logo for American Library Association
Hope, Hype and VoIP
Riding the Library Technology Cycle
Char American Library Association
American Library Association, 2010

logo for American Library Association
Opening Up Library Systems Through Web Services and Soa
Hype, or Reality?
Marshall American Library Association
American Library Association

logo for Duke University Press
Reproductive Labor and Innovation
Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype
Jennifer Denbow
Duke University Press, 2024
In Reproductive Labor and Innovation, Jennifer Denbow examines how the push toward techno-scientific innovation in contemporary American life often comes at the expense of the care work and reproductive labor that is necessary for society to function. Noting that the gutting of social welfare programs has shifted the burden of solving problems to individuals, Denbow argues that the aggrandizement of innovation and the degradation of reproductive labor are intertwined facets of neoliberalism. She shows that the construction of innovation as a panacea to social ills justifies the accumulation of wealth for corporate innovators and the impoverishment of those feminized and racialized people who do the bulk of reproductive labor. Moreover, even innovative technology aimed at reproduction—such as digital care work platforms and noninvasive prenatal testing—obscure structural injustices and further devalue reproductive labor. By drawing connections between innovation discourse, the rise of neoliberalism, financialized capitalism, and the social and political degradation of reproductive labor, Denbow illustrates what needs to be done to destabilize the overvaluation of innovation and to offer collective support for reproduction.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter