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  • The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency
  • Karla B. Hackstaff
The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency By Martha Albertson Fineman The New Press, 2004. 387 pages. $25.95 (cloth), $18.95 (paper)

In an era when "the autonomy myth" is proliferating – most recently, through the promotion of "personal or private accounts" for Social Security – this is a timely, important, and ambitious book. Fineman is concerned about our collective failure to take responsibility for those in need and their caretakers, because of a simplistic grasp of autonomy that undermines substantive equality. Although "family" is missing from the title, this book pivots on a comprehensive redefinition of family that would require structural realignments among family, state, and market. Toward that end she not only critiques current ideologies and arrangements, but also proposes a "theory of dependency." As she states in the introduction: "the theory of dependency I set forth develops a claim of 'right' or entitlement to support and accommodation from the state and its institutions on the part of caretakers – those who care for dependents." (p. xv)

She illustrates how our current ideologies and institutions thwart our ability to provide substantive equality to people, partly because current law and social policy delegate care to the "marital couple" family. As Fineman explains, our practice has been to privatize our collective responsibility for care; given changes in both social and family structures, however, the married couple family is decreasingly able to provide it such care. This paradigm has been justified by a concept of autonomy, which denies how dependency is a universal and inevitable condition and overlooks how we all benefit from the caretaking labor of others. In spite of our illusions to the contrary, Fineman argues that we are all, at some point, either subject to dependency or the derivative dependency that caretaking entails. Thus, we need an alternative paradigm. Her theory of dependency compels a redefinition of family from the 'marital couple' form to its 'caretaking' function and alters our understanding of what individuals and institutions owe to one another in a society.

The book is organized in four parts – with Part One and Part Four being most significant in this reader's view. The first two chapters provide a critical analysis of "foundational myths" that inform our conception of society in the United States, including our notions of autonomy, equality and "private and public" spheres. She reveals how these notions have regularly obscured the universal fact of human dependence and prevented remedies for injustice. Here, she anticipates key changes in reinterpreting these core concepts, and anticipates the significant institutional overhaul required to attain substantive rather than formal equality. This part of the book is truly compelling – particularly her argument concerning the "social debt" we owe to caretakers, without whom our society would collapse. [End Page 605]

The next two parts do present arguments essential to her creative reconfiguration of institutional relations; yet they were experienced as a detour by this reader. Part Two encompasses an overview – which provides especially helpful diagrams of alternative ways of viewing the relationships between family, state and society – and three chapters that address existing institutional arrangements. Chapter three provides an indispensable analysis of the privileging of marriage, through law and policy; she reveals how citizens require the mediating institution of the marital family to gain access to an array of social benefits. In the process, she refutes those who insist on marriage as the lynchpin of social stability. Her proposal to eliminate marriage as the symbolic and legal center of family is her most radical idea, given current social discourse. Yet it follows from her argument that function, not form, should be the basis for supporting caretaking units. Chapters four and five might have been easily condensed, partly due to some redundancy, referencing back and forth to other areas of the book, and since social and legal history of the family are covered elsewhere. In Part three she cogently argues that feminists have underestimated the need to substantially transform institutions to yield gender equality in families and work.

In Part Four, this reader was reinvigorated by her return to how we might socially reconfigure the relationships between family, market, and state as...

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