Universität Wien

070325 SE Vertiefung 1: Fragestellungen und Themen der Zeitgeschichte (2011S)

Reproduction, State Interventions and Women's Bodies: Global Designs and Local Life-worlds

6.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 7 - Geschichte
Prüfungsimmanente Lehrveranstaltung

An/Abmeldung

Hinweis: Ihr Anmeldezeitpunkt innerhalb der Frist hat keine Auswirkungen auf die Platzvergabe (kein "first come, first served").

Details

max. 25 Teilnehmer*innen
Sprache: Englisch

Lehrende

Termine (iCal) - nächster Termin ist mit N markiert

Montag 30.05. 12:30 - 14:00 Seminarraum 1, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1090 Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
Mittwoch 01.06. 13:00 - 15:00 Seminarraum 1, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1090 Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
Freitag 03.06. 13:00 - 15:00 Seminarraum 1, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1090 Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
Montag 06.06. 12:30 - 14:00 Seminarraum 1, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1090 Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
Mittwoch 08.06. 13:00 - 15:00 Seminarraum 1, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1090 Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
Montag 13.06. 12:30 - 14:00 Seminarraum 1, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1090 Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
Mittwoch 15.06. 13:00 - 15:00 Seminarraum 1, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1090 Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
Freitag 17.06. 13:00 - 14:55 Seminarraum 1, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1090 Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
Montag 20.06. 12:30 - 14:00 Seminarraum 1, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1090 Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
Mittwoch 22.06. 13:00 - 15:00 Seminarraum 1, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1090 Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
Freitag 24.06. 13:00 - 15:00 Seminarraum 1, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1090 Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
Montag 27.06. 12:30 - 14:00 Seminarraum 1, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1090 Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1

Information

Ziele, Inhalte und Methode der Lehrveranstaltung

Reproduction, State Interventions and Women's Bodies: Global Designs and Local Life-worlds

Course Description: In many strands of academic scholarship, in political debates and the media there is a broad consensus that the world is facing a "population problem". But the problem has been defined very differently for different parts of the world. If European colonial powers were worried by the low fertility rates in their colonies in Asia, Africa and the Pacific, after decolonisation they began funding programmes to control population growth in the very same countries. But the doomsday scenarios sketched by advocates of the "overpopulation" thesis for societies of the global South also have a long history in European thought going back to Malthus's "Essay on Population", which has over the centuries continued to influence demographers, policy-makers and popular opinion alike. High fertility in the South is linked causally to poverty, environmental crises and security threat besides more recently to the low status of women. In contrast most European countries today are gripped by a fear of falling fertility rates, which unless reversed, or compensated by an equally unwanted immigration, would negatively affect economic growth. Thus the world seems to be simultaneously "overpopulated" and "underpopulated". In political and popular discourse in Israel as in India, there is a fear of large Muslim families. Whereas the Chinese state, for example, sought to ensure a one-child family through draconian measures like forced abortions, the Rumanian state prohibited abortion and contraception and German health insurance companies funded up to three trials of assisted conception or IVF. Anti-natalistic policies and programmes in some regions of the world were and are paralleled by pro-natalistic policies in others. While the former involve the use of many kinds of technologies of surveillance and contraception, the latter is more a matter of social policy. But both kinds of policies primarily target and affect the lives and bodies of women. The"population problem" is thus evidently not an objective demographic question of sheer numbers but a normative and political issue of how many people, of which kind should live where and how.

The lectures we will use post-colonial and feminist perspectives to examine the ways in which "population" has been constructed as a problem historically and today. They will attempt to link the little to the large by looking at how global designs by Northern governments, US American private foundations and by the elites in the South have sought to "modernise" and shape the reproductive desires and bodies of women in poor communities in the North and South. It will explore the colonial origins of the debates on population size, the Cold War background of global designs of "population control" in the South, the role of demographic expertise and surveys in these programmes, the debates on abortion and sterilisation as well as the more recent shifts in international population policy to issues of women's empowerment and reproductive rights, its latest avatar. Attention will also be paid to infertility as a major reproductive health problem faced women all over the world, which has led to the globalization of in vitro fertilization (IVF), surrogacy, and other new assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). The seminar will enable students to read and critically discuss ethnographies on Rumania, Palestine, India, China, Egypt, Africa and the Pacific, which seek to situate and understand women's desire for children within the constraints of family and kinship structures, on the one hand, and interventions by nation-states and international actors, on the other. It will examine the specific and uneven impact of the globalization of reproductive technologies on women's bodies, subjectivities, and social relations.

