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BestsellerE-book
Author Bledsoe, Caroline H.

Title Contingent lives : fertility, time, and aging in West Africa / Caroline H. Bledsoe with contributions by Fatoumatta Banja ; foreword by Anthony T. Carter.

Publication Info. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xx, 396 pages) : illustrations.
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Series The Lewis Henry Morgan lectures ; 1999
Lewis Henry Morgan lectures ; 1999.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 357-383) and index.
Contents Foreword; Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Reproductive Tolls and Temporalities in Studies of Reproduction; 3. Setting, Data, and Methods; 4. Managing the Birth Interval: Child Spacing; 5. Disjunctures and Anomalies: Deconstructing Child Spacing; 6. Realizing a Reproductive Endowment in a Contingent Body; 7. Time-Neutral Reproduction, Time-Neutral Aging; 8. Reaping the Rewards of Reproduction: Morality, Retirement, and Repletion; 9. Discovering Our Habitus: Contingency and Linearity in Western Obstetric Observations; 10. Rethinking Fertility, Time, and Aging; Appendixes; Glossary.
Summary Most women in the West use contraceptives in order to avoid having children. But in rural Gambia and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, many women use contraceptives for the opposite reason--to have as many children as possible. Using ethnographic and demographic data from a three-year study in rural Gambia, Contingent Lives explains this seemingly counterintuitive fact by juxtaposing two very different understandings of the life course: one is a linear, Western model that equates aging and the ability to reproduce with the passage of time, the other a Gambian model that views aging as continge.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Birth control -- Gambia.
Birth control.
Gambia.
Family size -- Gambia.
Family size.
Fertility, Human -- Social aspects -- Gambia.
Fertility, Human -- Social aspects.
Fertility, Human.
Reproduction.
Family Planning Services.
Gambia.
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Electronic books.
Added Author Banja, Fatoumatta.
Other Form: Print version: Bledsoe, Caroline H. Contingent lives. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2002 0226058514 (DLC) 2001051050 (OCoLC)47990011
ISBN 9780226058504 (electronic book)
0226058506 (electronic book)
0226058514
9780226058511
0226058522
9780226058528