Alessandra Mezzadri
Biographic Data
| ID | 651399 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alessandra Mezzadri |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alessandra |
| FAMILY NAME | Mezzadri |
| SIGNATURE | MEZZADRI A |
| AFFILIATIONS | SOAS University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4233-6341 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 309 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Development as life-making
Explores debates on Global and International Development from the viewpoint of feminist political economy. • Reveals the limits of productivist readings of Development and political economy. • Redefines Development as ‘life-making’ drawing from plural strands of social reproduction feminism. • Rethinks Global Development as a primarily reproductive process. • Reset International Development priorities towards reproductive labour, life-sustaining …
Value theories in motion: Circular labour migration, unfinished land dispossession and reproductive struggles across the urban–rural divide
This analysis theorises the central role of the urban–rural divide in the making of value relations and exploitation in contemporary labour regimes. Inspired by insights contained in Diane Elson’s ‘value theory of labour’ and informed by evidence on labour circulation in India’s ‘Sweatshop Regime’, the article combines Early Social Reproduction Analyses (ESRA) and debates on ‘forms of exploitation’ to illustrate the integrated nature of the circu…
Life and the Labour Process in the Planetary Social Factory
Challenging productivist approaches to Labour Process Theory (LPT) and drawing inspiration from Harry Braverman’s own call to analyse the labour process as embedded in the broader social relations of capitalism, this article advocates for a ‘life-making’ approach to the labour process, informed by plural strands of social reproduction feminism. Conceptually anchored in the idea of the ‘planetary social factory’ and its many ‘forms of exploitation…
Plural Futures of/for Development? The Case for Global and International Development, and Against All Inequalities Everywhere
Pluralizing social reproduction approaches
The concept of social reproduction (SR) has gained renewed interest in the past decade. Discussed and elaborated by generations of feminists, the concept offers a rejection of productivism and the possibility of (re)telling the history of capitalism and its contemporary dynamics through the work and practices of “life making.” Yet, it is undeniable that much of the “old” and “new” theorizing around SR comes predominantly from the Global North. He…
What is the Value of Value for Agrarian Studies
Reflecting a longstanding intellectual heritage in Marxist political economy, contributions to agrarian studies have variously referred to the production, distribution and extraction of value. Despite this central role within the heritage of agrarian studies, the concept of value is often used inconsistently between authors and sometimes deployed without clear elucidation of the underlying theoretical tenets. As such, value often tends to be used…
Reading list: A feminist guide to essential writing about work
The social reproduction of agrarian change: Feminist political economy and rural transformations in the global south. An introduction
The last decade has seen a renaissance of feminist political economy studies centred on the concept of 'social reproduction'. These aim at studying global capitalism from the vantage-point of what produces and sustains life, expanding the social boundaries of processes and subjects analysed in political economy. Contributing to this research agenda, the special issue we present in this Introduction explores the Social Reproduction of Agrarian Cha…
Handbook of Research on the Global Political Economy of Work
Social reproduction, women’s labour and systems of life: A conversation
This conversation brings together feminist scholars from various backgrounds and epistemological traditions around a central topic in feminist debates that is today more relevant than ever, social reproduction. It begins by examining social reproduction as a concept and its entanglements with the dynamics of global capitalism from human geography and feminist international political economy perspectives. We ask, what does the lens of social repro…
Nurture versus Capitalism: Why the child went missing from for-profit childcare
Social reproduction and pandemic neoliberalism: Planetary crises and the reorganisation of life, work and death
This article portrays the COVID-19 pandemic as a planetary crisis of capitalist life and analyses it through the feminist political economy lens of social reproduction. Celebrating the plurality and distinctiveness of social reproduction theorisations, the article deploys three approaches to map the contours of the present conjuncture; namely Social Reproduction Theory, Early Social Reproduction Analyses and Raced Social Reproduction approaches. …
When the Lewisian Dream Sours: Industrial Aspirations and Reverse Labour Migration
The COVID-19 pandemic has escalated processes of labour transition from industrial work to the informal economy, which have always characterized the life of the working poor. This paper explores this kind of reverse transition, that is, when the Lewisian dream of having an industrial job comes to an end, and workers are forced into a reverse migration. Specifically, the paper focuses on the post-industrial experiences of former Indian garment wor…
The Social Reproduction of Pandemic Surplus Populations and Global Development Narratives on Inequality and Informal Labour
