Disputing contraception: Muslim reform, secular change and fertility

In South Asia, Muslim reformers have often attempted to 'rationalize' and gentrify the everyday behaviour of ordinary Muslims. Yet, despite the existence of discussions of contraceptive techniques in the yūnān-ī tibb curricula of 19th century India and the apparent affinity between rationalism and fertility regulation, contraception was rarely discussed in public debates involving Muslim reformers. In this paper we discuss some of the relationships between élite debates among Muslim leaders and the grassroots behaviour of villagers in rural Bijnor, in western Uttar Pradesh. Villagers' voices are ambiguous, with fears for mother and child health surfacing as often as concerns for religious orthodoxy and one's destiny in the afterlife. In addition, many of the villagers' views of Islam were much more restrictive than those of the locally accepted authoritative voices: although the staff at Daru'l 'Ulūm, Deoband, saw much modern contraception as an unwelcome sign of modernity, their discussions of the acceptability of family planning circled round notions of majbūrī (compulsion), repentance, and the unfathomable mercy of Allah. We conclude that focusing on local notions of Islam to understand the fertility behaviour of rural Muslims is less fruitful than considering a "political economy of hopelessness" that, increasingly since 1947, affects many Muslims in north India

Health and the state in India

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D66390/86 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Schooling, transitions and reproductive citizenship for poor people in urban and rural north India: preliminary results from Alwar and Dewas

Exactly how schooling affects young women's 'autonomy', especially with respect to her fertility and the life-chances of her children, is a contested issue. We draw on semi-structured interviews with young married women with at least one child under the age of six, in urban and rural areas of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, north India, to elaborate differences in attitudes and experiences in early married life between young married women with at least eight years of schooling and those with little or no formal schooling. All the women in our sample come from India’s most disadvantaged social groups—Scheduled or Other Backward Castes—and live in disadvantaged communities. Tentative conclusions include that women with 10 years or more schooling have very different aspirations about their life partner and married life, and are better able to negotiate relationships with their mother-in-law than do the women with little or no formal schooling experience

Striped Bass Egg Abundance and Viability in the Roanoke River, North Carolina, and Young-of-Year Survivorship, for 1993

Completion Report to Virginia Power, Innsbrook Technical Center, Glenn Allen, Virginia. ICMR Contribution series, NO. ICMR-95-02 Institute for Coastal and Marine Resources, East Carolina University and National Biological Survey, South Carolina Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Clemson, South CarolinaStriped bass spawning activity in the Roanoke River, North Carolina, was documented in 1993 by sampling for eggs at Barnhill's Landing (River Mile 117), which is just downstream of the spawning grounds between the towns of Halifax (RM 120) and Weldon (RM 130). Egg sampling was conducted every four hours near the surface and bottom from 16 April to 16 June 1993. Water quality and changes in instream flow caused by water releases from Roanoke Rapids Reservoir at RM 137 also were monitored every four hours. During the summer and fall, age-O (young-of-year) striped bass were collected by beach seine in western Albemarle Sound, and by trawl surveys in western and central Albemarle Sound. All fish retained in samples were weighed, measured, and aged by counting rings on otoliths. The date of spawn for each fish was backcalculated, and each fish was assigned to a daily cohort for calculations of survival rates relative to daily egg production estimates.Virginia Power, Innsbrook Technical Center, Glenn Allen, Virgini

Disability estimates: implications from a changing landscape of socio-political struggle

National governments in the South, as well as international bodies such as the World Bank, are finally beginning to take the issues of the extent, causes and implications of disability seriously. There is, however, a danger that data on people with disabilities are not being collected in the most reliable manner, resulting in flawed policies and inefficient use of resources. In this policy brief we argue: 1. that the identification of disability must not be seen merely as a technical issue (does someone have or not have a particular impairment) but also as a political one (what claims are being made by or about someone if they define an impairment as worthy of public attention); 2. that in large scale surveys, questions concerning disability must move beyond primarily medical definitions and reconceptualise disability in a functional and interactionist perspective; 3. that there is a greater place for qualitative studies of the social meanings of disability to illuminate the effects of changes in policy and in wider society

Measuring disability in India

Disability status is often transitory or a matter of insidious change. A person's ability to function properly depends to a considerable extent on her/ his social and physical environment. One area that slips through the large-scale studies like the census and National Sample Survey is the impact of the state and the market on the lives of people with disabilities. There is a case for a more fundamental re-envisioning of the nature of the disability estimates