its importance to the economy. Withinmarx-
ism, domestic labour is seen as necessary to the
social reproductionthat supports and sus-
tains economic production; periodically,marx-
ist geographershave had to be reminded of
this importance (Mitchell, Marston and Katz,
2004). Other attempts to bring domestic
labour within theeconomy– to make it more
visible and highlight its value – have included
‘wages for housework’ campaigns, and efforts
to include questions about domestic labour on
questionnairesrelated to nationalcensuses.
The latter allow the extent and worth of such
labour to be measured and potentially figured
into calculations of national economic activity,
such asgross national product(Domosh
and Seager, 2001, p. 45). Cameron and
Gibson-Graham (2003) argue that the second
set of strategies (which they characterize as
‘adding on’ and ‘counting in’) ‘fall short of
generating a feminist politics of transform-
ation’ (p. 151), because they seek to include
domestic labour within existing ways of think-
ing about the economy, rather than using
domestic labour as a vehicle for thinking
about the economy differently. Rather than
incorporating domestic labour into a broader
conception of the capitalist economy, these
authors urge that domestic labour be
rethought within a diverse economy of
market/non-market, paid/unpaid,capitalist/
non-capitalist relations. England and Lawson
(2005) caution that the category itself main-
tains troubling conceptual borders by reinfor-
cing a distinction between domestic and other
kinds of work. gp
Suggested reading
Domosh and Seager (2001).
domestication The process by which plant
oranimalspecies are reshaped through the
social and economic uses to which they are
put by humansocietiesin particular cultural
and historical contexts. As this implies, human
societies have altered the genetic composition
of plants and animals by influencing their
reproduction and life histories so as to make
them better fitted to human needs and designs
(see Clutton-Brock, 1999). In his theory of
evolution, Darwin (1998 [1868]) called this
process ‘artificial’ (as opposed to ‘natural’)
selection and illustrated it with the example
of pigeon-fanciers (see darwinism). Some
domesticated species and organisms can
become adapted to the point of dependency
on human relations – for example, garden
plants and companion animals or agricultural
crops and livestock – and would have difficulty
surviving outside of that domesticated context.
Domestication is strongly bound up with the
centrality of cultivation to Western ideas of
civilizationand the advancement of human
societies from thestate of nature. Here, the
process of domestication is understood as con-
sequential not only in terms of altering the
physiognomy of plants and animals, but also
the sociocultural practices of what is taken
to define human beings (Anderson, 1997).
The historical realization of these ideas in the
political and legal practices ofcolonialism
finds echoes in those of thepost-colonial
present through the persistent imperatives of
the scientific management and technological
improvement in the efficiency and productivity
ofnatural resources. In an era ofbiotech-
nology, this historical legacy informs new
geopoliticalinvestments in the meaning and
practice of domestication. In forums such as
the Food and Agriculture Organization and
theworld trade organization, for example,
Western countries have asserted claims to
intellectual property rightsin biological
resources on the basis of scientific interven-
tions in what are presented as previously ‘nat-
ural’ materials (seepatenting). By contrast,
countries in the globalsouthhave sought to
assert the claims of farmers and indigenous
peoples to equivalent rights in recognition of
their transformative ecological relations with
plants and animals time-out-of-mind. swSuggested reading
Harlan (1995).domesticity Home life and home-making
practices within and beyond the household
and/or family. Closely tied to understandings
ofhome, house andhousehold, domesticity
encompasses paid and unpaid domestic work
(including cooking, cleaning and caring; see
domestic labour), the home life of people
who live alone or with others, and a wider
sense of what is familiar and homely rather
than ‘foreign’ and unhomely. The study of
domesticity dates back to attempts to formal-
ize, rationalize and teach its principles from
the mid-nineteenth century. Within geog-
raphy, the work of feminist geographers has
been particularly influential in studying
domesticity since the 1970s (see feminist
geographies). In their analysis of social
reproduction within the domestic sphere,
socialist feminists have explored the ways in
which domesticity, as a site of contested and
unequal gender relations, is inseparably boundGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_D Final Proof page 171 1.4.2009 3:15pmDOMESTICITY