This article proposes a reading of the COVID-19 crisis through a social reproduction lens, with a focus on the restructuring of reproductive sectors, the world of work and the generation of differentiated surplus populations, and considers the implications of this reading for global development debates on inequality and informal labour. Learning from the pandemic and the social reproduction of the surplus populations it generated, the analysis ar…
Hidden Abodes in Plain Sight: The Social Reproduction of Households and Labor in the Covid-19 Pandemic
This article deploys a feminist political economy approach centered on social reproduction to analyze the reconfiguration and regeneration of multiple inequalities in households and the labor markets during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on this approach, the analysis unpacks the multiple trajectories of fragility the current crisis is intervening on and reshaping in the home and in the world of work, and their gendered and racialized features acro…
Feminist global political economies of work and social reproduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed the relevance of social reproduction as a key analytical lens to interrogate contemporary capitalist processes. Building on insights from distinct theoretical traditions, in this introductory contribution to the special issue in Feminist Global Political Economies of Work we propose social reproduction as a prism to examine labour and work in the Global South from a feminist standpoint. We develop a social repr…
A Value Theory of Inclusion: Informal Labour, the Homeworker, and the Social Reproduction of Value
Critically engaging with Marxist‐Feminist debates, this article argues that only interpretations of social reproduction as value‐producing capture the features of contemporary informalised labour relations. Building on early social reproduction analyses and informed by debates in political economy of development and feminist geography, the article sketches a “value theory of inclusion” premised on the centrality of all labour to value‐generation;…
Marx in the Field
Marx in the Field is a unique edited collection illustrating the relevance of Marxian methods to study contemporary capitalism and the global development process. Essays in the collection bring Marx 'to the field' in three ways. They illustrate how Marxian categories can be concretely deployed for field research in the global economy, they analyse how these categories may be adapted during fieldwork and they discuss data collection methods suppor…
The Informal Labours of Social Reproduction
Towards a feminist political economy of time: Labour circulation, social reproduction & the ‘afterlife’ of cheap labour
This article explores ‘time’ as a crucial category of analysis shaping and shaped by the dynamics of exploitation and social reproduction across the global assembly line. Focusing on the Indian garment industry, the article develops a feminist political economy of time stressing the productive and reproductive temporalities of exploitation, which give rise to multiple forms of labour circulation, including early exit from industrial work. Then, t…
Classes of Labour' at the Margins of Global Commodity Chains in India and China
This article deploys the concept of 'classes of labour' to map and compare non-factory labour relations in the garment chain across Delhi and Shanghai metropolitan areas. It contributes to commodity studies by unpacking the great complexity of mechanisms of 'adverse incorporation' of informal work in global commodity chains and production circuits. Field findings reveal the great social differentiation at work in informalized settings in the two …
Health and safety in garment workers’ lives: Setting a new research agenda
The informalization of capital and interlocking in labour contracting networks
Analyses of labour contracting crucially inform studies of labour informalization and precarious work in industrial systems and production networks. Challenging conceptualizations emphasizing contractors’ intermediary role, and drawing from debates on petty commodity production and interlocking, this article analyzes labour contractors in the home-based embroidery sector in Bareilly, India. It shows that these are informal capitalists, rather tha…
Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics As If All People Mattered (Second Edition)
Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics As If All People Mattered (Second Edition)." Gender & Development, 24(2), pp. 329–330
Class, gender and the sweatshop: On the nexus between labour commodification and exploitation
Drawing on approaches to class emphasising the multiplicity of labour relations at work under capitalism, and from feminist insights on oppression and social reproduction, this paper illustrates the interconnection between processes of class formation and patriarchal norms in globalised production circuits. The analysis emphasises the nexus between the commodification and exploitation of women’s labour, and how it structures gendered wage differe…
A Value Theory of Inclusion: Informal Labour, the Homeworker, and the Social Reproduction of Value
Critically engaging with Marxist‐Feminist debates, this article argues that only interpretations of social reproduction as value‐producing capture the features of contemporary informalised labour relations. Building on early social reproduction analyses and informed by debates in political economy of development and feminist geography, the article sketches a “value theory of inclusion” premised on the centrality of all labour to value‐generation;…
Feminist global political economies of work and social reproduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed the relevance of social reproduction as a key analytical lens to interrogate contemporary capitalist processes. Building on insights from distinct theoretical traditions, in this introductory contribution to the special issue in Feminist Global Political Economies of Work we propose social reproduction as a prism to examine labour and work in the Global South from a feminist standpoint. We develop a social repr…
