Imaginaries of a laparoscope: power, convenience, and sterilization in rural India

Abstract

Laparoscopic tubal ligation is the most prevalent method of contraception amongst India’s rural and urban poor. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in rural Rajasthan in 2012–2013, this paper investigates how rural women’s perceptions of a biomedical instrument—the laparoscope—influence their perceptions of sterilization, a procedure often entrenched in coercive, target- and incentive-driven population control programme. By investigating how a laparoscope is entangled in global exchanges, national policies, institutional arrangements, and local moral worlds, this paper demonstrates that while wider biomedical discourses perpetuate the narrative of safety and convenience, people’s everyday lives inform their understandings of technology that is widely known but rarely seen.

Keywords:

• India
• imaginaries
• laparoscope
• sterilization
• reproductive technology

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on fieldwork that was funded by the Brunel University London PhD studentship, the Parkes Foundation PhD grant, and the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Sutasoma Award. Writing of the manuscript has been supported by a grant from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Research Fund, Keele University. I would like to thank my interlocutors for their friendships, Jenn Ortegren and James Staples for their insightful comments on various drafts of this paper, Natalie Cope for helping with the numbers, and Aoife McKenna for sharing a writing process. I am also grateful to the reviewers for their supportive and insightful comments.

Ethical approval

Ethical approval to conduct research presented in this paper was granted by Brunel University in 2011.

Disclosure statement

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 Surgical abortion involves a surgical procedure to remove the pregnancy from the womb; medical abortion involves taking medicines (a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol) to end the pregnancy without the need for a surgery or anaesthesia.