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Author Unnithan, Maya, author

Title Fertility, Health and Reproductive Politics : Re-imagining Rights in India / Maya Unnithan
Published Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 233 pages) : illustrations
Series Routledge contemporary South Asia series ; 132
Routledge contemporary South Asia series ; 132.
Contents Cover; Half Title; Series Page; Title Page; Copyright Page; Table of Contents; List of Figures; Preface and acknowledgements; Table of Acronyms; Chapter 1: Fertile subjects: Global reproductive politics at the intersections of caste, class and gender; Experiencing institutional change: birth as context in Rajasthan; Key concepts: power, emotion and agency; Situating power in the context of gender, caste and class in India; Power, emotion and reproductive agency; A maternal-centric reproductive health and rights discourse; The maternal and sexual in everyday social reproduction
Methods in entangled fieldsSome facts and figures: the benefits and limits of databases; A guide to the chapters in this book; Notes; Bibliography; Chapter 2: State empowerment and reproductive control; Population, fertility and health in colonial discourse in India; Providing choice, taking control: state family planning at the crossroads; Renewed emphases on sterilisation in rights-based reproductive and child health programmes (1997-2005); Diffusing and/or consolidating state authority? Civil society and the challenge of rights work; Koshish; Mutlub; Discussion; Notes; Bibliography
Chapter 3: Infertility and other reproductive anxieties: An ontological challenge to 'reproductive health' and 'rights'The fear of infertility in Rajasthan; Disruptions: infertility in anthropology; Pakad: being caught by a spirit/healer; The pakad ('hold') of the family healer; Pakad beyond the family: the multiple bodies of faith healing; Gyarsi: Matamai and healing through bharna (the 'filled body'); Rehman: healing through Jhad-Phoonk ('the body extended'); 'Each in their own place': healing and biomedical cures for sterility
Concluding reflections: the challenge to notions of reproductive health and beyondNotes; Bibliography; Chapter 4: Sex selective abortion and reproductive agency: Technology and the discourse on rights; Introduction; Background: pre-natalsex selection in India from the 1980s onwards; The desire for FSA: marriage anxieties and son preference in the context of modernisation; 'Normalising' FSA: 'rights', moralities and new networks of medical authority; Maternal bonding and ways of 'seeing'; FSA in the broader context of the use of contraceptive technologies; Concluding reflections on agency
NotesBibliography; Chapter 5: Maternal risk and its mediation: Learning from health worker vulnerabilities; Precarity in the work of indigenous midwives: managing blood, kinship and household labour; From birth work to 'multi-purpose'work: the declining relevance of midwives; Being an ASHA: managing the risks of 'not enough skill', 'too much work' and material deprivation; Asha apne saas ka virodh jub nahi kar sakti to kis ghar mein ja ke ladegi?; Incentives and sentiment; The other side of birth work: sterilisation and the culture of 'targets'; Concluding discussion; Notes; Bibliography
Summary Set in the context of the processes and practices of human reproduction and reproductive health in Northern India, this book examines the institutional exercise of power by the state, caste and kin groups. Drawing on ethnographic research over the pasteighteen years among poor Hindu and Muslim communities in Rajasthan and among development and health actors in the state, this book contributes to developing analytic perspectives on reproductive practice, agency and the body-self as particular and novel sites of a vital power and politic. Rajasthan has been among the poorest states in the country with high levels of maternal and infant mortality and morbidity. The author closely examines how social and economic inequalities are produced and sustained in discursive and on the ground contexts of family-making, how authoritative knowledge and power in the domain of childbirth is exercised across a landscape of development institutions, how maternal health becomes a category of citizenship, how health-seeking is socially and emotionally determined and political in nature, how the health sector operates as a biopolitical system, and how diverse moral claims over the fertile, infertile and reproductive body-self are asserted, contested and often realised. A compelling analysis, this book offers both new empirical data and new theoretical insights. It draws together the practices, experiences and discourse on fertility and reproduction (childbirth, infertility, loss) in Northern India into an overarching analytical framework on power and gender politics. It will be of interest to academics in the fields of medical anthropology, medical sociology, public health, gender studies, human rights and sociolegal studies, and South Asian studies
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Maya Unnithan is Professor of Social and Medical Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies and Health (CORTH) in the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, UK
Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed April 9, 2019)
Subject Reproductive rights -- India
Human reproduction -- India
Reproductive health -- India
Fertility -- India
HEALTH & FITNESS -- Fertility & Infertility.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- General.
Fertility.
Human reproduction.
Reproductive health.
Reproductive rights.
India.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780429465482
0429465483
0429878761
9780429878763
042987877X
9780429878770
9780429878756
0429878753