Global knowledge/local bodies: Family planning service providers’ interpretations of contraceptive knowledge(s)

Contraceptive technologies and the knowledges that are constructed around them are simultaneously global and local. Family planning methods in the context of international development interventions are interpreted and understood as part of the relationship between meanings that are at once embodied and remote. While quality of care issues have been raised over nearly two decades, the interactive relationship between policy/program, supply, and interpersonal relations in forming identities has not been analyzed. This paper is based on two years of qualitative fieldwork conducted in Tanzania over a period between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s. It will examine Tanzanian service providers’ perceptions of contraceptives to shed light on questions of local level dissemination of population knowledge(s) and shaping of identities. The findings suggest that the family planning program serves in a process of differentiation between two groups of “local†women: the service providers and their clients. This differentiation subsequently shapes the implementation of the family planning program.anthropological demography, contraceptives, family planning, foreign aid, international development, population, reproductive health, service providers

Global knowledge/local bodies:Family planning service providers' interpretations of contraceptive knowledge(s)

Contraceptive technologies and the knowledges that are constructed around them are simultaneously global and local. Family planning methods in the context of international development interventions are interpreted and understood as part of the relationship between meanings that are at once embodied and remote. While quality of care issues have been raised over nearly two decades, the interactive relationship between policy/program, supply, and interpersonal relations in forming identities has not been analyzed. This paper is based on two years of qualitative fieldwork conducted in Tanzania over a period between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s. It will examine Tanzanian service providers' perceptions of contraceptives to shed light on questions of local level dissemination of population knowledge(s) and shaping of identities. The findings suggest that the family planning program serves in a process of differentiation between two groups of "local" women: the service providers and their clients. This differentiation subsequently shapes the implementation of the family planning program

Batman Saves the Congo: How Celebrities Disrupt the Politics of Development

How celebrity strategic partnerships are disrupting humanitarian space: Can a celebrity be a disrupter, promoting strategic partnerships to foster ideas and funding to revitalize the development field, or are they just charismatic ambassadors for big business? Examining the role of the rich and famous in development and humanitarianism, this book argues that celebrities do both, and that understanding why and how yields insight into the realities of neoliberal development. Contents: Introduction Chapter 1. Celebrity, Disruption and Neoliberal Development Chapter 2. Narrating the Congo: Dangerous Single Stories and the Organizations that Need Them Chapter 3. Choosing the Congo: How a Celebrity Builds a Development Organization Chapter 4. Marketing the Congo: Products that Sell Development Chapter 5. Saving Congolese Coffee: Celebrities and the Business Model for Development Chapter 6. Celebrities and the Local Politics of Development: As Seen from Kinshasa Chapter 7. Conclusions on Celebrity and Development: Disruption, Advocacy and Commodification Epilogue: COVID-19 and Making ECI Relevant Again Acknowledgments Appendix A. Methodology and Data Collection Appendix B. Affleck, ECI, and ECI Partner’s Interactions with Congress, 2011–2017 Appendix C. K&L Gates Lobbying on Behalf of Eastern Congo Initiative Notes Bibliography Indexhttps://ecommons.udayton.edu/books/1098/thumbnail.jp

Gendering the Therapeutic Citizen: ARVs and Reproductive Health

Reproductive Health as a global agenda can provide an opportunity for including “social issues” under its vast umbrella. However, so far reproductive health has failed to go beyond family planning in large-scale, high impact interventions. Now, the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic has meant that the primary reproductive health goal of many African women in highly affected communities is to remain healthy long enough to reproduce. The case of ARV treatment in a township clinic in South Africa will demonstrate the need for a genuinely integrated global concept of reproductive health and rights that includes the realities of AIDS and its treatment. This research is in some respects an anthropological examination of AIDS interventions from a political standpoint. In this paper I examine the other side of the issue of AIDS and family planning integration: how are family planning technologies and contraceptive decision making integrated into HIV/AIDS treatment clinics? Reproductive decision making in the context of the AIDS clinic reignites classic debates over the rights of the individual versus the rights of the community, the meanings of motherhood and maternal identity, and the appropriate control of sexuality by the state vis a vis governance of the self. Yet, in the situation of reproductive decision making by HIV positive women, the stakes are higher, the boundaries less discernible, and the meanings even more contingent by the urgency of the disease and the poignancy of the processes of giving life. To begin to understand this, I argue, we must find a way to gender the therapeutic citizen in order to reintegrate the biopolitical struggle of ARVs with the “social issues” percolating within the therapeutic state

Commodifying COVID-19: humanitarian communication at the onset of a global pandemic

Corporations have become prominent actors in responding to COVID-19. Within the context of increasing privatization of humanitarianism and marketization of social justice, corporate marketing has played a part in the “interpretive battles” to define the global crisis of COVID-19. Understanding corporate COVID-19 communications contributes to understanding the politics of the global pandemic. This article analyzes companies’ humanitarian communications during the early phase of COVID-19 in Europe and North America to identify how their messages define COVID-19 and justified particular responses. We find that brands constructed COVID-19 as a crisis of expertise and logistics, a crisis of resources and capital, and a crisis of the self. In response to these crises, corporations provide products to “help” consumers to manage the pandemic and to manage themselves. These humanitarian narratives make the case that business has a concrete role to play in solving crises and present individual consumption as a humanitarian act

The tropes of celebrity environmentalism

Celebrity advocacy for environmental causes has grown dramatically in recent decades. An examination of this expansion and the rise of causes such as climate change reveals the shifting politics and organization of advocacy. We address these changes to the construction and interpretation of celebrity advocacy and detail how they have produced a rich variety of environmental celebrity advocates. We also account for differences between legacy (e.g., radio, TV, newspapers) and online celebrities and their practices (e.g., hashtag publics, brandjacking, online communities). Environmental celebrity advocates’ performances can be divided into nine tropes, each characterized in part by the particular varieties of environmentalism that they promote. We present the tropes and discuss their five cross-cutting themes. We conclude with a set of questions for future research on celebrity environmentalism