Vulnerable bodies and invisible work: The Covid-19 pandemic and social reproduction

Introduction

Seldom has an event so clearly illustrated the core tenets of Martha Fineman’s vulnerability theory as the global Covid-19 pandemic has – that, as embodied beings, we share a constant and inescapable vulnerability, our fragile bodies living with ‘the ever-present possibility of harm and injury’ (Fineman, 2008, p. 9). Furthermore, our corporeal vulnerability means that we are ‘dependent upon, and embedded within, social relationships and institutions throughout the life course’ (Fineman, 2017, p. 134). The relentless, indiscriminate spread of the virus across the globe and the human failure to defeat or control it has starkly illustrated our universal helplessness in the face of forces of nature that we cannot fully understand, let alone hope to conquer.

In this paper, I critically analyse the UK’s response to the pandemic through a vulnerability lens. In particular, I examine how the pandemic has affected the visibility and status of socially reproductive work, as well as the impact on those who perform it. Social reproduction, defined as ‘the maintenance of life on a daily basis and intergenerationally’ (Laslett and Brenner, 1989, pp. 382–383), includes a wide range of labour, including supporting and nurturing those who undertake paid work, caring for infant, elderly, sick, and disabled populations (either paid or unpaid), food preparation, and domestic work in the home. Across the globe, women undertake substantially more social reproduction than men, both on a paid and unpaid basis (Rai et al., 2014). The reality of the embodied, vulnerable, and episodically dependent human condition, as described above, means that society could not function without this work. Yet, the state consistently devalues social reproduction, denying its essential nature and society’s reliance upon it. Where it is performed in the context of the private family unit, social reproduction becomes configured as a gendered endeavour – an expectation of the female relational role within the private family unit and lacking any value or recognition beyond this (Fudge, 2005). Even where the worker receives remuneration, caregiving and other social reproduction is regarded as unskilled labour, attracting low pay and often poor or precarious conditions (see Hayes, 2017). Instead, the state organises its institutions, including law, around an artificial image of autonomous liberal personhood, whereby the individual is imagined as rational, self-interested, and economically self-sufficient (Fineman, 2008; Grear, 2013).

I argue in this paper that the pandemic has shattered the illusion of autonomous individualism that underlies the liberal state’s actions. Socially reproductive labour and society’s undeniable reliance on it have come into public view after being concealed for so long. In this sense, an image of an embodied ‘vulnerable subject’ (Fineman, 2010, p. 2) has been forced to the forefront of the public imagination, also revealing the state’s ultimate control (and the individual’s corresponding lack of control) over the production of resilience against vulnerability. However, while this illumination of universal vulnerability has been useful in demonstrating the inadequacies in the liberal theoretical approach that has so long dominated, the global crisis has also had disproportionate adverse effects on those who undertake socially reproductive work. As I argue, it has always been the case that the state’s devaluation and neglect of social reproduction has caused various economic, physical, and emotional harms to those undertaking the work (Gordon-Bouvier, 2019b; Rai et al., 2014). However, the pandemic has had a notably exacerbating effect on these harms, causing intolerable situations that must urgently be redressed by the state.

The outbreak has demonstrated the urgency of a new approach involving a ‘responsive state’ (Fineman, 2010) that places the embodied and relational reality of personhood at its centre and strives to organise its institutions in order to promote resilience. Unfortunately, as I argue, the UK’s response has retained a commitment to the autonomous liberal ideal and has been inadequate and ineffective as a consequence. Despite this, I suggest that the atmosphere of exceptionality and crisis generated by the pandemic has provided a glimmer of hope that a different way forward is possible. In particular, the state’s new willingness to consider non-means tested basic income schemes could be used to improve the conditions of those who perform socially reproductive labour. However, such measures must take care to avoid further perpetuating gender inequalities.

The structure of the paper is as follows. I begin by outlining how the restrained state relies on liberal theoretical conceptions of personhood that regard the individual as self-sufficient and in possession of an invulnerable body. In the second section, I explore how the pandemic has made the illusion of autonomous personhood impossible to maintain and has exposed society’s reliance on socially reproductive work. In the final section, I stress the importance of a genuinely responsive state and outline how, in the UK, the state’s actions in response to the pandemic have unfortunately been hampered by its continued emphasis on the invulnerable body.

