The international perspective HI 269 Week 10 International

The international perspective HI 269 Week 10!

International Ideas of Kinship • Is biology the only way to construct kinship relations? • Yap: Kinship defined by shared landholding • Navajo: Childrearing, not birthing, determine maternity (in a matrilineal society) • Ecuador: kinship determined by sharing of food • Malaysia: siblings are those who have nursed at same breast, for example.

Birth control policies beyond the west • Zimbabwe: 1981 ban on long-acting injectible contraceptive Depo-provera • Japan: abortion up to the limits of fetal viability available ‘for cause’ from MDs, BUT contraceptive pill only legalized in 1999, after 20 year battle – and then only after Viagra was approved in under 6 months…

Japan: Why abortion (and not the pill)? • History? [the ‘lack of Christianity thesis’] • Culture? [‘Fluidity’ of Buddhist view of life/ death, availability of rituals encompassing aborted fetuses] • Definitions of personhood? [mizuko (fetus) literally translates as ‘water child’, not yet a full person]

Japan: Why abortion (and not the pill)? • Abortion rights grated under ‘Eugenic Protection Law of 1948 and during period of economic distress combined with steeply rising population; • Pill appeared at a time when burgeoning economic recovery was regarded as more important, and a time of falling birth rates and drug scandals; • Abortions were/are lucrative for MDs, births for midwives, barrier technologies for family planners…Who was to profit from the Pill?

Zimbabwe: why not Depoprovera? • Health risks? • Poor testing? • Imperial coercion? Anti Depo-provera campaign poster based on a poster designed by Women against Imperialism, San Francisco

Zimbabwe: why not Depo-provera? • Woman centred distribution/delivery mechanisms • Use was ‘invisible’ so women could control decision-making, and could afford the treatment independent of family resources (countering the idea that women’s bodies were in fact ‘national bodies’ ) • Also strongly associated with white power, racism, dumping: so using it was not just sneaky but traitorous.

Extract of Rhodesian Debate over Depo-Provera, taken from Kaler, p. 358

Questions to think about (especially as we get ready for next term!): • Do different cultures integrate medical technologies differently? • Do different models of ‘family’ and ‘individuality’ affect the relative (no pun intended!) impact of medical technologies on social and cultural identity? • What effect do the particularities of national history have on different nations’ responses to new medical technologies?

Happy Holidays! Have a great break, and I’ll see you next year!