ANTH/WMNS 326 Cross cultural families and households
17 Mar.: The state: fertility, population control
Required readings: Feldman-Savelsberg, Pamela, Flavien T. Ndonko and Bergis Schmidt-Ehry (2000) "Sterilizing Vaccines or the Politics of the Womb: Retrospective Study of a Rumor in Cameroon." Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 14(2):159-179. Anthrosource. http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/pdfplus/10.1525/maq.2000.14.2.159
Krause, Elizabeth L and Milena Marchesi (2007) "Fertility Politics as ‘Social Viagra’: Reproducing Boundaries, Social Cohesion, and Modernity in Italy." American Anthropologist. 109(2):350-362. Anthrosource. http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/pdfplus/10.1525/aa.2007.109.2.350
What is the role of the state in individual decisions about fertility?
- last week we explored cultural factors that affect fertility, especially in the context of NRTs; we also hinted at some economic factors, with respect to the industries that develop and market NRTs
- now we explore how people’s experiences of state power and state policy interact with how they reproduce and think about reproduction.
- societies usually have ways of controlling or promoting fertility, whether they are small scale societies or large states
- anthropological analyses have usually been cultural ecological, linking strategies to promote or control birth rates according to the carrying capacity of the land, given the technology
Feldman-Savelsberg, Pamela, Flavien T. Ndonko and Bergis Schmidt-Ehry:
- how to understand young women’s resistance to an anti-tetanus vaccine in Cameroon in 1990
- what was the anti-tetanus campaign trying to accomplish?
- who was being targeted for vaccination?
- how did they respond? what rumours circulated?
- what is the history of vaccination in Cameroon?
- what was the Cameroonian political and economic context within which the campaign took place? how does this relate to the importance people place on fertility?
- they refer to this case as revealing a "politics of the womb"
Krause, Elizabeth L and Milena Marchesi
- how to understand two apparently contradictory Italian state policies: one which is pronatalist in offering a baby bonus and the other which is anti-natalist in severely restricting which NRTs can be used and under what circumstances
- what is the history of state views about family size in Italy? How does this relate to Italy’s place in the world?
- how do Italians view family?
- given low fertility rates, how are these framed at the European Union and in Italy?
- what do Krause and Marchesi say is really underlying Italy’s two policies?