ABSTRACT
The household provides a critical site to observe the dialectic relationship between micro-and macro levels of society. Historically critiqued for its encapsulation of the devalued nature of women's contribution to society, this social space is integrally connected to the feminized construction of household labor to reproduce daily life. Central to this study, when the private household becomes a public labor site, severe race, class, and global location divides manifest in addition to the reinforcement of traditional assumptions about "women's work." Furthermore, this private space encapsulates the systematic dependency on women's labor central to the emerging patterns of globalization, thereby becoming a microcosm of international relations (Chin 1998). As Ling (2002) contends, micro social relations in the household are directly connected to world relations, just as global processes continually reshape the most private interactions. This chapter begins by mapping these dialectic processes that inform our investigation of the institution of paid domestic labor as a critical social space that encapsulates race, class, gender and national divides within the private sphere. The particular salience of paid household labor in the South African context is then discussed at length to situate this study and illustrate its complex meaning in a society transitioning from apartheid to democracy.
