Kathi Weeks is an Associate Professor in the Women’s Studies Program at Duke University. Her primary interests are in the fields of political theory, feminist theory, Marxist thought, the critical study of work, and utopian studies. She is the author of The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics and Postwork Imaginaries (Duke UP, 2011) and Constituting Feminist Subjects (Cornell UP, 1998), and a co-editor of The Jameson Reader (Blackwell, 2000).

This event is part of “The Origins of Civil Society” organized by the Crisis in the Cultures of Capitalism Research Cluster. The development of the discipline of political economy, including its dialogue with modern political philosophy, is closely intertwined with the rise and expansion of capitalist society. As we turn our attention today to capitalism’s crisis tendencies and the future of market society, a critical examination of this foundational history becomes the starting point of the analysis of the present. This lecture series addresses the origins of civil society from several vantage points: the legal and political forms that underlie market relations; the transformation of the labor process; the role of gender and reproductive labor; and the history of separation from the means of subsistence.

Additional events in this series:
Jan 16, 2014 – Warren Montag: “The Revocation of the Right to Subsistence: On the Legal and Political Origins of the Market”
Mar 6, 2014 – Michael Perelman: “Primitive Accumulation: From Adam Smith to Angela Merkel”

Presented by the Crisis in the Cultures of Capitalism Research Cluster. Staff support provided by the Institute for Humanities Research. For more information, including disabled access, please contact Evin Guy: (831) 459-5655, ecguy@ucsc.edu. Maps: http://maps.ucsc.edu.