Unsettling the (presumed) settled: Contents and Discontents of Contraception in Aotearoa New Zealand

Authors

  • N. S. Appleton Cultural Anthropology Victoria University of Wellington

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/hcs.2017.243

Keywords:

Contraception, Reproductive Justice, New Zealand, Indigenous Communities, Women

Abstract

In January 2017, New Zealand’s medicines and medical devices safety authority, Medsafe,  announced in a press release that its Medicines Classification Committee (MCC) had recommended a reclassification of certain oral contraceptives in order for them to be made available over the counter in pharmacies.  In A/NZ, a progressive temporal narrative has been established around contraception that begins with the heroic struggle of women at the turn of the 20th Century to get access to contraception and abortion as a way to manage their reproductive lives and progresses to the guaranteed access of contraceptives to women. My intention to interrogate the contemporary contraceptive reality is not a project to undermine the historically important moves women have made here in A/NZ; but, rather, to include new places of analysis including how indigenous communities experienced the same contraceptives moments differently under the gaze of a eugenics project.

Author Biography

N. S. Appleton, Cultural Anthropology Victoria University of Wellington

Dr. Nayantara Sheoran Appleton is a lecturer in the cultural anthropology programme at Victoria University of Wellington. Her work is in the fields of anthropology (medical, feminist, and visual), cultural studies, feminist theories, and science and technology studies. She is currently working on a book manuscript, which seeks to critically analyze the implications of shifts in the politics of health and reproduction in liberalized India by focusing particularly on pharmaceutical contraceptives. Her second project on stem cell research and therapy extends her engagement with biomedically promoted regenerative medicine and burgeoning biotechnologies. She is also interested in anthropological methods for studying biomedicine.

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Published

2017-12-08

Issue

Perspectives II

Section

Invited Articles

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