Financializing Healthcare and Infrastructures of Social Reproduction: How to Bankrupt a Hospital and be Unprepared for a Pandemic

Abstract

This paper contributes to extending the empirical and conceptual scope of Social Reproduction Theory by bringing it into dialogue with debates on financialization. We call for the need to document and theorize the “lived” dimension of the financialization and marketization of Infrastructures of Social Reproduction, and of the healthcare sector in particular. Our argument draws empirically on the analysis of patient and staff safety and vulnerability issues related to the bankruptcy of the Slotervaart hospital in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.