The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania / Edition 1

by Gail Kligman

Overview

The political hypocrisy and personal horrors of one of the most repressive anti-abortion regimes in history came to the world's attention soon after the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Photographs of orphans with vacant eyes, sad faces, and wasted bodies circled the globe, as did alarming maternal mortality statistics and heart-breaking details of a devastating infant AIDS epidemic. Gail Kligman's chilling ethnography—of the state and of the politics of reproduction—is the first in-depth examination of this extreme case of political intervention into the most intimate aspects of everyday life.

Ceausescu's reproductive policies, among which the banning of abortion was central, affected the physical and emotional well-being not only of individual men, women, children, and families but also of society as a whole. Sexuality, intimacy, and fertility control were fraught with fear, which permeated daily life and took a heavy moral toll as lying and dissimulation transformed both individuals and the state. This powerful study is based on moving interviews with women and physicians as well as on documentary and archival material. In addition to discussing the social implications and human costs of restrictive reproductive legislation, Kligman explores the means by which reproductive issues become embedded in national and international agendas. She concludes with a review of the lessons the rest of the world can learn from Romania's tragic experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520210752
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	07/06/1998
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	350
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 8.75(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Gail Kligman is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics, and Popular Culture in Transylvania (California, 1988).

Table of Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LIST OF TABLES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTE ON DIACRITICS 
INTRODUCTION: POLITICS, REPRODUCTION,AND DUPLICITY 
1. Building Socialism in Ceausescu's Romania:Politics as Performance 
2. Legislating Reproduction under Socialism 
3· "Protecting" Women, Children, and the Family 
4· Institutionalizing Political Demography: The Medicalization of Repression 
5· Spreading the Word-Propaganda 
6. Bitter Memories:The Politics of Reproduction in Everyday Life 
7· Legacies of Political Demography 
8. Coercion and Reproductive Politics:Lessons from Romania 
APPENDIX: COURT CASES 
NOTES 
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 
INDEX 

What People are Saying About This

Henry P. David

"Tis timely analysis of the Orwellian tragedy of Ceausescu's Romania is superbly researched -- a cross-disciplinary contribution...thta in places almost reads like a novel." -- Author of Born Unwanted