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

Abstract

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.