2 - Beverley Mullings: Social Transformations, Social Reproduction and Social Justice

Summary

Introduction

As a feminist political economic geographer, Beverley Mullings brings to economic geography a much-needed focus on global and intimate forms of neoliberal governmentality through an intersectional, multi-scalar analysis. Committed to feminist political economy, she has been a leader in pushing the discipline to centre the multiple systems of oppression that shape people's lives. Importantly, she has done this by focusing on the relationship between diaspora, home and spheres of social reproduction – areas of essential economic activity but not always considered important in the subdiscipline. As well, she has been preoccupied with the politics of knowledge production, including the politics of research methods, questioning dominant modes of inquiry and challenging the neoliberalizing of the academy.

In this chapter, I highlight three themes that are currents throughout Mullings’ career. First is a deep commitment to feminist, anti-racist and decolonial futures. This manifests in an attention to context and history, as well as intersectionality, and a foregrounding of something so universal: work. Next, the politics and essentialness of everyday life, particularly social reproductive work and spaces to the economy animates much of her research. She demonstrates not only the usefulness and importance of social reproduction for understanding the world, but how social reproduction opens new avenues for research, understanding and ways of living. Finally, the politics of praxis is a central concern. Mullings addresses how geographers produce knowledge in myriad ways, from Geography's history to economic geography's methods to the impacts of neoliberalism on the academy.

These are, of course, economic concerns. Mullings writes, that ‘economic geographers who seek to do more than ‘add women and stir’ must also examine how the questions that are asked, interpreted and presented may conflict with the dominant modes of representation within either feminist or economic geography’ (1999a: 343). This requires a deep interrogation of and sustained engagement with the politics of knowledge production at all stages. Throughout her work, Mullings has been deeply committed to the reproduction of a different world, which includes geographers’ role in that process, as well as the politics and possibilities of reproducing a different academy.

Beverley has also been a mentor, colleague and comrade to me and has shaped my development as a scholar. I first met Beverley in 2015, when Lisa Freeman and I invited her to join a panel at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting on the history of feminist geography.