Remapping gendered circuits of violence:a social reproduction perspective

This chapter engages with the concept of "gendered circuits of violence" to explore how social reproduction both sustains and resists war economies. Using the lens of social reproduction, we argue that contemporary political economies resemble war economies, as violence moves through the circuits of capital, biopolitics and mastery. Circuits of capital highlight the exploitation and dispossession intrinsic to accumulation, where labours of social reproduction sustain but are also undermined by neoliberal economic orthodoxies and post-war reconstruction policies. Circuits of biopolitics bring to light the violent governance of social reproduction in the form of social and security policies, for example in the areas of development, migration, and health, that entrench racialised and gendered forms of othering. Circuits of mastery foreground how extractivism and coloniality justify epistemic and material violences, situating war economies within longer histories of domination. These circuits do not operate in isolation but interlock in everyday negotiations of survival and resistance. Recognising social reproduction as liminal, we argue that it operates as a practice that both coopts and offers alternatives to the circuits of violence that define war economies.