The invulnerable liberal body and the restrained state

Western legal and political systems are founded on classical liberal theories of personhood that promote the idea that humans are inherently autonomous, rational, and self-sufficient. ¹ As Fineman argues, the enactment of law and policy and the structuring of the state’s various institutions are carried out with a hypothetical ‘autonomous liberal subject’ in mind (Fineman, 2008). Grear (2013, p. 49) has described this person as ‘a human adult (male) standing in a highly selective relation to developmental time and processes – always paradigmatically fully-formed and functional’. The imagined autonomous liberal subject is constantly at the peak of physical power and independence, ‘its powers and capacities never deteriorating, its body never ageing’ (Gordon-Bouvier, 2019b, p. 169). In addition, liberal theories of personhood idealise and promote a restrained or ‘night-watchman’ state, whose role is confined to protecting and upholding the individual freedoms of its citizens. State interference beyond this, particularly in the form of redistribution of resources across populations, is regarded as an unwarranted encroachment on the liberal subject’s autonomy (see Nozick, 1974).

As vulnerability theorists argue, the autonomous liberal subject’s dominance in law and politics inevitably leads to the marginalisation and stigmatisation of vulnerability and dependency. Within the restrained state, those who cannot conform to the liberal ideal are frequently regarded as having failed to avail themselves of opportunities to become economically self-sufficient (Fineman, 2004). Dependency on the state, whether through welfare benefits or healthcare provision, is viewed with disapproval, often presented as imposing an unacceptable burden on so-called ‘responsible citizens’ (Brown and Baker, 2012). Rather than being recognised as an inherent and inevitable aspect of the human condition, vulnerability under the liberal perspective is depicted as an extraordinary condition that affects only certain designated groups (Fineman, 2013, p. 16). Visible evidence of embodiment, such as disability or old age, is othered, as it threatens the illusion of the autonomous liberal subject’s permanently strong body. The promotion of invulnerability as the norm allows the restrained state to evade responsibility for redressing inequalities. The dominant rhetoric of personal responsibility for one’s own societal position places the blame for hardship squarely on the individual rather than on the state’s unequal distribution of the resources that provide resilience against inherent vulnerability.

The autonomous liberal subject is depicted as atomistic and self-sufficient rather than relational and dependent. The constant cycles of care and social reproduction, essential to sustain and nurture life, are absent from the liberal perspective. As Halewood (1995, p. 1336) argues, ‘liberal rights theory separates itself from the body, basing its universalism on the equality with which it attaches to all legal subjects as abstract wills or personalities, rather than as particularly instantiated or situated bodies’. The human ability to reason and act rationally becomes the primary focus within these theories, with the body being regarded as a mere vessel for the superior mind, or ‘surplus material’ (Halewood, 1995, p. 1337). The liberal perspective also ignores the human body’s complete reliance on its surrounding material and environmental conditions. Without the effective functioning of the natural environment in which it is situated, the fragile human body would very quickly perish. As Grear (2011, p. 40) argues, ‘the interrelational structure of our embodied existence firmly locates us as part of the living order, continuously intimate with its lived, pulsating movements’. ² However, these interconnections between humankind and the natural world are downplayed in liberal theories, often ‘accompanied by disregard for the well-being of the non-human animals and by an exploitative attitude towards the environment’ (Grear, 2011, p. 25).

Covid-19: Shared vulnerability but unequal resilience

As an event, the pandemic has highlighted many of the core tenets of vulnerability theory discussed above. In particular, it has severely undermined the myth of the autonomous liberal subject and instead reinforced the universal and constant nature of embodied vulnerability. The qualities of self-sufficiency and quasi-disembodiment that characterise the autonomous liberal subject, and which have been employed to justify increasingly neoliberal state policies, have been exposed as illusory and hopelessly unrealistic in the face of a virus that strikes down even those who can emulate the economically self-sufficient ideal. Instead, when responding to the pandemic, states have been forced to explicitly acknowledge the universal vulnerability that has hitherto been ignored or concealed. As Jon (2020, p. 334) has noted, ‘[t]he coronavirus…makes our bodies appear at the centre of politics/policy making’. ⁵

While the pandemic has been depicted in public discourses as an unprecedented, ‘black swan’ event, natural and humanitarian disasters are by no means novel phenomena. Poorer nations, usually lacking the medical infrastructure present in this country and the rest of the Global North, have endured disease outbreaks and environmental catastrophes at numerous points in recent history. However, the Covid-19 outbreak is unique in its global reach, making it impossible for even the world’s wealthiest nations to distance themselves from this crisis and cling to capitalist illusions of invincibility. Instead, Covid-19’s spread, across borders and in seeming defiance of any measures to control it, illustrates the reality of human precarity. In an instant, the institutional structures and dominant ideologies that have for centuries been presented as invulnerable and unbreakable, have crumbled and been revealed as illusory. To understand and indeed, to survive, the pandemic’s impacts, it has become clear that state’s must accept the reality of a vulnerable body that is in constant need of care and is dependent upon other humans and its environment for survival and safety.

