Social reproduction is a contested field, not automatic habit

Evidence

This trifold theory of reproduction allows us to locate culture at the heart of economics. If we understand societies as composed, fundamentally, of patterns of reproduction, then patterns are always under negotiation, always changing, and are made up of uncountable individual actions that either reinforce or challenge (in subtle and blatant ways) that reproduction of the status quo. Reproduction in this sense does not refer to an automatic, unthinking, agentless process by which humans, drone-like, rehearse their social life in their habituated fashion. Reproduction at all three levels is a field of contestation, refusal, negotiation, compromise and experimentation. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 120

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines reproduction as willed contestation and negotiation, directly countering the ‘drone-like habit’ misreading.
• XREF: This is the linchpin that lets Haiven move from material base to culture/fiction - exactly the move deWaard’s cultural argument builds on. — connects to: Social systems reproduce through self-referential communication, not individual will — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 20; Culture spans everyday social reproduction and aesthetic practice as one contested process — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 114; Financialization is a contested terrain of conflicting reproduction cycles, not a top-down imposition — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 130 (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that reproduction is ‘sublime’ and beyond imaginative comprehension, so we need social fictions to grasp it, is the dense theoretical pivot that licenses the whole book’s cultural method.

Broader Connections

• Culture spans everyday social reproduction and aesthetic practice as one contested process #qualifies (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 114
• Social systems reproduce through self-referential communication, not individual will #expands (0.78) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 20