In the introductory chapter I outlined my working definition of state-led marketization, as one way to apprehend how states are involved in the active construction of markets to solve social problems. Moving forward, this chapter will develop a framework through which to explore state-led marketization in action, drawing on the conceptual language of a broader social science literature called the Social Studies of Marketization (SSM) (Callon, 2007a; Muniesa et al, 2007; Berndt and Boeckler, 2012). This work, largely housed in the domains of cultural economy, economic sociology and economic geography, seeks to take markets as an object of study, paying analytical attention to the everyday, mundane practices and objects which are involved in their construction. While care markets have not tended to be a focus of research in this field, with commodity and financial markets dominating analyses, I suggest that SSM offers a conceptually sophisticated language to open the black box of childcare, and other care markets, to more engaged scrutiny. Bringing the literature on childcare markets into conversation with the insights of SSM, this chapter will lay out an alternative approach which seeks to better account for the dynamic and often unseen work involved in their creation. In doing so I will move from a critique of markets as an ideology or ‘handmaiden’ of neoliberalism as outlined in Chapter 1, to markets as an object of study in their own right.

A central aim of this book is to explore the changing relationship of the state vis-a-vis the organization, regulation and delivery of childcare in neoliberal contexts. This chapter will provide further background for this aim, by outlining the fundamental critiques of marketized childcare and the role of the state within these conversations. In the process I will consider why many argue that childcare should be organized and provided as a public good. Common to much of this literature has been a desire to explicitly address the ongoing devaluation of childcare under neoliberal forms of governance, whereby care has become viewed as an individualistic, commodified and privatized experience purchased through the market (Pratt, 2003; Press and Woodrow, 2005; Gallagher, 2018b).