ABSTRACT
A whole series of questions—the nature of ideology, the sociology of education, the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy—had by the mid 1970s been re-worked as problems of social reproduction, the reproduction of the relations of production, even ‘relations of reproduction’. It is an intellectual response, shaped by a particular sociological and political tradition, to a definite problem. To account for the reproduction of the relations of production, Althusser sets about reformulating the marxist theory of the state and ideology. The rise of reproduction theory in socialist discussions of education has been exactly matched by a loss of political confidence in what radical activity can do. It is striking how reproduction theorists, dealing with the apparently placid course of daily life, are led to use the language of force. The prospect of liberation indeed looks longer, messier, more mundane: more gritting of teeth, washing of dishes and sitting through committees; and rather less in the way of manifesto and satori.
