Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction / Edition 1

by Faye D. Ginsburg, Rayna Rapp

Overview

This groundbreaking volume provides a dramatic investigation of the dynamics of reproduction. In an unusually broad spectrum of essays, a distinguished group of international feminist scholars and activists explores the complexity of contemporary sexual politics around the globe. Using reproduction as an entry point in the study of social life and placing it at the center of social theory, the authors examine how cultures are produced, contested, and transformed as people imagine their collective future in the creation of the next generation.

The studies encompass a wide variety of subjects, from the impact of AIDS on reproduction in the United States to the aftereffects of Chernobyl on the Sami people in Norway and the impact of totalitarian abortion and birth control policies in Romania and China. The contributors use historical and comparative perspectives to illuminate the multiple and intersecting forms of power and resistance through which reproduction is given cultural weight and social form. They discuss the ways that seemingly distant influences shape and constrain local reproductive experiences such as the international flows of adoptive babies and childcare workers and the Victorian and imperial legacy of eugenics and family planning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520089143
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	07/31/1995
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	450
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Faye D. Ginsburg is Associate Professor of Anthropology at New York University and the author of Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community (California, 1989). Rayna Rapp is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Graduate Program in Gender Studies and Feminist Theory at the New School for Social Research.

Table of Contents

PREFACE
1. Introduction: Conceiving the New World Order
Faye D. Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp

ONE • THE POLITICS OF BIRTH/CONTROL
2. A Surfeit of Bodies: Population and the Rationality of the State
in Post-Mao China
Ann Anagnost
3· Modern Bodies, Modern Minds: Midwifery and Reproductive Change
in an African American Community
Gertrude]. Fraser
4· Irniktakpunga!: Sex Determination and the Inuit Struggle
for Birthing Rights in Northern Canada
John D. O'Neil and Patricia Leyland Kaufert

TWO • STRATIFIED REPRODUCTION
5· "Like a Mother to Them": Stratified Reproduction and West Indian
Childcare Workers and Employers in New York
Shellee Colen
6. On the Outside Looking In: The Politics of Lesbian Motherhood
Ellen Lewin
7· Households Headed by Women: The Politics of Race, Class, and Gender
Leith Mullings
8. Early Childbearing: What Is the Problem and Who Owns It?
Martha C. Ward

THREE • RETHINKING DEMOGRAPHY, BIOLOGY,
AND SOCIAL POLICY
g. Deadly Reproduction among Egyptian Women: Maternal Mortality
and the Medicalization of Population Control
Soheir A. Morsy
10. Coitus Interruptus and Family Respectability in Catholic Europe:
A Sicilian Case Study
Peter Schneider and Jane Schneider
11. Women's Reproductive Practices and Biomedicine:
Cultural Conflicts and Transformations in Nigeria
Tala Olu Pearce

FOUR • DISASTROUS CIRCUMSTANCES AND
REPRODUCTIVE CONSEQUENCES
12. National Honor and Practical Kinship: Unwanted Women and Children
Veena Das
13. Political Demography: The Banning of Abortion in Ceausescu's Romania
Gail Kligman
14. From Reproduction to HIV: Blurring Categories, Shifting Positions
Emily Martin
15. Physical and Cultural Reproduction
in a Post-Chernobyl Norwegian Sami Community
Sharon Stephens

FIVE • WHAT'S SO NEW ABOUT THE NEW
REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES?
16. Public Servants, Professionals, and Feminists:
The Politics of Contraceptive Research in Brazil
Carmen Barroso and Sonia Correa
17. The Normalization of Prenatal Diagnostic Screening
Carole H. Browner and Nancy Ann Press
18. Postmodern Procreation: A Cultural Account of Assisted Reproduction
Sarah Franklin
19. Displacing Knowledge: Technology and the Consequences for Kinship
Marilyn Strathern

SIX • WHAT'S POLITICAL ABOUT REPRODUCTION?
20. Interrogating the Concept of Reproduction in the Eighteenth Century
Ludmillajordanova
21. The Body as Property: A Feminist Re-vision
Rosalind Pollack Petchesky
22. Reassessing Reproduction in Social Theory
Annette B. Weiner
23. Misreading Darwin on Reproduction:
Reductionism in Evolutionary Theory
Adrienne L. Zihlman

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Editorial Reviews

Feminist scholars and activists explore contemporary sexual politics around the globe, using reproduction as an opening to investigate women's social life. The 23 essays consider the impact of AIDS in the US, Chernobyl among the Sami people of Scandinavian, totalitarian abortion and birth-control policies in Romania and China, and other conditions affecting the production of the next culture. No index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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