Capitalism and the production of uneven bodies: women, motherhood and food distribution in Britainc.1850–1914

Abstract

Capitalism and the production of uneven bodies: women, motherhood and food distribution in Britain c. S ebastien RiouxThis article argues that processes of social reproduction are central to our understanding of body formation under capitalism. Articulated through a feminist historical materialist framework founded on a social ontology that recognises the material foundation of social life as constituted of both productive and reproductive activities, this paper develops the concept of uneven body as a more holistic approach integrating into corporeal geography a social reproduction lens. I explore the social and historical analytical capacity of the concept through a study of food distribution in Britain c.1850-1914 in order to reveal how certain bodies absorbed, mediated and embodied contradictions between production and social reproduction.

A feast of Tantalus: Corporeal crisis and death by starvation in Britain 1830–1914

“…The generational and gendered nature of these categories – most deaths were from infants, young children under 5 years of age and women – suggests that they must have been greatly influenced by nutrition status. Because of the uneven distribution of food among members of the family, poverty and chronic undernourishment were particularly detrimental to working class mothers (Pember Reeves 1914; Rioux 2015a; Ross 1993). Women’s health is key to infants’ health, and therefore must be seen as an important vector influencing their development.…”

“…While Marxist scholarship has shown growing interest in the body (Callard 1998; Fracchia 2005; Guthman & DuPuis 2006; Harvey 1998; Orzeck 2007), very little has been written on the central importance of corporeal processes for social reproduction theory (Rioux 2015a, 2015b). In this article, I argue that the fundamental contradiction between production and social reproduction – that is, between profit- and life-making processes – is expressed first and foremost as a corporeal (and therefore generational) crisis.…”

The body as infrastructure

“…This lacuna is all the more surprising given that historical materialist approaches to corporeality have flourished in recent decades. Such approaches have a firm grounding in Marx's own writings, which, as Scarry (1987), Fracchia (2008) and Rioux (2015aRioux ( , 2015b all note in different ways, are suffused with references to corporeality, with concrete studies of the labouring body and with metaphorical references to the bodily implications of capitalist relations. For Fracchia (2008), understanding Marx's mobilisation of the body deepens the sense of 'the corporeal depths of [Marx's] concept of immiseration'.…”

“…The basis for such an approach, Rioux (2015a) argues, can be found in a rapprochement between historical materialist approaches, political ecology and social reproduction theory. Elsewhere Rioux (2015b) demonstrates, through a detailed analysis of the production of uneven bodies in 19th-century Britain, the ways in which a gendered division of labour, along with an expanding imperial project, re-shaped the diets of a deeply gendered working class. Repeatedly, he emphasises how the wage form and the commodity labour power occlude understandings of the necessary reproduction of actually existing bodies.…”

Historical geography in Transactions

“…Her attempts to study bodies at work in the past necessitated ‘creatively curating and narrating historical geographies of craftwork’ (2017, 391). Patchett's attention to working bodies links well to Rioux's () study of uneven bodies as sites of social and economic processes, while her ‘deliberate curation of historical remainders’ (2017, 392) connects productively with some of DeLyser's concerns above. Like Patchett, Finnegan focuses on a practice that is difficult for us to capture today.…”