Hidden Abodes in Plain Sight: The Social Reproduction of Households and Labor in the Covid-19 Pandemic
This article deploys a feminist political economy approach centered on social reproduction to analyze the reconfiguration and regeneration of multiple inequalities in households and the labor markets during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on this approach, the analysis unpacks the multiple trajectories of fragility the current crisis is intervening on and reshaping in the home and in the world of work, and their gendered and racialized features acro…
Class, gender and the sweatshop: On the nexus between labour commodification and exploitation
Drawing on approaches to class emphasising the multiplicity of labour relations at work under capitalism, and from feminist insights on oppression and social reproduction, this paper illustrates the interconnection between processes of class formation and patriarchal norms in globalised production circuits. The analysis emphasises the nexus between the commodification and exploitation of women’s labour, and how it structures gendered wage differe…
Classes of Labour' at the Margins of Global Commodity Chains in India and China
This article deploys the concept of 'classes of labour' to map and compare non-factory labour relations in the garment chain across Delhi and Shanghai metropolitan areas. It contributes to commodity studies by unpacking the great complexity of mechanisms of 'adverse incorporation' of informal work in global commodity chains and production circuits. Field findings reveal the great social differentiation at work in informalized settings in the two …
Towards a feminist political economy of time: Labour circulation, social reproduction & the ‘afterlife’ of cheap labour
This article explores ‘time’ as a crucial category of analysis shaping and shaped by the dynamics of exploitation and social reproduction across the global assembly line. Focusing on the Indian garment industry, the article develops a feminist political economy of time stressing the productive and reproductive temporalities of exploitation, which give rise to multiple forms of labour circulation, including early exit from industrial work. Then, t…
The social reproduction of agrarian change: Feminist political economy and rural transformations in the global south. An introduction
The last decade has seen a renaissance of feminist political economy studies centred on the concept of 'social reproduction'. These aim at studying global capitalism from the vantage-point of what produces and sustains life, expanding the social boundaries of processes and subjects analysed in political economy. Contributing to this research agenda, the special issue we present in this Introduction explores the Social Reproduction of Agrarian Cha…
Pluralizing social reproduction approaches
The concept of social reproduction (SR) has gained renewed interest in the past decade. Discussed and elaborated by generations of feminists, the concept offers a rejection of productivism and the possibility of (re)telling the history of capitalism and its contemporary dynamics through the work and practices of “life making.” Yet, it is undeniable that much of the “old” and “new” theorizing around SR comes predominantly from the Global North. He…
Health and safety in garment workers’ lives: Setting a new research agenda
The Social Reproduction of Pandemic Surplus Populations and Global Development Narratives on Inequality and Informal Labour
This article proposes a reading of the COVID-19 crisis through a social reproduction lens, with a focus on the restructuring of reproductive sectors, the world of work and the generation of differentiated surplus populations, and considers the implications of this reading for global development debates on inequality and informal labour. Learning from the pandemic and the social reproduction of the surplus populations it generated, the analysis ar…
Globalisation, informalisation and the state in the Indian garment industry
Globalisation has affected the industrial trajectories of developing countries, producing an increasing disarticulation between the management of production and regimes of labour control. While production regimes have been projected into the global arena, labour regimes have remained apparently anchored to regulatory mechanisms provided by local social structures, and gone through increasing processes of informalisation. Examining the case of the…
The informalization of capital and interlocking in labour contracting networks
Analyses of labour contracting crucially inform studies of labour informalization and precarious work in industrial systems and production networks. Challenging conceptualizations emphasizing contractors’ intermediary role, and drawing from debates on petty commodity production and interlocking, this article analyzes labour contractors in the home-based embroidery sector in Bareilly, India. It shows that these are informal capitalists, rather tha…
Social reproduction, women’s labour and systems of life: A conversation
This conversation brings together feminist scholars from various backgrounds and epistemological traditions around a central topic in feminist debates that is today more relevant than ever, social reproduction. It begins by examining social reproduction as a concept and its entanglements with the dynamics of global capitalism from human geography and feminist international political economy perspectives. We ask, what does the lens of social repro…
When the Lewisian Dream Sours: Industrial Aspirations and Reverse Labour Migration
