The aims of this program are to foster dynamic campus programming, catalyze campus interdisciplinary collaboration, and pull together the scholarly resources to make a competitive NSF grant application run through IRWG.
Background
My colleague Lynn Morgan (Mt. Holyoke) and I are beginning a long term international research project on “Reproductive Governance in Latin America.” As we advance it, reproductive governance refers to the mechanisms through which different historical configurations of actors -- such as state institutions, churches, donor agencies, and NGOs -- use legislative controls, economic inducements, moral injunctions, direct coercion, and ethical incitements to produce, monitor and control reproductive behaviors and practices.
We believe that reproductive governance in Latin America is currently undergoing a dramatic transformation. Over the past decade, constitutional, civil, and legislative actors have intensified reproductive regulation throughout the region. In country after country, public policy conversations are coalescing around abortion, contraception, sterilization, and assisted reproductive technologies. The terms of discussion, however, are very different from either the Cold War era of population control or the post-Cairo rhetoric of reproductive health. Instead, that population and reproductive discourse and practice throughout Latin America are increasingly framed through contestations over “rights,” where rights-bearing citizens are pitted against each other over claims to reproductive, sexual, indigenous, and natural rights, as well as the “right to life” of the unborn.
While effects of reproductive policies are often executed, experienced, and analyzed as national phenomena, it is clear that global economic and social movements also have an impact on population and reproduction through international policies pertaining to migration, health, and reproduction. Tracking reproductive governance across national borders can help to illuminate broader political economic processes, such as the expansion of privatized medicine, shaping the Latin American region today. We therefore are proposing a cross-disciplinary research agenda that is capable of accounting for local and international historical, economic, and political trends, and therefore of linking local governance to global governance.
In order to foster this international and cross disciplinary research Morgan and I are planning to apply for an NSF grant on reproductive governance in Latin America. With this larger multi-year grant we intend to set up a network of scholars working on reproductive themes throughout the Americas and organize a major conference that will forge alliances between scholars, lawyers, and activists to track reproductive governance throughout the region. To these ends we have already submitted a commentary and research report to an anthropological journal and discipline wide newsletter.
Program Area Activity
In order to make the most competitive NSF grant possible we need the expertise of scholars from across Michigan campus and scholars elsewhere who work on issues of reproductive governance in Latin America. To this end the program on reproductive governance would bring campus scholars and invited speakers to a yearly symposium that maps the contours of reproductive governance in Latin America. This symposium would provide that expertise, foster campus programming, and catalyze interdisciplinary collaboration.
The symposia will take place October 8 and 9th 2009 consisting of two invited speakers, one, two or three campus faculty, Lynn Morgan and I. We would also have a closed planning workshop during that time to intensively discuss our findings and approach to reproductive governance. The symposia will be of great interest to the community of scholars at U of M, women’s studies, IRWG, the nursing school, the OBGYN department, anthropology, Latin American Studies, and public policy. The symposia will help us prepare a competitive NSF grant for the summer of 2010.
This program is directed by Elizabeth Roberts, Assistant Professor, Anthropology and Residential College. For more information, please contact her at (lfsrob@umich.edu).