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Plastic Bodies: Sex Hormones and Menstrual Suppression in Brazil
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.
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Plastic Bodies: Sex Hormones and Menstrual Suppression in Brazil
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.
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Plastic Bodies: Sex Hormones and Menstrual Suppression in Brazil
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.
Emilia Sanabria is Maîtresse de conferences in Social Anthropology at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix Introduction. Plastic Bodies 1 1. Managing the Inside, Out: Menstrual Blood and Bodily Dys-Appearance 43 2. Is Menstruation Natural? Contemporary Rationales of Menstrual Management 71 3. Sexing Hormones 105 4. Hormonal Biopolitics: From Population Control to Self-Control 129 5. Sex Hormones: Making Drugs, Forging Efficacies 159 Conclusion. Limits That Do Not Foreclose 187 Notes 207 References 223 Index 241
What People are Saying About This
Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil - Alexander Edmonds
"Read this book and you’ll never think about hormones the same way again. Emilia Sanabria takes us into the Brave New World of Brazilian gynecology, where experimental contraceptives (sometimes containing testosterone) are taken to suppress menstruation, improve body shape, 'give fire,' or manage relationships. Plastic Bodies is a fascinating account of how hormones came to have multiple forms and uses in Brazil. A beautifully written ethnography, it is also an intimate portrait of women’s experiences of these pharmaceuticals."
Biological Relatives: IVF, Stem Cells, and the Future of Kinship - Sarah Franklin
"This book belongs to a new generation of ethnographies that are reinventing our conceptions of gender, health, embodiment, and medicine. In her lucid exposition of hormonal practices in Bahia, Emilia Sanabria both introduces us to a new form of biological control and challenges existing models of self, agency, and matter. By meticulously charting the relative biologies of her informants, she persuasively argues that their plastic bodies are also ours."