The COVID-19 pandemic has escalated processes of labour transition from industrial work to the informal economy, which have always characterized the life of the working poor. This paper explores this kind of reverse transition, that is, when the Lewisian dream of having an industrial job comes to an end, and workers are forced into a reverse migration. Specifically, the paper focuses on the post-industrial experiences of former Indian garment wor…
Plural Futures of/for Development? The Case for Global and International Development, and Against All Inequalities Everywhere
What is the Value of Value for Agrarian Studies
Reflecting a longstanding intellectual heritage in Marxist political economy, contributions to agrarian studies have variously referred to the production, distribution and extraction of value. Despite this central role within the heritage of agrarian studies, the concept of value is often used inconsistently between authors and sometimes deployed without clear elucidation of the underlying theoretical tenets. As such, value often tends to be used…
Globalisation, informalisation and the state in the Indian garment industry
Globalisation has affected the industrial trajectories of developing countries, producing an increasing disarticulation between the management of production and regimes of labour control. While production regimes have been projected into the global arena, labour regimes have remained apparently anchored to regulatory mechanisms provided by local social structures, and gone through increasing processes of informalisation. Examining the case of the…
The informalization of capital and interlocking in labour contracting networks
Analyses of labour contracting crucially inform studies of labour informalization and precarious work in industrial systems and production networks. Challenging conceptualizations emphasizing contractors’ intermediary role, and drawing from debates on petty commodity production and interlocking, this article analyzes labour contractors in the home-based embroidery sector in Bareilly, India. It shows that these are informal capitalists, rather tha…
Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics As If All People Mattered (Second Edition)
Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics As If All People Mattered (Second Edition)." Gender & Development, 24(2), pp. 329–330
Class, gender and the sweatshop: On the nexus between labour commodification and exploitation
Drawing on approaches to class emphasising the multiplicity of labour relations at work under capitalism, and from feminist insights on oppression and social reproduction, this paper illustrates the interconnection between processes of class formation and patriarchal norms in globalised production circuits. The analysis emphasises the nexus between the commodification and exploitation of women’s labour, and how it structures gendered wage differe…
Health and safety in garment workers’ lives: Setting a new research agenda
Classes of Labour' at the Margins of Global Commodity Chains in India and China
This article deploys the concept of 'classes of labour' to map and compare non-factory labour relations in the garment chain across Delhi and Shanghai metropolitan areas. It contributes to commodity studies by unpacking the great complexity of mechanisms of 'adverse incorporation' of informal work in global commodity chains and production circuits. Field findings reveal the great social differentiation at work in informalized settings in the two …
Marx in the Field
Marx in the Field is a unique edited collection illustrating the relevance of Marxian methods to study contemporary capitalism and the global development process. Essays in the collection bring Marx 'to the field' in three ways. They illustrate how Marxian categories can be concretely deployed for field research in the global economy, they analyse how these categories may be adapted during fieldwork and they discuss data collection methods suppor…
The Informal Labours of Social Reproduction
Towards a feminist political economy of time: Labour circulation, social reproduction & the ‘afterlife’ of cheap labour
This article explores ‘time’ as a crucial category of analysis shaping and shaped by the dynamics of exploitation and social reproduction across the global assembly line. Focusing on the Indian garment industry, the article develops a feminist political economy of time stressing the productive and reproductive temporalities of exploitation, which give rise to multiple forms of labour circulation, including early exit from industrial work. Then, t…
Hidden Abodes in Plain Sight: The Social Reproduction of Households and Labor in the Covid-19 Pandemic
This article deploys a feminist political economy approach centered on social reproduction to analyze the reconfiguration and regeneration of multiple inequalities in households and the labor markets during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on this approach, the analysis unpacks the multiple trajectories of fragility the current crisis is intervening on and reshaping in the home and in the world of work, and their gendered and racialized features acro…
Feminist global political economies of work and social reproduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed the relevance of social reproduction as a key analytical lens to interrogate contemporary capitalist processes. Building on insights from distinct theoretical traditions, in this introductory contribution to the special issue in Feminist Global Political Economies of Work we propose social reproduction as a prism to examine labour and work in the Global South from a feminist standpoint. We develop a social repr…
A Value Theory of Inclusion: Informal Labour, the Homeworker, and the Social Reproduction of Value