Importantly, the pandemic has emphasised the social and institutional embeddedness of human nature, as well as the state’s central role in protecting the welfare of its citizens. While liberal theories and neoliberal discourses are based on individualism personal responsibility, it has become abundantly clear that a restrained minimalist night-watchman state is incapable of dealing with the current crisis in any meaningful way. Instead, states have been forced to become more responsive. Illustrating this, when the pandemic broke out in early 2020, the initial official discourse in many countries (including the UK) shifted towards one of care, which can be seen as surprising in view of many decades of neoliberal policies and individualism (see Branicki, 2020). Highlighting awareness of relationality and dependency, we were suddenly urged by officials to take care of others and to avoid actions that would have a detrimental impact on those at higher risk. However, as I discuss below, the initial recognition of relationality has gradually given way to a return to individualism.

While vulnerability is rooted in the ontological body and is therefore universal, societal inequalities result from unequal distribution of resilience across populations (Fineman, 2017). As well as illuminating our shared vulnerability, the pandemic has also laid bare severe inequalities in access to resilience that mean that the pandemic is by no means experienced the same across society. Fineman (2017, p. 146) explains resilience as ‘the critical, yet incomplete solution to our vulnerability’, arguing that ‘[a]lthough nothing can completely mitigate our vulnerability, resilience is what provides an individual with the means and ability to recover from harm, setbacks and the misfortunes that affect our lives’. While vulnerability that results from embodiment is constant and unavoidable, the way it is experienced greatly depends on the individual’s access to a range of social, relational, and material resources. Fineman (2020) stresses that ‘no one is born resilient. Rather, resilience is acquired over time, within social institutions and relationships’.

In the case of the pandemic, it quickly became apparent that the risks and effects of the virus were not being felt equally. While many middle-class workers were able to work relatively comfortably from their homes, thus avoiding much of the risk of being infected, those working performing paid socially reproductive work, such as caring or food distribution, were not afforded this option, as it would have led to societal collapse (see Thomason and Macias-Alonso, 2020). Moreover, UK frontline healthcare workers caring for the sick and dying were not provided with adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) because sufficient levels of such equipment did not exist and could not be manufactured in time. The lack of PPE was a direct consequence of neoliberal state policies that had long prioritised economic growth over personal safety. The daily reports of deaths at the height of the pandemic (the numbers which included several frontline workers) displayed the direct human cost of this mercenary approach. This was not a novel phenomenon either, as neoliberalism and austerity politics have always had brutal effects on marginalised populations. However, these tend to be downplayed or concealed in public discourse, which became much more difficult to do during the pandemic. Analysis of deaths and hospital admissions also revealed that there were disproportionately high numbers among BAME populations. While this may indeed partly have a genetic cause, it also highlighted pre-existing issues of social inequality and unequal access to healthcare and a safe working environment (Bhatia, 2020).

Inequalities in housing and access to space, both of which are influential in terms of how the pandemic is lived, were also exposed. The government discourse around the lockdown period at the outset of the outbreak ubiquitously imagined the home as a place of safety, away from the infection-risk now presented by public spaces. However, for many, the expectation of confinement to the home created intolerable and dangerous conditions. Cramped housing, poverty, and lack of availability of outdoor space meant that, while protecting against Covid-19 infections, lockdowns risked causing or exacerbating other physical and mental health conditions instead (see Mikolai et al., 2020). The state’s depiction of the home as a safe space also ignored realities of domestic abuse, which increased during the lockdown period in a number of countries (Mahase, 2020). The forced closure of a range of facilities and services meant that victims had a greatly decreased support network and little opportunity to escape harmful conditions in the home (Usher et al., 2020). Thus, the lockdown, as it was portrayed by the state, bore little resemblance to the lived reality for those who already lacked resilience-enhancing resources. It also highlighted how differences in levels of resilience, while not eliminating the risk of the virus, substantially affect how an individual experiences the pandemic.

