Undervalued Social Care in the Home and Community. A feminist social reproduction perspective.
Authors: Read, R.
Publication Date: 25/09/2026
Publisher: Routledge
Abstract:This book develops a fresh approach to understanding social care, by using feminist social reproduction theory to critically assess the undervaluing of waged and unwaged forms of social care labour in homes and communities.
Part One makes the case for why the feminist social reproduction approach offers a dynamic and compelling theoretical framework for exploring adult social care in theoretical and historical terms. Its distinctive theoretical proposition is that, despite its importance to sustaining lives, caregiving must be subordinated to profit-making in capitalism. The book explores how this core contradiction has shaped the history of adult social care in the UK, from the post-World War Two period to the present day. Part Two comprises a case study of adult social care in a southern English region during the pandemic of 2020-2021, focusing on caregiving infrastructures across households, communities and homes care occupations. It provides detailed insights into how carers, volunteers and home care workers experienced the contradiction of being simultaneously essential to the sustenance and survival of the older and disabled people they cared for, and yet also low paid, invisibilised and taken for granted.
It is intended audience are scholars and students working on care, social reproduction and feminist theory, from across sociology, social anthropology, social policy, social work, human geography and history.
Source: Manual