Critically engaging with Marxist‐Feminist debates, this article argues that only interpretations of social reproduction as value‐producing capture the features of contemporary informalised labour relations. Building on early social reproduction analyses and informed by debates in political economy of development and feminist geography, the article sketches a “value theory of inclusion” premised on the centrality of all labour to value‐generation;…
Nurture versus Capitalism: Why the child went missing from for-profit childcare
Social reproduction and pandemic neoliberalism: Planetary crises and the reorganisation of life, work and death
This article portrays the COVID-19 pandemic as a planetary crisis of capitalist life and analyses it through the feminist political economy lens of social reproduction. Celebrating the plurality and distinctiveness of social reproduction theorisations, the article deploys three approaches to map the contours of the present conjuncture; namely Social Reproduction Theory, Early Social Reproduction Analyses and Raced Social Reproduction approaches. …
When the Lewisian Dream Sours: Industrial Aspirations and Reverse Labour Migration
The COVID-19 pandemic has escalated processes of labour transition from industrial work to the informal economy, which have always characterized the life of the working poor. This paper explores this kind of reverse transition, that is, when the Lewisian dream of having an industrial job comes to an end, and workers are forced into a reverse migration. Specifically, the paper focuses on the post-industrial experiences of former Indian garment wor…
The Social Reproduction of Pandemic Surplus Populations and Global Development Narratives on Inequality and Informal Labour
This article proposes a reading of the COVID-19 crisis through a social reproduction lens, with a focus on the restructuring of reproductive sectors, the world of work and the generation of differentiated surplus populations, and considers the implications of this reading for global development debates on inequality and informal labour. Learning from the pandemic and the social reproduction of the surplus populations it generated, the analysis ar…
Handbook of Research on the Global Political Economy of Work
Social reproduction, women’s labour and systems of life: A conversation
This conversation brings together feminist scholars from various backgrounds and epistemological traditions around a central topic in feminist debates that is today more relevant than ever, social reproduction. It begins by examining social reproduction as a concept and its entanglements with the dynamics of global capitalism from human geography and feminist international political economy perspectives. We ask, what does the lens of social repro…
Reading list: A feminist guide to essential writing about work
The social reproduction of agrarian change: Feminist political economy and rural transformations in the global south. An introduction
The last decade has seen a renaissance of feminist political economy studies centred on the concept of 'social reproduction'. These aim at studying global capitalism from the vantage-point of what produces and sustains life, expanding the social boundaries of processes and subjects analysed in political economy. Contributing to this research agenda, the special issue we present in this Introduction explores the Social Reproduction of Agrarian Cha…
Value theories in motion: Circular labour migration, unfinished land dispossession and reproductive struggles across the urban–rural divide
This analysis theorises the central role of the urban–rural divide in the making of value relations and exploitation in contemporary labour regimes. Inspired by insights contained in Diane Elson’s ‘value theory of labour’ and informed by evidence on labour circulation in India’s ‘Sweatshop Regime’, the article combines Early Social Reproduction Analyses (ESRA) and debates on ‘forms of exploitation’ to illustrate the integrated nature of the circu…
Life and the Labour Process in the Planetary Social Factory
Challenging productivist approaches to Labour Process Theory (LPT) and drawing inspiration from Harry Braverman’s own call to analyse the labour process as embedded in the broader social relations of capitalism, this article advocates for a ‘life-making’ approach to the labour process, informed by plural strands of social reproduction feminism. Conceptually anchored in the idea of the ‘planetary social factory’ and its many ‘forms of exploitation…
Plural Futures of/for Development? The Case for Global and International Development, and Against All Inequalities Everywhere
Pluralizing social reproduction approaches
The concept of social reproduction (SR) has gained renewed interest in the past decade. Discussed and elaborated by generations of feminists, the concept offers a rejection of productivism and the possibility of (re)telling the history of capitalism and its contemporary dynamics through the work and practices of “life making.” Yet, it is undeniable that much of the “old” and “new” theorizing around SR comes predominantly from the Global North. He…
What is the Value of Value for Agrarian Studies
Reflecting a longstanding intellectual heritage in Marxist political economy, contributions to agrarian studies have variously referred to the production, distribution and extraction of value. Despite this central role within the heritage of agrarian studies, the concept of value is often used inconsistently between authors and sometimes deployed without clear elucidation of the underlying theoretical tenets. As such, value often tends to be used…
Sociology (19 works) · Economics (18 works) · Political science (17 works) · Reproduction (14 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Social science (11 works) · Social reproduction (10 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Capitalism (8 works)