The Subprojects "Property in the human body in the context of transnational economies of reproduction" (project management: PD Dr. Stefanie Graefe, PD Dr. Susanne Lettow) and "Ownership of genetic resources" (project management: Prof. Dr. Maria Backhouse) of the Collaborative Research Center TRR 294 "Structural Change of Property" invite:

Thursday 14^th of October 2021 6-8pm (CEST)

Prof. Dr. Sarah Franklin (University of Cambridge): "Fertinomics": what is the relationship of reproduction to political economy?

In this presentation I offer historical and contemporary perspectives on the ways in which reproduction has been both central to, and absent from, theorisations of ‘political economy’. As recent work by scholars such as Jennifer Morgan (2021) and Katherine McKrittick (2014), among others, has suggested, we can understand the origins of the concept of ‘political economy’ in terms of not only ‘what counts as capital’ – but how numbers are used to ‘count’, and to abstract not only value but life itself. Although the politics of what is perceptibly ‘economic’ or ‘economically valuable’ – as opposed to what is ‘uneconomic’ or ‘raw material’ – is a well-rehearsed problematic in the context of both the critique of racialised capitalism and the tradition of feminist materialism, it’s equally clear that ‘reproduction’, or ‘reproductivity’, remains poorly characterised as an analytic term in this context. Often it is used instead descriptively. As a concrete example, this lecture addresses ‘fertility’ as a social product, and indeed as an economic value. Using this starting point, we will work back to consider how reproduction is, and always has been, fundamental to the feminist critique of political economy. 

The online lecture will take place in English!

Meeting link: https://fu-berlin.webex.com/fu-berlin/j.php?MTID=m8cebcd99b6075b03f4dc76827444dfce
Meeting ID: 2730 200 0122
Password:  Eigentum294Frank

You can find more information regarding the Collaborative Research Center TRR 294 "Structural Change of Property" here: https://sfb294-eigentum.de/en/

More information regarding the Subproject "Property in the human body in the context of transnational economies of reproduction" can be found here: https://www.mvbz.fu-berlin.de/forschung/themenschwerpunkt-kontexte-der-reproduktion/index.html, or here: https://sfb294-eigentum.de/de/teilprojekte/eigentum-am-menschlichen-korper-im-kontext-transnationaler-reproduktionsokonomien/

More information regarding the Subproject "Ownership of genetic resources“ can be found here: https://sfb294-eigentum.de/de/teilprojekte/eigentum-genetischen-ressourcen/