Taking the memory of pronatalism in contemporary Romania as a case study, this article is an attempt to view the national politics of memory of contemporary Europe with regard to its communist past from an anthropological perspective. From 1966 to 1989, the communist regime imposed extreme policies of controlled demography in Romania, as it was imputed, for 'the good of the socialist nation'. Profamily measures were developed in parallel to the banning of abortion on request and the making of contraception almost inaccessible. The social remembering of such a difficult past is still a taboo in contemporary Romanian society. This general lack of public remembering, which is still playing a role in the current situation of Romania's reproductive health, is influenced by the interrelations between the different forms of pronatalist memory. The analysis is based on oral history fieldwork conducted between 2003 and 2008, and is theoretically informed by the interdisciplinary field of Memory Studies.
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On Memory Work in Post-communist Europe
A Case Study on Romania's Ways of Remembering its Pronatalist Past
Lorena Anton
In Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2009
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 106–122 (16 total)
The Good, the Bad, and the Childless
The Politics of Female Identity in Maternité (1929) and La Maternelle (1933)
Cheryl A. Koos
This essay explores Jean Benoît-Lévy and Marie Epstein's box-office success La Maternelle and their lesser-known Maternité in the context of interwar debates over women's roles in society. Reflecting natalist-familialist conceptions of motherhood and femininity, the films magnified three pervasive cultural icons in French social and political discourse: the monstrous, childless "modern woman," the exalted mother, and the "single woman" who fell somewhere in the middle. As both products and vehicles of these tropes, La Maternelle and Maternité not only illustrate how popular cinema disseminated and justified certain value-laden assumptions about female identity in the late 1920s and early 1930s; they also reveal the limitations of French feminism and socially-engaged, progressive art of the period.
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2009
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 3–20 (18 total)
'No More than Two with Caesarean'
The C-section at the Intersection of Pronatalism and Ethnicity in Turkey
Hatice Erten
In this article, I investigate the politicisation of the Caesarean-section (C-section) in Turkey as an anti-natalist procedure. In 2012, the Turkish state began to implement a series of interventions to lower the high rates of birth by C-section, which culminated in an attempted ban on elective C-section. In a previously unseen way, I argue that this intervention was based on the logic that because women are not medically recommended to undergo several C-sections, this surgical procedure limits the number of children a woman can give birth to, causing a concomitant decrease in population growth rates. This article traces the ways in which pronatalist discourses and interventions become meaningful in the medical setting by addressing the politicisation of C-sections. It examines how the C-section reflects a particular population discourse, which is marked by a moral language that stigmatises the fertility of Kurdish women.
In Anthropology in Action
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2015
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 7–16 (9 total)
Who Is a Victim of Communism?
Gender and Public Memory in the Sighet Museum, Romania
Alina Haliliuc
The Memorial Museum of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance is the main museum of communism in Romania. This article a ends to this museum's politics of representing gender and argues that its exhibits reify resistance to and victimization by the communist regime as masculine. The museum marginalizes women, in general, and renders unmemorable women's lives under Nicolae Ceauşescu's pronatalist regime, in particular. The absence is significant because Romania is the only country in the former communist bloc where women experienced unique forms of systematic political victimization under Ceauşescu's nationalist-socialist politics of forced birth. This article illustrates how the museum's investment in an anti-communist discourse creates a gendered representation of political action under the communist regime.
Abstracts
the familial compensation tax to help fund the FFO and in this way support other French families. Keywords : Morocco, Vichy, family policy, pronatalism, settlers Nadia Malinovich , Francophonie and Sephardic Difference in the Postwar United States
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2016
- Article Type:
- Abstract
- Pages:
- 155–158 (4 total)
Editor's Introduction
Sharon A Kowalsky
contextualization of this source reveal the ways postwar Soviet medical authorities sought to redefine the meaning of masculinity in support of pronatalism. In this context, being a man meant being a supportive and helpful spouse by taking over domestic chores
The Office de la Famille Française
Familialism and the National Revolution in 1940s Morocco
Margaret Cook Andersen
birthrate and made dire predictions about the eventual demise of the French population. One response to these concerns was pronatalism, an influential political movement whose adherents sought to educate the public about the consequences of depopulation and
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 44–62 (19 total)
For the Father of a Newborn
Soviet Obstetrics and the Mobilization of Men as Medical Allies
Amy E. Randall
(World War II), Soviet pronatalism intensified because of the imperative to replenish the population. Consternation about the declining birth rate in the 1950s and 1960s also contributed to new biopolitical strategies to maximize the collective health of
‘No Virus Is Stronger than Our Unity’
Shifting Forms of Governmental Intimacies during COVID-19
Senem Kaptan
://www.cnnturk.com/turkiye/cumhurbaskani-erdoganin-bayram-mesaji-tum-vatandaslara-gonderildi . Erten , H. ( 2015 ), ‘ “No More than Two with Caesarean”: The C-Section at the Intersection of Pronatalism and Ethnicity in Turkey ’, Anthropology in Action 22 , no. 1 : 7 – 16 , doi: 10.3167/aia.2015.220102 . Gürsoy , Y. ( 2020 ), ‘ Turkey Is
Decorating Mothers, Defining Maternity
The Invention of the French Family Medal and the Rise of Profamily Ideology in 1920s France
Hannah M. Stamler
Third Republic, pronatalist groups like the National Alliance for the Increase of the French Population did not surge in popularity until after World War I. It was also after 1918 that a conservative and Catholic-leaning familial brand of pronatalism
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2022
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 83–106 (24 total)