Plastic Bodies: Sex Hormones and Menstrual Suppression in Brazil

Emilia Sanabria

Published by Duke University Press 2016

Plastic Bodies

Sex Hormones and Menstrual Suppression in Brazil

Emilia Sanabria

In the series Experimental futures : technological lives, scientific arts, anthropological voices

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822374190

Overview
Contents

About this book

In Plastic Bodies Emilia Sanabria examines how women's use of sex hormones in Bahia, Brazil for menstrual suppression shapes social relations, having become central to contemporary understandings of the body, class, gender, sex, personhood, modernity, and Brazilian national identity.

Author / Editor information

Emilia Sanabria is Maîtresse de conferences in Social Anthropology at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon.

Reviews

"Emilia Sanabria’s Plastic Bodies is a captivating book and a much needed study on perceptions on menstruation and associated biomedical practices. . . . Plastic Bodies is a pleasure to read; it is beautifully written and has a style that at times merges with the genre of travel writing enabling readers to accompany Sanabria to Salvador de Bahia where she conducted her fieldwork."

-- Ángela Lavilla Cañedo Centre for Medical Humanities

"Clearly written and engaging, Plastic Bodies will make an excellent addition to both graduate and undergraduate reading lists, in particular in courses on the anthropology of the body, reproduction, and science and technology studies. It will also be of interest to those who teach courses on Brazil and the Brazilian Northeast region."

-- K. Eliza Williamson Medical Anthropology Quarterly

"Plastic Bodies is a timely and exhilarating project that contributes to a constellation of emergent, multidisciplinary, feminist scholarship about bodies, hormones, biopolitics, and materiality."

-- E. Hella Tsaconas Feminist Formations

"Rich in ethnographic detail and rigorous in interpretation, Plastic Bodies is a deeply researched, complex, and innovative exploration of an important topic.... [T]his book is a fascinating analysis of gender, the medicalization of the body, and the socialization of biochemistry that has wide applicability across disciplines."

-- Okezi T. Otovo Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

"Sanabria’s work is innovative and inventive, responding to the impacts of neomaterialism, feminist studies of science and the “ontological turn” in anthropology. Instead of taking the bodies’ frontiers for granted, Sanabria prefers to focus on the very process of their making. This is a great contribution to contemporary studies of the body."

-- Daniela Tonelli Manica Somatosphere

"Plastic Bodies is an extraordinary monograph, produced from a decade of careful engagement with techniques of place-making, othering, and ethnographic theory. Anthropology at its very best, this is work that makes evident the plasticity of the binary. Through gripping stories of the self in the other, the here in the there, nature in artifice, and the beauty in mess, readers come to understand that binaries are always socially made."

-- Emily Yates-Doerr Somatosphere

"A highly readable and sophisticated ethnography, Plastic Bodies will appeal to scholars in the fields of Brazilian studies, women and gender studies, global health, science and technology studies, and pharmaceutical anthropology."

-- José Amador The Latin Americanist

"Sanabria has produced a subtle, well-researched and beautifully written book that could be used in graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in Science and Technology Studies, Latin American Studies, the Sociology or Anthropology of Health and Medicine and the Globalization of Sexuality and Gender."

-- Rafael de la Dehesa International Feminist Journal of Politics

"Plastic Bodies is nuanced and richly detailed. . . . It delivers everything it promises."

-- Andrea Ford Medicine Anthropology Theory

"Convincingly argued and engaging, Plastic Bodies is an ethnography that would work well in a variety of both undergraduate and graduate courses in anthropology, exploring reproduction, medicine, the body, gender, science and technology studies, health policies and inequalities, or in courses focusing on Latin America or Brazil specifically."

-- Karolina Kuberska Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Plastic Bodies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Managing the Inside, Out Menstrual Blood and Bodily Dys-Appearance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
2. Is Menstruation Natural? Contemporary Rationales of Menstrual Management Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
3. Sexing Hormones Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
4. Hormonal Biopolitics From Population Control to Self-Control Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
5. Sex Hormones Making Drugs, Forging Efficacies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
Conclusion: Limits That Do Not Foreclose Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 264
Illustrations
- Other: 12 photographs

eBook

Published: April 21, 2016
ISBN: 9780822374190