A sociological and historical study of the development of reproductive technologies, this book focuses on key technological developments through a biomedicalization lens with special attention to gender. Using in vitro fertilization (IVF) as a hub, it critically examines the main areas of related socio-technical developments: reproductive science, birth control, animal husbandry, genetics and r…
Over the past decades, infectious disease epidemics have come to increasingly pose major global health challenges to humanity. The Anthropology of Epidemics approaches epidemics as total social phenomena: processes and events which encompass and exercise a transformational impact on social life whilst at the same time functioning as catalysts of shifts and ruptures as regards human/non-human re…
The emergence of Zika virus in 2015 challenged conventional ideas of mosquito-borne diseases, tested the resilience of health systems and embedded itself within local sociocultural worlds, with major implications for environmental, sexual, reproductive and paediatric health. This book explores this complex viral epidemic and situates it within its broader social, epidemiological and historical …
This open access book explores a range of new and older systems mapping methods focused on representing causal relationships in systems. In a practical manner, it describes the methods and considers the differences between them; describes how to use them yourself; describes how to choose between and combine them; considers the role of data, evidence, and stakeholder opinion; and describes how t…
This book examines how cultural and ideological reactions to activism in the post-Civil Rights Black community were depicted in fiction written by Black women writers, 1965–1980. By recognizing and often challenging prevailing cultural paradigms within the post-Civil Rights era, writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, and Paule Marshall fictionalized the black communit…
This book addresses how sexual practices and identities are imagined and regulated through development discourses and within institutions of global governance. The underlying premise of this volume is that the global development industry plays a central role in constructing people’s sexual lives, access to citizenship, and struggles for livelihood. Despite the industry’s persistent insis…