Plastic bodies : sex hormones and menstrual suppression in Brazil / Emilia Sanabria.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sanabria, Emilia, 1979- author.

Series:

Experimental futures

Experimental futures: technological lives, scientific arts, anthropological voices

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Salvador.

Menstruation--Brazil--Salvador--Prevention.

Menstruation.

Hormones, Sex.

Contraceptive drugs--Health aspects--Brazil--Salvador.

Contraceptive drugs.

Menstruation--Social aspects--Brazil--Salvador.

Menstrual regulation--Brazil--Salvador.

Menstrual regulation.

Menstruation--Social aspects.

Brazil--Salvador.

Brazil.

Physical Description:

xi, 252 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2016.

Summary:

In Plastic Bodies Emilia Sanabria examines how sex hormones are enrolled to create, mold, and discipline social relations and subjectivities. She shows how hormones have become central to contemporary understandings of the body, class, gender, sex, personhood, modernity, and Brazilian national identity. Through interviews with women and doctors; observations in clinics, research centers and pharmacies; and analyses of contraceptive marketing, Sanabria traces the genealogy of menstrual suppression, from its use in population control strategies in the global South to its remarketing as a practice of pharmaceutical self-enhancement couched in neoliberal notions of choice. She links the widespread practice of menstrual suppression and other related elective medical interventions to Bahian views of the body as a malleable object that requires constant work. Given this bodily plasticity, and its potentially limitless character, the book considers ways to assess the values attributed to bodily interventions. Plastic Bodies will be of interest to all those working in medical anthropology, gender studies, and sexual and reproductive health. Book jacket.

Contents:

Plastic bodies

Managing the inside, out: menstrual blood and bodily dys-appearance

Is menstruation natural?: contemporary rationales of menstrual management

Sexing hormones

Hormonal biopolitics: from population control to self-control

Sex hormones: making drugs, forging efficacies

Limits that do not foreclose.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-240) and index.

ISBN:

9780822361428

0822361426

9780822361619

0822361612

OCLC:

917359214