Citation
Rivkin-Fish, Michele R. (2011). Post-Socialism: Troubling the Reproduction of the Nation.. Mascia-Lees, Frances E. (Ed.) (pp. 403-418). Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.Abstract
The analytic of ‘embodiment’ has enabled anthropologists to reveal the many ways in which bodily states and processes refract broader visions of the social order. In postsocialistcontexts where the remaking of the body politic is uncertain and acrimonious, the reproduction of bodies is also highly fraught. This chapter examines how nationalist agendas compete with medical struggles for the power to engineer Russian women’s reproduction. It argues that understanding the specific biopolitical strategies deployed in abortion and reproductive politics – in post-socialist contexts and beyond – requires insights into the embodied world deemed to be in crisis.