Cultural Perspectives on Reproductive Health

This volume brings together studies carried out in a variety of contexts to explore the relevance of the notion of reproductive health and the role of culture in shaping its diverse manifestations. The perspective that guides the collection is informed by anthropological and sociological research on the body, pluralism, and medicalization, and by recent debates regarding women's health and the need to reconcile global agendas and local conditions.The fourteen chapters provide views of how reproductive health is viewed by women and men in different parts of the world, mainly at the level of local communities—-in India, Egypt, Mexico, Kenya, and South Africa—-but also in centres of power in China and Iran, and in modern (and post-modern) settings of the North and Far East. The methodological approaches used by authors are varied, but all share a concern with the perceptions, decisions, and rationalizations that surround health andreproduction. A central theme is the correspondence between professional and lay models of reproductive health, and some chapters explicitly seek to uncover the logic of practices that appear irrational from a biomedical point of view. By analysing behaviour from the perspective of the actors themselves, they show the relevance of local notions for understanding the factors that constitute risks for reproductive ill-health, including conditions of material deprivation, constraints in seeking care, andinappropriate use of therapies and technologies."Cultural Perspectives on Reproductive Health" illustrates complex processes of negotiation, adaptation, and manipulation in the formulation of ideas and policies related to reproductive health through analyses of such topics as the state's discourse on population, religious constraints on abortion care, professional and legal policies on reproductive technologies, health professionals' response to violence, and the dilemmas that emerge from the new diagnostic and genetic techniques. It alsoinvites reflection on the societal construction of rights across cultures and on the place of cultural explanations in analyses of reproductive health.

Stimulating ... Obermeyer has pulled together a valuable and consistently excellent set of essays.

Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer is Associate Professor of Population and Anthropology in the Department of Population and International Health at Harvard University. She is currently on leave from Harvard and working as a scientist with the World Health Organization on research and evidence related to women's health.