A responsive state? Narratives of heroism and personal responsibility

Vulnerability theory mandates that the state must respond to vulnerability by organising its institutions in such a way as to build resilience. While, as discussed above, the pandemic has meant that the reality of universal vulnerability can no longer be concealed or ignored to the extent that it previously has, the extent of state responsiveness across the globe has been variable. My analysis in this section focuses on the UK, where I argue that the state has missed an opportunity to become responsive by refusing to abandon the familiar liberal principles of self-sufficiency and state restraint. Nonetheless, I argue that there are also reasons to be optimistic that the pandemic can bring about genuine change in respect of valuing social reproduction and increasing the resilience of those who undertake it, as the climate of exceptionality surrounding the crisis has resulted in a forced expansion of the parameters of state responses.

When responding to the pandemic, the UK government has continued to promote liberal individualism and myths of invulnerability. For example, it has frequently invoked images of battle and warfare, positing the virus as an enemy of humanity that must be defeated (Gillis, 2020). As Branicki (2020) has argued, this reflects a masculine and aggressive approach to crisis management, which ‘tends to be conceptualized as a rational and linear process which follows discrete stages of signal detection, preparation/prevention, containment, recovery and learning’. Additionally, as Gillis (2020, p. 2) points out, military metaphors carry ‘strong historical resonance and immense emotional power and can accordingly function as a linguistic device that makes it difficult to question governments’ responses and responsibility’. By relying on war imagery, the UK has portrayed the virus as an extraordinary and temporary threat that must be conquered before life can resume ‘as normal’. As I have argued throughout this paper, this characterisation is inaccurate. The pandemic, through its global reach, has merely highlighted the existing reality of universal human vulnerability and the body’s dependence on relational and institutional networks, as well as its environmental surroundings. Nor is the virus likely to simply ‘go away’, allowing the illusion of individualistic autonomy and state restraint to be resumed. As the months stretch on and new waves of infections loom, it is becoming clear that this is not a battle that will be easily won. Even though there are reasons to be optimistic about the global vaccination efforts to date, the threat of future pandemics and vaccine-resistant strains will still exist after Covid-19 has subsided. Instead of pursuing the hopeless task of eliminating vulnerability by ‘defeating enemies’, the state needs to focus on structuring itself to ensure equitable distribution of resilience-enhancing resources across populations.

The UK’s approach to social reproduction during the pandemic also highlights a refusal to fully recognise the reality of vulnerability and dependency. The pandemic highlighted society’s direct reliance on socially reproductive work for its effective function. While social reproduction workers, such as nurses and carers, have always been undervalued and underpaid by the state, their status was suddenly elevated in the media and in political discourse to that of ‘heroes’ (Cox, 2020). Echoing the battle metaphors discussed above, those care and public sector workers who lost their lives to the virus were presented as if they were fallen war dead who had sacrificed their lives to their country (Benziman, 2020). The rhetoric of heroism sought to obscure the fact that their deaths largely resulted from unsafe working conditions, lack of PPE, and an absence of choice over attending work, due to inadequate economic support from the state. It also demonstrated the state’s direct reliance on the affection and moral duty that many caregivers have for those they care for. Emotion is capitalised upon to downplay the value of care and other socially reproductive work. Legal and political discourses grounded in liberal individualism characterise caregiving as ideally altruistic, despite the enormous economic value its performance confers on society (Sloan, 2012). This reliance on altruism was also evident in the national weekly round of applause for the ‘NHS heroes’ who were ‘keeping us safe’ when the reality was that they were working in a system that was woefully underfunded and under strained and sometimes intolerable conditions, as a result of decades of government cuts. This illustrates Fineman’s (2011) argument that state institutions, as well as individuals, are vulnerable. In its refusal to acknowledge the reality of the human condition, the restrained state has created institutions that are unable to withstand this crisis. Yet, through the language of heroism, and sacrifice described above, the state was able to obscure its own failures.

