Contingent Lives: Fertility, Time, and Aging in West Africa
Contingent Lives: Fertility, Time, and Aging in West Africa
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偶然的生活：西非的生育率、时间和老龄化
DOI：
10.2307/3097687
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发表时间：
2002
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
C. Bledsoe
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
C. Bledsoe
在西方，大多数女性使用避孕药来避免生育。但在冈比亚农村和撒哈拉以南非洲的其他地区，许多妇女出于相反的原因使用避孕药--尽可能多地生孩子。使用冈比亚农村地区一项为期三年的研究中的人种学和人口学数据，临时生活通过并列两种对生命过程的非常不同的理解来解释这一看似违反直觉的事实：一种是线性的西方模型，将衰老和生育能力与时间的推移等同起来；另一种是冈比亚模型，将衰老视为取决于个人历史上累积的身体、社会和精神痛苦，特别是产科创伤。Caroline Bledsoe从彼此的角度看待这两个模型，她对生殖、时间和衰老等经典人类学主题产生了新的理解，这些主题在女性的婚姻生活中被文化塑造。她的见解将受到人类学和人口学学者以及公共卫生、发展研究、老年学和医学史工作人员的欢迎。
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 contingent on the cumulative physical, social, and spiritual hardships of personal history, especially obstetric trauma. Viewing each of these two models from the perspective of the other, Caroline Bledsoe produces fresh understandings of the classical anthropological subjects of reproduction, time, and aging as culturally shaped within women's conjugal lives. Her insights will be welcomed by scholars of anthropology and demography as well as by those working in public health, development studies, gerontology, and the history of medicine.