Maidens, Meal and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Community / Edition 1

by Claude Meillassoux

Overview

A translation from the French, this book develops a theory of the domestic mode of production and examines the ways in which the domestic community is exploited when it comes in contact with capitalism. The book represents a major contribution to the contemporary progress of historical materialism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2900521297089
Publication date:	03/05/1981
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

Table of Contents

	Preface to the English translation	vii
	Introduction	xi
Part I	The Domestic Community	1
1	Locating the domestic community	8
(i)	Why incest?	10
(ii)	The band and the relations of adhesion	14
(iii)	Mating and filiation	19
(iv)	Protected women, abducted women	22
2	Domestic reproduction	33
(i)	The level of the productive forces	34
(ii)	The constitution of the relations of production	39
(iii)	The constitution of the relations of reproduction	42
3	The alimentary structures of kinship	50
(i)	The reproduction of human energy or the process of production: energy - subsistence - energy	51
(ii)	Surplus-labour	55
(iii)	The circulation of offspring	58
4	The dialectic of equality	61
(i)	The circulation of wives and bridewealth	61
(ii)	Bridewealth as wives' claims	62
(iii)	Identical exchange	65
(iv)	Incipient value	67
5	Who are the exploited?	75
(i)	Women	75
(ii)	Juniors	78
6	Contradictions and contacts: the premises of inequality	82
Part II	The exploitation of the domestic community: imperialism as a mode of reproduction of cheap labour power	89
1	The paradoxes of colonial exploitation	91
2	Direct and indirect wages	99
3	Primitive accumulation	104
4	Without hearth or home: the rural exodus	107
5	Periodic migration: the eternal return to the native land	110
6	The maintenance of labour-reserves	117
7	The double labour market and segregation	120
8	The profits from immigration	124
9	The limits of the over-exploitation of labour	127
(i)	The poverty datum line	129
(ii)	The objective criterion for the division of the proletariat	133
(iii)	Competition	135
	Conclusion	138
	Notes	145
	References cited	162
	Index	189