Moral Figures - Making Reproduction Public in Vanuatu (Paperback)

In the early twentieth century, people in the southwestern Pacific nation of Vanuatu experienced rapid population decline, while in the early twenty-first century, they experienced rapid population growth. From colonial governance to postcolonial sovereignty, Moral Figures shows that despite attempts to govern population size and birth, reproduction in Vanuatu continues to exceed bureaucratic economization through Ni-Vanuatu insistence on Indigenous relationalities. Through her examination of how reproduction is made public, Alexandra Widmer demonstrates how population sciences have naturalized a focus on women's fertility and privileged issues of wage labour over women's land access and broader social relations of reproduction. Widmer draws on oral histories with retired village midwives and massage healers on the changes to care for pregnancy and birth, as well as ethnographic research in a village outside the capital of Port Vila. Locating the Pacific Islands in global histories of demographic science and the medicalization of birth, the book presents archival material in a way that emphasizes bureaucratic practices in how colonial documents attempted to render Indigenous relationalities of reproduction governable. While demographic imaginaries and biomedical practices increasingly frame fertility control as an investment in the reproductive health of individual bodies, the Ni-Vanuatu worlds presented in Moral Figures show that relationships between people, land, knowledge, kin, and care make reproduction a distributed and assisted process.

General

Imprint:	University of Toronto Press
Country of origin:	Canada
Series:	Anthropological Horizons
Release date:	February 2023
First published:	2023
Authors:	Alexandra Widmer
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 25mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade
Pages:	262
ISBN-13:	978-1-4875-4321-1
Categories:	Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > History of science Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > General Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics > Medical anthropology Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics > Biological anthropology > Early man
LSN:	1-4875-4321-2
Barcode:	9781487543211

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