206, 213, 230, 233, 239, 242, 243, 247, 248, 252, 257, 263, 266 Private, 34, 41, 47–49, 51, 66, 82, 85, 94, 97, 120, 121, 128, 129, 135, 137, 138, 140, 147, 152, 161, 173–177, 189, 192, 195, 196, 200, 225, 247, 262–264 Production, 2, 4, 32, 33, 38, 39, 41, 43–45, 48, 50, 54, 65, 66, 82, 83, 93, 98, 101, 121, 124, 126, 129–131, 137, 140, 145, 147, 163, 182, 191, 192, 206, 207, 212, 213, 216, 217, 219, 221, 222, 224, 227–231, 233, 250, 256, 257, 260–262, 266 Protection, 33, 47, 76, 127, 133, 134, 197, 199, 206, 242, 245, 261 Public policy/public policies/public action/public authorities, 2, 6, 35, 50–52, 66, 74, 75, 81–83, 124, 129, 138–140, 152, 173, 180, 212, 218, 233, 238–240, 242, 248–252, 255, 259 Public procurement/public-buying scheme, 47, 223, 228, 250 Public space, 35, 83, 100, 107, 112, 127, 134, 156, 191 Q Quilombolas , 245, 259 R Race/racist/racism, 3, 36, 39, 55, 239, 241, 252, 261

278

SUBJECT INDEX

Reciprocity, 37–40, 48, 55, 132, 159, 180–182, 232, 241, 261, 262, 264, 265 Redistribution, 31, 38, 40, 47, 48, 55, 66, 84, 122, 132, 177, 181, 197, 198, 208, 241, 242, 260, 261 Reproduction, 6, 34, 41, 43, 45, 55, 147, 170, 177, 181, 184, 190, 191, 201, 212–214, 233, 238, 245, 261, 262, 267 Reproduction of life, 3, 32–34, 39, 43, 45, 48, 146, 171, 180, 184, 185, 226, 230, 239 Resistance, 2, 35, 37, 47, 48, 51, 54, 55, 73, 87, 88, 100, 104, 146, 238, 244, 247, 248, 252, 263, 265 Rural movement, 212, 222–225, 248 S Security, 33, 43, 47, 51, 69, 71, 74, 82, 85, 101, 149–151, 153, 157, 163, 165, 192, 201, 202, 242 Sexual division of work/gendered division of labour, 55, 126, 165, 176, 177, 180–182, 220, 231, 243, 244 Social change, 5, 6, 35, 36, 48, 73, 92, 213, 257, 266 Social movement, 37, 53, 82, 100, 107, 114, 156, 157, 161, 232, 242, 245, 247, 249, 257, 258, 260, 262, 267 Social protection, 51, 53, 74, 75, 128, 129, 141, 151, 153, 238, 242, 250, 251, 266 Social relations capitalist, 39, 83, 242 domestic, 39, 48, 55, 238, 241 of production, 38, 39, 83, 85 of reproduction, 147, 244, 252

Social reproduction, 1–6, 32, 35, 38, 39, 41–50, 52, 54, 55, 66, 83, 87–90, 94, 97–99, 110, 113, 114, 120–124, 126–132, 136, 138–142, 162, 180, 182, 184, 214, 225, 232, 233, 237–243, 245, 249–252, 256, 266 Solidarity, 2, 3, 31, 33, 36, 37, 39, 41, 47, 48, 50, 66, 79, 84, 89, 90, 99, 102, 104, 113, 120, 126, 129–131, 136–139, 142, 145, 147–149, 151, 157–161, 163, 170, 179–184, 197–199, 212–214, 224, 229, 231, 233, 238, 239, 241–250, 252, 258, 263–267 Solidarity economy (SE), 1–6, 32–36, 38–40, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49, 54, 65, 66, 122, 132, 136–139, 145, 146, 150, 181, 206, 207, 212–214, 238–240, 247, 248, 250–252, 255, 256, 258–260, 264–267 State, 33, 35, 39, 40, 43, 46, 47, 52, 55, 66, 67, 69, 70, 74–77, 79–85, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 100, 101, 103, 108–111, 113, 114, 122, 132, 134–142, 145, 146, 149, 151, 153–157, 159, 162–165, 169, 170, 173–175, 177–179, 181, 182, 192, 193, 195–202, 206, 215–218, 220, 222, 226, 227, 238, 239, 243, 249–251, 255, 257, 259–263, 266 government, 74, 81, 83, 93, 136, 137, 156, 179 governmental schemes, 113 Struggle, 2, 33, 36, 49, 53–55, 66, 67, 75, 77, 83–85, 88, 89, 91, 100–103, 108, 110, 112, 114, 115, 124, 141, 145, 150, 151,

SUBJECT INDEX

159, 164, 180, 185, 196–198, 201, 222, 226, 232, 238, 240–242, 246, 248, 249, 252, 257, 260, 263, 265, 266 conflict, 103 Subaltern/subalternity, 40, 41, 48, 55, 88, 102, 238, 240, 247, 249, 252, 264, 265 Subject, 36, 42, 48, 49, 55, 66, 89, 99, 104, 111, 122, 125, 131, 135, 137, 139, 140, 220, 234, 243, 245, 247, 252, 258, 261, 263 political subject, 104, 245 Sustainability, 2, 48, 107, 212, 245, 250, 267

T Territory/territoriality, 2, 49, 88–90, 92, 94, 97, 114, 120, 122, 132, 133, 171, 180, 182–185, 216, 218, 224, 232, 233, 238, 244–246 Trade-unions, 67, 68, 70, 78, 146, 148, 150, 153, 158, 159, 163–165, 248

U Unions/unionism, 34, 41, 45–47, 49–52, 65–75, 77–84, 109, 127, 132, 135, 146, 147, 149, 150, 152–154, 158–160, 163, 214, 217, 221, 231, 242, 243, 247–250, 259, 263 Urbanisation, 89, 93, 104, 113, 114

V Value devaluation, 45

279

valorization, 212 valuation, 243 Violence, 35, 49, 50, 66, 69, 75–77, 83, 88, 92, 94, 100, 102, 103, 110, 112, 124, 127, 130, 131, 134, 141, 148, 155, 178, 179, 183, 220, 232, 241, 242, 245, 247, 262 W Wealth, 34, 98, 260, 261 Women, 2–5, 33, 34, 36, 40–55, 65–85, 87–114, 120–135, 139–141, 146–165, 169–185, 189–208, 211–215, 217, 219– 234, 238–252, 256, 260, 264, 265 Work, 2–4, 32, 34, 39–53, 55, 66–68, 70–74, 77–81, 83–85, 88, 90–94, 96, 101, 103, 105, 110, 114, 120–122, 124, 126, 127, 129–131, 141, 145–153, 155–159, 161–165, 170–183, 185, 189–192, 197, 199, 201– 207, 212, 213, 217–221, 223, 224, 226, 227, 229–231, 233, 234, 238–245, 247, 249–251, 256, 261, 263 domestic work, 44, 46, 68, 71, 84, 105, 147, 149, 152–154, 176, 204, 205, 220, 230, 256 unpaid work, 240, 242, 261 Worker’s movements, 73, 249, 257 Y Young/youth, 72, 76, 79, 80, 84, 89, 94, 96, 97, 112, 113, 134, 155, 160, 161, 169, 170, 172–175, 181, 184, 204, 221, 227, 230, 240, 243