CAR Newsletter Fall 2011

In This Issue:

A Transnational Alliance in the Argentine Campaign For Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion
By Lynn M. Morgan and Mónica Tarducci

The movement to legalize abortion in Argentina has been gaining momentum as part of an ongoing social mobilization around human rights. Argentina is internationally known for its human rights achievements, thank in large part to the courageous Madres de la Plaza de Mayo who protested the disappearance of their children during and since the last military dictatorship (1976-1983). The Campaña has adopted the Madres’ trademark handkerchief as its symbol -in green rather than white-to emphasize that “women’s rights are human rights.” Argentina has inspired North American human rights advocates in more ways than one. In 2010, Argentina became the first Latin American country to legalize gay an lesbian marriage. Argentine feminists were vocal supporters of marriage equality’ equal marriage advocates are now vocally supporting the legalization of abortion.

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CAR Newsletter Spring 2011

In This Issue:

Mentorship Column:
Sarah Rubin writes from Cape Town

 For me, finding The Spoiler hasn’t just been an obstacle to overcome, but an integral part of my fieldwork process. It helped me to understand, in a surprising way, Xhosa motherhood and emotion through the lens of race and historical oppression, which has been invaluable to my nascent analysis. And learning to shed the parts of my behavior and mindset that are “too white” has helped me to get closer to my research participants in ways that that didn’t seem possible a year ago. My professors were right, you do have to becognizant of your predecessors and clean up their mess before you can do your “good” work, and all you need is a new twist on the basic tenants of ethnographic inquiry—be open, be patient, keep your perspective, let go of your “self,” be culturally relative, remain inquisitive, and don’t be too hard on yourself.

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CAR Newsletter Fall 2010

In This Issue:

Mentorship Column:
Anthropology and Advocacy
By Wendy Chavkin

 Advocacy is a messy undertaking and necessitates collaboration. One has to understand both those likely to support and to oppose your position and appreciate the ways in which potential allies might complement or frustrate some of your approaches. This implies developing an awareness of the varied contributions different actors can make to effective advocacy, while simultaneously refining your vision of the role of the anthropologist/ researcher. 

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CAR Newsletter Spring 2010

In This Issue:

Mentorship Column:
Paying it Forward
By Elly Teman

Paying it forward. Yes, it is the name of a schmaltzy movie with Haley Joel Osment and Helen Hunt, but the concept is one that I have been privileged to learn through the experience of giving birth to my third baby-and longest labor of love, sweat and tears-my book, Birthing a Mother, which is finally being published this month. All I remember from that movie is that it was a tear jerker about a kid who got involved in a kind of pyramid scheme of doing what we Jews call mitzvahs: one person does a good deed for another and that person goes on to do it for someone else rather than paying the other person back. 

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CAR Newsletter Fall 2009

In This Issue:

Mentorship Column:
What I Learned about Writing a Book Manuscript
By Sallie Han

 Each month, one woman’s work (like a book chapter or conference paper) is offered as the “entrée” and a second woman’s work is the “side dish” (like an abstract for a conference). We e-mail our drafts at least two full days in advance, but occasionally we bring copies of “side dishes” to the meeting itself. Having a scheduled meeting provided me with a deadline. Also, it became an obligation to my friends that I did not take lightly. Month by month, I brought my chapters to my writing group in part because I knew that they were expecting them. I could let myself down, but not my Village People.

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CAR Newsletter Spring 2009

In This Issue:

Mentorship Column
By Lauren Fordyce Ph.D.

Recognize that you won’t write every day. Some days it just doesn’t work out. Writing my dissertation in Florida, I got a lot of work done in the summer when I would sit huddled in front the tiny a/c unit and couldn’t even imagine stepping outside. Things were a bit more difficult in the winter on those sunny 70­degree days when all your friends would call after they got out of class to meet for happy hour.

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CAR Newsletter Fall 2008

In This Issue:

Mentorship Column
By Deb Blizzard

We all have different experiences with tenure. It can be daunting, but it can also be affirming.
After assembling my materials I stared at the boxes: I was unsettled to think that a bunch of paper
was going to represent me to the committee. But it was and it did. So, on a personal note, it may be
difficult but try to remind yourself that you are more than just those boxes, whatever outcome you
receive. Good luck!

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CAR Newsletter Spring 2008

In This Issue:

Uncovering the Nativism of Population Politics
Priscilla Huang, NAPAW

When anti-immigrant zealots publicize their opposition to policies that they perceive as “pro-immigrant,” they often insist that their motives are not racist. The anti-immigrant movement has carefully maintained that it is only opposed to “illegal” immigration, and welcomes immigrants who “follow the rules” and enter the country legally. Many pundits and presidential candidates similarly embrace this rhetoric. But their assertions are in fact disingenuous.

What’s more, immigrant women bear the brunt of these anti-immigrant attacks. Take the issue of birthright citizenship.

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In This Issue:

TAKING A STAND: CAR OPPOSES THE GLOBAL GAG RULE
By The CAR Advocacy Committee

First implemented by the Reagan administration in 1984, rescinded by President Clinton, and reinstated by the Bush administration in 2001, the Global Gag Rule prohibits foreign organizations that receive U.S. family planning money from providing abortion or referring clients to abortion services, even if they do not use US funds to do so. The Global Gag Rule forbids foreign organizations that receive US funding from working to legalize abortion in their own countries. This provision would be unconstitutional in the United States because it requires that an organization “surrender its right to use its own funds to exercise free speech and participate in the political process” (Population Action International). Anthropologists have ample opportunity to observe and document the cruel and devastating effects of the Global Gag Rule in poor countries and communities.
 

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CAR Newsletter Spring 2007

In This Issue:

CAR Advocacy Initiative
By Lynn M. Morgan 

CAR members study all facets of reproduction the world over. Our collective expertise covers issues such as mothering, childbearing, infertility, midwifery, contraception, abortion, adoption, new reproductive technologies, and the local effects of global policies. Some of us conduct research in humble homes and impoverished rural clinics, while others work in high-tech laboratories and wealthy medical institutions. With the advocacy initiative, CAR members offer our skills, services, and research results to the advocates with whom we share common cause.
 

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CAR Newsletter Fall 2006

In This Issue:

Member News: In the Media

“Rachel Roth: This article discusses the debate taking place in the United Kingdom regarding lowering the legal limit of abortion to less than 24 weeks, the current limit…
 
Laury Oaks: The Childbirth Connection i a not-for-profit organization that provides women and health care professionals with information about maternity care…
 
Lynn Morgan: For a chilling account of where we stand on abortion in the US, see “Roe versus reality: Abortion and Women’s health,” in the New England Journal of Medicine…”

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CAR Newsletter Spring 2006

In This Issue:

Member News: In the Media

“Alma Gottlieb (2005) worked on a set of short videos connected with my new book The Afterlife is Where We Come From: The Culture of Infancy in West Africa (U. of Chicago Press, 2004)….
 
The First episode of Linda Layne’s TV series “Motherhood Lost: Conversations has won two awards….”

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CAR Newsletter Fall 2004

In This Issue:

The Home Pregnancy Test: A Feminist Technology?
by Linda Layne

“Home pregnancy tests are relatively low cost and easy for women to obtain and use, in other words, the very type of technology advocated by women’s health movement and STS scholars calling for more democratic design and use of technoscience.”

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CAR Newsletter Spring 2004

In This Issue:

Population and Progress in a Yoruba Town
by Elisha Renne 

“This study of local perceptions of population and development questions some of the underlying assumptions of the demographic theory of fertility transition, namely once certain conditions associated with Wester societies are attained, fertility will decline.”

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