OrientationObservationIn-depth interviewsDocument analysis and semiologyConversation and discourse analysisSecondary Data
SurveysExperimentsEthicsResearch outcomes
Conclusion
Christine Delphy's (1978) analysis of housework provides an example of critical social research from a feminist tradition. It also shows that critical social research does not solely deal with total systems such as the nature of capitalist economy.
Delphy argues that conventional sociological approaches to examining housework start from the taken-for-granted view that housework is simply a set of specified tasks undertaken in the home, such as cooking, cleaning, ironing, doing the laundry and washing up. She argues that specifying housework in this way reflects the theoretical interpretations that are applied to it.
For example, she refers to the debate, which was topical at the time, that those people who do the housework, mainly women, should be paid a wage. Despite being a feminist, she basically disagrees with this position because, she argues, it misses the point. Similarly, she disagrees with the contrary view that housework is essentially 'free' because, when it is done within the family setting, it is an activity that does not pass through the market. (This does not include the situation where someone pays an outsider to do the housework for them). If there is no buying and selling of housework within the family then it is an activity without exchange value.
Delphy's view is that these two debates miss the point because they see housework as a set of tasks. In the same way as Marx had done in his analysis of money, Delphy argued that housework might appear to be a concrete activity but is actually an abstraction because it, too, concealed relations of production and exchange.
Delphy started by asking what was fundamental about housework. The answer was not that it is a set of 'everyday' activities that take place in the home. On the contrary, what is fundamental to housework is a relationship of production. Housework is done by someone for someone else.
Delphy approached this as follows. First she demonstrated that 'payment' and 'remuneration' are not the same. Productive work that one does for oneself does not need payment because the product is itself the remuneration. You get your own benefit for what you do for yourself and do not need paying for it. If the productive work was not done by oneself then, assuming it was required, someone else would have to be paid for doing it. For example, baking and consuming ones own bread is still remunerated through the consumption of the bread. It makes no sense to suggest that the work, as housework, should be paid for as well.
Thus not all 'unpaid' work is free. The only 'free' work is when there is no remuneration, that is when the labourer receives neither payment in exchange for the labour nor payment in the form of self-consumption. In short, when the work is done for someone else.
This is the basis of housework, it is unremunerated work done by one family member (the wife in patriarchal families) for other family members. Thus housework is not a set of discrete tasks but 'all the work done unpaid for others within the confines of the household or family' (Delphy, 1985, p. 90).
Delphy's analysis illustrates how critical social research takes an empty abstract concept (housework) and shows that it represents a historically-specific idea that operates within specific relationships within a social structure: in this case the patriarchal family. By deconstructing the concept of housework and showing that it is not just a 'set of tasks' but a relationship of production it reveals the nature of patriarchal exploitation inherent in the abstract concept. It thus provides an alternative way to reconstruct an understanding of housework.
