Green Economy” or Green Utopia: The Salience of Reproductive Labor Post-Rio+20

Abstract

Sociologists use the concept of class variously to explain and predict people's relation to the means of production, their earnings, living conditions, social standing, capacities, and political identification. With the rise of capitalist globalization, many sociologists focus on the transnational ruling class and new economic predicaments faced by industrial workers in the world-system (see, for example, Robinson and Harris 2000). Here I will argue that to understand and respond to the current global environmental crisis, another major class formation should be acknowledged - one defined by its materially regenerative activities under "relations of reproduction" (Salleh 2010).