Art der Leistungskontrolle und erlaubte Hilfsmittel

The seminar will consist of short presentations by students in every session, commented on both by the peers and by the professor. Students will be required to read 1-2 texts (articles or book chapters) mostly in English, summarise the main arguments and critique these in class. Each student will be required to write a short essay in English or German at the end of the course on a topic of his or her choice in consultation with the professor, which will be graded. This should be submitted latest by 21.7.2011.

Mindestanforderungen und Beurteilungsmaßstab

Prüfungsstoff

Literatur

The short literature list below is NOT all required reading but meant to give an idea of some of the important debates in the vast field. It can be used to delve deeper into certain issues or regions or for reference later while writing the essays.

Ali, Asdar Kamran, (2002), Planning the Family in Egypt: New Bodies, New Selves.
Bandarage, Asoka, (1997), Women, Population, and Global Crisis: Political and Economic Analysis.
Correa, Sonia, (1994), Population and Reproductive Rights: feminist Perspectives from the South.
Connelly, Matthew (2008), Fatal Misconceptions: The Struggle to Control World Population.
Cook, Michael (ed.) (1995), The New Imperialism: World Population and the Cairo Conference.
Edwards, Janet et al., (1999), Technologies of Procreation: Kinship in the Age of Assisted Conception (2nd ed.)
Faye D. Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp, (eds.), (1995), Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction.
Ginsburg, Faye and Rayna Rapp, (1991), "The politics of reproduction," In Annual Review of Anthropology 20:311-43.
Greenhalgh, Susan (ed.), (1995), Situating Fertility: Anthropology and Demographic Inquiry.
Gupta, Jyotsna Agnihotri, (2000) New Reproductive Technologies, Women's Health and Autonomy: Freedom or Dependency.
Hartmann, Betsy, (1995), Reproductive Rights and Wrong: the Global Poliitcs of Population Control.
Heim, Susanne and Schatz, Ulrike (1996) Berechnung und Beschwörung. Überbevölkerung - Kritik einer Debatte.
Halfon, Saul, (2007), The Cairo Consensus: Demographic Surveys, Women's Empowerment and Regime Change in Population Policy.
Hunt, Nancy Rose, (1999), A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo.
Inhorn, Marcia, (2002), Infertility around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies.
Jolly, Margaret and Ram, Kalpana, (2003), (eds.), Borders of Being: Citizenship, Fertility, and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific.
Kligman, Gail, (1998), The politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania.
Mamdani, Mahmood, (1972), The Myth of Population Control: Family, Caste and Class in an Indian Village.
Morgan, Lynn M. and Michaels, Meredith W. (eds.) (1999), Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kanaaneh, Rhoda, (2000), Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel.
Ram, Kalpana and Margaret Jolly, (eds.) (1998), Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and postcolonial experiences in Asia and the Pacific.
Schoen, Johanna, (2005), Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare.
Townsend, Nicholas, (2002), The Package Deal: Marriage, Work, and Fatherhood in Men's Lives.
Wichterich, Christa, (ed.) (1994), Menschen nach Mass: Bevölkerungspolitik in Nord und Süd.

Zuordnung im Vorlesungsverzeichnis

MA Zeitgeschichte: Vertiefung 1+2 (6 ECTS); Diplom Geschichte: P2; BA-Modul 2 (10 ECTS); MA Geschichte: Vertiefung 2 - Späte Neuzeit (6 ECTS);

Letzte Änderung: Mo 07.09.2020 15:31