Grassroots Feminist Economic Thought: A Reconstruction from the Working-class Women's Liberation Movement in 1970s Britain
ISBN: 978-1-80455-983-3, eISBN: 978-1-80455-982-6
Publication date: 2 October 2023
Abstract
Can we broaden the boundaries of the history of economic thought to include positionalities articulated by grassroots movements? Following Keynes’s famous remark from General Theory that ‘practical men […] are usually the slaves of some defunct economist,’ we might be wont to dismiss such a push from below. While it is sometimes true that grassroots movements channel preexisting economic thought, I wish to argue that grassroots economic thought can also precede developments subsequently elaborated by economists. This paper considers such a case: by women at the intersection of the women’s liberation movement and the claimants’ unions movement in 1970s Britain. Oral historical and archival work on these working-class women and on achievements such as their succeeding to establish unconditional basic income as an official demand of the British Women’s Liberation Movement forms the springboard for my reconstruction of the grassroots feminist economic thought underpinning the women’s basic income demand. I hope to demonstrate, firstly, how this was a prefiguration of ideas later developed by feminist economists and philosophers; secondly, how unique it was for its time and a consequence of the intersectionality of class, gender, race, and dis/ability. Thirdly, I should like to suggest that bringing into the fold this particular grassroots feminist economic thought on basic income would widen the mainstream understanding and historiography of the idea of basic income. Lastly, I hope to make the point that, within the history of economic thought, grassroots economic thought ought to be heeded far more than it currently is.
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Acknowledgements
AcknowledgEments
The empirical part of this paper was based on oral historical research on the Claimants Union movement in Britain in the long 1970s. I am grateful to all interviewees. Constraints of space preclude including here everyone by name, but especially to Lyn Boyd, Susan Carlyle, Roger Clipsham, Susan Cooper, Jane Downey, Mary Issitt, Bill Jordan, Julia Mainwaring, Annette McKay, Rosemary Robson, Margaret, and Chris Tyrrell for their encouragement and friendship. Boyd, Clipsham, Cooper, Issitt and Mainwaring kindly dug out from their attic internal documents of and photos related to the Claimants Unions movement. Phillipe Van Parijs and Walter van Trier generously sent me scanned copies of historical materials related to BIEN. I am also grateful to Barb Jacobson and Ellen Malos for their generous answers to my questions. Regarding the Dutch usage of ‘basis-inkomen’, I am indebted to van Trier and Anton Jäger for their enlightening correspondences, and to Liza Silvius at the Jan Tinbergen Archive of Erasmus University Rotterdam for her generous assistance. I am also grateful to Guido Erreygers for his kind reply to my enquiry. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1st History of Economic Thought Diversity Caucus Conference, held 24–25 May 2021. (In its call for papers, the title of the conference was given as ‘history of economic thought’, not ‘history of economics’ ). I am encouraged by the warm reception of participants there. The discussions with Clem Davies, Chloe Halpenny, Jessica Schulz, and Almaz Zelleke at the ‘UBI and gender’ research team at the Freiburg Institute for Basic Income Studies have been encouraging. Rositza Alexandrova and Zelleke kindly read the draft and gave me several suggestions, for which I am grateful. Work underlying parts of this paper were supported by grants from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JP19K12621, JP26360054, JP22710266), which is gratefully acknowledged. I am also grateful to the editor and anonymous reviewers of this journal for their constructive comments. Any mistakes belong to me.
Citation
Yamamori, T. (2023), "Grassroots Feminist Economic Thought: A Reconstruction from the Working-class Women's Liberation Movement in 1970s Britain", Fiorito, L., Scheall, S. and Suprinyak, C.E. (Ed.) Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology: Including a Selection of Papers Presented at the First History of Economics Diversity Caucus Conference (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 41B), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 119-146. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542023000041B007
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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