Caring about water in Camden, New Jersey: social reproduction against slow violence

Abstract

This paper examines the heightened demands of social reproduction amidst the slow violence of environmental harm. In doing so, it contributes to feminist scholarship bridging environmental and reproductive justice. Through a case study of water provisioning in Camden, New Jersey, the analysis reveals the added burden of gendered care-work under racialized conditions of environmental insecurity, where many suspect threats to community health but are denied legitimacy for their claims. I show how residents contest official declarations of water quality through narratives of water insecurity, linking everyday injustices to histories of slow violence. Such insecurity intensifies the gendered and racialized labor required to care for children. As mothers mitigate risk through daily provisioning, many resort to buying bottled water in an effort to gain control over their reproductive labor. While it may seem that mothers are opting for privatized solutions, they frame this strategy as a necessary response to the state’s failure to secure the conditions of social reproduction. Situating mothers’ everyday care-work alongside activists’ critiques of privatization, the paper advances a multi-scalar analysis of environmental justice that connects the intimate, embodied sphere of reproduction to the institutional terrain of neoliberal restructuring. Key to this struggle is combatting neoliberal logics of mother-blame that locate risk within the labor of caregiving. Ultimately, I argue, struggles to sustain reproductive labor against the threat of slow violence illuminate the need for collective infrastructures of care that prioritize life-making over profit-making.

Keywords:

• Environmental justice
• mothering
• social reproduction
• slow violence
• water insecurity

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the community members who shared their experiences and perspectives with me. I also want to thank Norah MacKendrick, Lauren Silver, and James Cairns for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Finally, the analysis benefited immensely from the thoughtful comments and suggestions offered by reviewers and editors at Gender, Place and Culture.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kate Cairns

Kate Cairns is Associate Professor of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University-Camden. Her work brings a feminist approach to the politics of childhood, with particular focus on how children and youth are positioned as the promise or threat of collective futures. Kate is co-author, with Josée Johnston, of Food and Femininity (Bloomsbury 2015) and has published articles in venues such as Gender & Society, Signs, Antipode, Harvard Educational Review, and Children’s Geographies. Her current research examines feminist theories of social reproduction and youth struggles for environmental justice.