This groundbreaking volume provides a dramatic investigation of the dynamics of reproduction. In an unusually broad spectrum of essays, a distinguished group of international feminist scholars and activists explores the complexity of contemporary sexual politics around the globe. Using reproduction as an entry point in the study of social life and placing it at the center of social theory, the authors examine how cultures are produced, contested, and transformed as people imagine their collective future in the creation of the next generation.

The studies encompass a wide variety of...

Based on the struggle over a Fargo, North Dakota, abortion clinic, Contested Lives explores one of the central social conflicts of our time. Both wide-ranging and rich in detail, it speaks not simply to the abortion issue but also to the critical role of women's political activism.

A new introduction addresses the events of the last decade, which saw the emergence of Operation Rescue and a shift toward more violent, even deadly, forms of anti-abortion protest. Responses to this trend included government legislation, a decline in clinics and doctors offering abortion services, and...

This groundbreaking volume showcases the exciting work emerging from the ethnography of media, a burgeoning new area in anthropology that expands both social theory and ethnographic fieldwork to examine the way media--film, television, video--are used in societies around the globe, often in places that have been off the map of conventional media studies. The contributors, key figures in this new field, cover topics ranging from indigenous media projects around the world to the unexpected effects of state control of media to the local impact of film and television as they travel...