ABSTRACT
Sidney Mintz's discussion of chattel slavery in the Caribbean was among the first texts to use the theoretical framework of Wallerstein's world-systems analysis in order to explain the persistence of non-wage forms of labour control in the capitalist world-economy. In spite of the substantial modifications and significant methodological corrections they operated on Marx's theory of capitalism, both the world-systems and the feminist subsistence approach viewed the Marxian account of the polarisation of capitalist classes as essentially correct. The creation of the housewife as a systematic and historically specific process characteristic of capitalist development thus turned out to be the common denominator of both instances of sexual division of labour the Western European and the non-European one. By highlighting the phenomenon of bourgeoisification, world-systems analysts did not claim that it was the central process in the capitalist world-economy, as subsistence theorists did for housewifisation.
