Between economics and the feminist criticism of “rationality”: an overview of home economics courses in Brazil

• Main Author: Elaine da Silveira Leite
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina 2016-11-01
• Series: Política & Sociedade
• Subjects: economia; economia doméstica; crítica feminista; sociologia econômica; racionalidade
• Online Access: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/politica/article/view/47769

From the perspective of economic sociology, which considers the economy to be a result of social constructs shaped by ethical, religious, moral and cultural principles, this article seeks to outline a portrait of the emergence and decadence of home economics schools, undergraduate courses and manuals in Brazil, correlating them with the waves of the feminist movement. In particular, we will highlight the growing field of studies on feminist criticism of economy, which comes forth as a direct criticism of mainstream economics, intending to deconstruct the idea of the homo oeconomicus from neoclassical theory. Thereby, this research seeks to show that, along these courses’s production of knowledge, there has been an obscuring of economic activities that involve the domestic and intimate environments, “symbolically” naturalizing the attribution of rational actions to men.