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.
This article moves past high politics and the most prominent activists to explore the daily, intimate practice of international movement building by mid-level fieldworkers within the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) during its first decade of existence (1952–62). It illustrates how fieldworkers and the IPPF’s practitioner-oriented newsletter Around the World attempted to bridge the ideological and geographic diversity of the family planning movement and connect with advocates around the world through an emotive narrative of suffering, love, and global humanity, reinforced by affective bonds and women’s volunteerism. The story of global family planning must thus be seen not only as part of the history of eugenics, population control, and feminism, but also as part of the longer trajectory of maternalist humanitarianism. This mid-twentieth century version of maternalist humanitarianism built on earlier traditions but also incorporated concepts of human rights, critiques of dominant gender and sexual norms, and an official commitment to local self-determination in the context of decolonization movements. Still, the organization was plagued by the problems that shape humanitarianism more broadly, including the difficulty of moving past colonialist discourses, deeply rooted feelings of racial superiority, and the contradictions inherent in attempts to impose an impossible ideal of political neutrality in a politically complex world. Looking at the history of global family planning from this perspective thus helps us understand how the different traditions, intimate relationships, and practical experiences mid-level actors bring to their work shape the broader process of international movement building, beyond high-level political and ideological activism.
In the late 1930s, following a massive labor rebellion on the island, a group of middle- and upper-class Jamaicans launched a campaign to spread access to modern birth control technology to the working classes, leading to the establishment of the first birth control clinic in Kingston in March of 1939. This paper analyzes the debate that arose as a result of these activities during this period, focusing on the ways concerns surrounding “over-population” and illegitimacy in Jamaica were intimately linked to class and racial tensions as well as to local and international nationalist, feminist, and eugenics movements.
Riche en citations, renvois et allusions littéraires de toutes sortes, l'oeuvre semi-autobiographique de Colette dépasse le simple vécu pour opérer une véritable mise en scène de ce luxueux excédent qu'est l'écriture avec son art et ses artifices. L'écrivaine met en circulation l'objet-écriture doté d'une valeur qu'il s'agit de réinvestir et de faire fructifier. Empruntant et transformant, Colette exploite le capital-texte qui s'enrichit progressivement d'une esthétique du secret et de l'ambiguïté. Le grand luxe pour Colette, longtemps considérée comme écrivain «naturel», serait donc de réclamer son droit à la filiation littéraire.
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