Description
The family under neoliberalism has increasingly become burdened with responsibilities that once fell under state welfare. Social reproductive scholarship has shed light on this transformation, framing the shift as a retreat of the state and a product of the neoliberal marketisation of care. However, many scholars now recognize that this transformation cannot be fully understood through neoliberal theory alone. By exploring the history of governance practices that long predate neoliberalism, this article reveals how the family’s transformation as a new object of governance, reflects a profound paradigm shift in social policy. I argue that this shift cannot be reduced to practices of neoliberal state roll back, or the systematic privatisation of social care. Instead, this article argues that the family has been reshaped though a process of managerial governance – a model that emerged not directly from neoliberal ideology, but from earlier public-private partnerships and managerial strategies rooted in mid 20th century industrial housing policy.
Through a radical historicist approach, this paper demonstrates how these pre-existing governance frameworks helped embed the family as a critical locus for managing social reproduction.
