Birth Control in the Decolonizing Caribbean: Reproductive Politics and Practice on Four Islands, 1930–1970
Cambridge University Press, 11/21/2016
EAN 9781107118652, ISBN10: 1107118654
Hardcover, 272 pages, 24 x 15.5 x 2.2 cm
Language: English
Over the course of the twentieth century, campaigns to increase access to modern birth control methods spread across the globe and fundamentally altered the way people thought about and mobilized around reproduction. This book explores how a variety of actors translated this movement into practice on four islands (Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, and Bermuda) from the 1930s–70s. The process of decolonization during this period led to heightened clashes over imperial and national policy and brought local class, race, and gender tensions to the surface, making debates over reproductive practices particularly evocative and illustrative of broader debates in the history of decolonization and international family planning. Birth Control in the Decolonizing Caribbean is at once a political history, a history of activism, and a social history, exploring the challenges faced by working class women as they tried to negotiate control over their reproductive lives.
List of tables and figures
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of acronyms
Introduction
1. The answer, an aid, a right
birth control debates and social movements in the interwar years
2. From politics to practice
the Colonial office, foreign activists, local advocates, and the structure of family planning clinics
3. Beyond culture or choice
working class families and birth control clinics
4. A matter of cost
reproductive politics, state family planning programs, and foreign aid in the transition to independent rule
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index.