Work

Milking the Labor of Suri Rumah : A Case Study on Farm Fresh

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This article undertakes a case study on Farm Fresh, a home-grown dairy company embedded within state capital in Malaysia. The case study centers the life stories of suri rumah (housewives) incorporated into the company’s supply chain as home dealers and their bodily and emotional depletion brought about by capitalist extraction. Empirical insights from the case study contribute to the call to pluralize social reproduction approaches, foregrounding contextual meanings while accounting for how domestic labor in the Global South is differentially incorporated into the networks of global accumulation. To provide a more complex understanding of reproductive labor and its relationship with paid labor, this article approaches the racialized-gendered location of suri rumah as an alternative site for theoretical and empirical reflections. Social reproduction is situated within the broader coloniality of milk in Malaysia, and the processes of value extraction are moored to the developmental state project of racial and gender restructuring.

Source: Social Politics International Studies in Gender State & Society

DOI: 10.1093/sp/jxaf059

Author: Christopher Choong

Institution: University of Warwick

Language: English

Topic: Political Economy and Marxism

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Decent work and economic growth, Zero hunger, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,631