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Book Cover
E-book
Author Briggs, Laura, 1964- author.

Title Reproducing empire : race, sex, science, and U.S. imperialism in Puerto Rico / Laura Briggs
Published Berkeley : University of California Press, ©2002

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 278 pages) : illustrations, maps
Series American crossroads ; 11
American crossroads ; 11
Contents Acknowledgments; INTRODUCTION: Colonialism: Familiar Territory; 1. Sexuality, Medicine, and Imperialism: The International Traffic in Prostitution Policy; 2. Sex and Citizenship: The Politics of Prostitution in Puerto Rico, 1898-1918; 3. Debating Reproduction: Birth Control, Eugenics, and Overpopulation in Puerto Rico, 1920-1940; 4. Demon Mothers in the Social Laboratory: Development, Overpopulation, and "the Pill," 1940-1960; 5. The Politics of Sterilization, 1937-1974; 6. "I like to be in America": Postwar Puerto Rican Migration, the Culture of Poverty, and the Moynihan Report
EPILOGUE: Ghosts, Cyborgs, and Why Puerto Rico Is the Most Important Place in the WorldNotes; Bibliography; Index
Summary Annotation Original and compelling, Laura Briggs'sReproducing Empireshows how, for both Puerto Ricans and North Americans, ideologies of sexuality, reproduction, and gender have shaped relations between the island and the mainland. From science to public policy, the "culture of poverty" to overpopulation, feminism to Puerto Rican nationalism, this book uncovers the persistence of concerns about motherhood, prostitution, and family in shaping the beliefs and practices of virtually every player in the twentieth-century drama of Puerto Rican colonialism. In this way, it sheds light on the legacies haunting contemporary debates over globalization. Puerto Rico is a perfect lens through which to examine colonialism and globalization because for the past century it has been where the United States has expressed and fine-tuned its attitudes toward its own expansionism. Puerto Rico's history holds no simple lessons for present-day debate over globalization but does unearth some of its history. Reproducing Empiresuggests that interventionist discourses of rescue, family, and sexuality fueled U.S. imperial projects and organized American colonialism. Through the politics, biology, and medicine of eugenics, prostitution, and birth control, the United States has justified its presence in the territory's politics and society. Briggs makes an innovative contribution to Puerto Rican and U.S. history, effectively arguing that gender has been crucial to the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico, and more broadly, to U.S. expansion elsewhere
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-266) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Birth control -- Puerto Rico -- History
Sterilization (Birth control) -- Puerto Rico -- History
Prostitution -- Puerto Rico -- History
Prostitution -- History
Puerto Ricans -- United States.
Family planning services.
Medical policy.
Prostitution.
Sterilization.
Family Planning Services
Colonialism
Health Policy
Sex Work
Sterilization
Contraception -- history
prostitution.
sterilization.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Abortion & Birth Control.
HISTORY -- United States -- General.
Sterilization
Medical policy
Family planning services
Birth control
Prostitution
Puerto Ricans
International relations
Sterilization (Birth control)
SUBJECT United States -- Relations -- Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico -- Relations -- United States
Puerto Rico
Subject Puerto Rico
United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780520936317
0520936310
058546779X
9780585467795
1597348619
9781597348614