Although at the outset of the pandemic, the public discourse in many countries, including the UK, was punctuated by a new sense of solidarity and collectivism – that we were ‘all in this together’ (see Coulter, 2020), this has increasingly given way to the more utilitarian argument that some human lives may need to be sacrificed in order to keep the economy from collapsing (see van Uden and van Houtum, 2020). This narrative draws clear distinctions between ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ bodies, marginalising and stigmatising the latter and viewing them as direct obstacles to economic progress. As it became clear that biological factors such as age and sex were relevant indicators of mortality from the virus (Petrilli et al., 2020), lines were drawn between those who had ‘vulnerable bodies’ and those that did not. The reporting of deaths and hospital admissions in the media made frequent reference to the presence of underlying health conditions among victims that could have contributed to the outcome. This reinforced the notion of a strong, young, and healthy body as the norm, reflecting the qualities possessed by the quasi-disembodied autonomous liberal subject discussed above.

This othering of bodies that do not conform to the liberal ideal was particularly prevalent in respect of the elderly population. Whereas ageing is an inherent and unavoidable component of the human condition, the discussion of elderly bodies and their perceived susceptibility to the virus, marked them out as being contrary to the norm. Government suggestions that the elderly should continue self-isolate while lockdown was eased for younger people also added to the sense of marginalisation and discrimination (see Proctor, 2020). This is strongly indicative of the liberal tendency to view embodied vulnerability as an extraordinary rather than universal phenomenon, restricted to narrowly defined groups (Fineman, 2013). However, the seemingly neat, utilitarian solution of only isolating those bodies regarded as vulnerable fails to acknowledge the extent to which ‘low risk’ individuals are also embedded in relational networks with those who are a higher risk. For instance, while children are the least likely of any age group to suffer adverse effects from the virus, their parents may be reliant on childcare provided by grandparents, enabling the parents to undertake paid work. In fact, the state’s privatisation of caregiving and the absence of an effective and affordable childcare scheme means that these informal relationships are particularly crucial to the function of the economy, and will mean that measures aimed solely at ‘the vulnerable’ are likely to be ineffective.

The notion of individual blame has also emerged within the public discourse, with people being stigmatised for risky behaviour and presented as having brought risk upon themselves. An example is the UK government’s declaration of a ‘war on obesity’, which encourages people to ‘lose weight to beat Covid-19 and protect the NHS’ (Department of Health and Social Care, 2020). This again is framed in the language of personal responsibility, with the insinuation that complications from the virus arise due to unhealthy choices made by individuals. It also reveals a strong narrative of state restraint, seen in the suggestion that taking personal responsibility will ‘save the NHS’. This falsely implies that the functioning and resourcing of the health service is something that lies within individual rather than state control. As is becoming increasingly apparent, the state must abandon this reliance on liberal principles if it wishes to effectively deal with the current crisis.

Conclusion

The global Covid-19 crisis lends itself particularly well to a vulnerability theory analysis. The inescapable reality of universal embodied vulnerability has been laid bare and states, in responding to the crisis, have had to confront this. While the pandemic has been labelled as unprecedented in public discourses, it has merely exacerbated and revealed problems and inequalities that already existed, but which were concealed behind a rhetoric that promoted individualism and self-sufficiency. As I have argued in this article, the outbreak has highlighted the extent of the state’s reliance on social reproduction (both paid and unpaid), which has always been gendered and devalued – much of it hidden within the home. The lockdowns that were imposed in the UK and elsewhere involved spatial and temporal shifts that rendered socially reproductive work more visible, but which also created often-intolerable situations of trying to balance various responsibilities. The unequal gendered division of social reproduction within society means these difficulties have affected women more than men.

As I have argued, it is important that the state responds to vulnerability, building institutions that can create resilience rather than exacerbating inequalities, as they currently do. The pandemic exposed the fictitious and fragile nature of the autonomous liberal subject that underlies much of law and policy. In view of this, it is disappointing that the state response in the UK still tries to uphold principles of liberal individualism and state restraint, especially through the othering of bodies that do not conform to the invulnerable ideal and the promotion of caregivers as ‘heroes’. Despite this, the pandemic has created an unprecedented opportunity to bring about more radical change than has been possible in the past, especially in terms of increasing resilience for social reproduction workers. The air of exceptionality and urgency surrounding the crisis means that states are more receptive to new approaches, including traditionally socialist initiatives such as basic income schemes. Basic income has long been suggested as a solution to the problem of devaluation of social reproduction in the home, and the current climate could help in making this a reality. However, basic income can only form one part of the state’s response, which must reconfigure social reproduction as an essential consequence of the human condition and, therefore, a collective responsibility.