A through-time framework for producer households

Taking as its central case urban producer households of a kind widely found in the third world, this paper shows that the through-time analyses of material activities developed by Marxist and Post Keynesian theorists are as applicable to ‘reproductive’ household activities as they are to market-directed production. Drawing on and extending work by Marxist feminist theorists, it develops an internal critique of the productive–reproductive divide by showing that if the material activities of reproduction are taken as seriously as those of for-market production, multiple and complex links between the two spheres become apparent. In this framework insights from different theoretical traditions can be brought into conversation with one another. These points are extended via a critique of the assumption that households are bounded and discrete units. Among other uses, the framework facilitates scrutiny of the assumptions used by advocates for microcredit programs.