The Pandemic and the Fights Over How to Manage It

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The current pandemic and the fights over how to manage it, they're all fights over social reproduction. Even as we see workers shortages in key carrying economy sectors, health care, education, those workers get sick or burn out. We haven't yet seen up politics, i guess, like uniting domestic and waged care workers. There's no version of that critique that you can articulate that is compatible with the democratic party andd its allies.

Historian Gabriel Winant discusses The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America. It's a fascinating study of the emergence of the service sector and a new working class out of the wreckage of deindustrialization through the story of the rise and fall of unionized steel in Pittsburgh and its replacement by a massive hospital industry. Listen to my past interview with Winant on the social worlds that make US politics and how that sociality is rooted in the economy, carceral state, social media, religion, and more thedigradio.com/podcast/the-social-question-with-gabriel-winant Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet, by David Carlin and Nicole Walker rosemetalpress.com/books/the-after-normal