Exploring key trajectories of feminist anthropologies of reproduction, this chapter demonstrates how issues surrounding procreation and its prevention have provided the terrain for major insights about cultural and political dynamics since the very beginning of anthropology itself. The notion of stratified reproduction proved pivotal for broadening the ethnographic gaze on reproductive practices to include global processes, inspiring feminist anthropologists to highlight the multiple forms of inequality and the multiplication of inequalities within and across borders. The author focuses on theoretical debates that have both influenced the feminist anthropologies of reproduction and, in turn, been impacted by it – questions of Foucauldian biopolitics. The author begins by outlining Foucault’s notion of biopower, and then explores some of the diverse ways that feminist anthropologists have related to concepts of biopolitics in theorizing the study of reproduction. The third section illuminates anthropologies of abortion that have variously pursued feminist politics, and/or the analytical concerns of biopolitics, at times bringing them together and at others considering them to be discrete agendas. Finally, the chapter explores feminist anthropologies of abortion in state socialist and postsocialist societies, arguing that these political-economic and social contexts offer important directions for understanding reproduction, the state, and biopolitics.

This chapter provides and overview of feminist and queer anthropologies that engaged with questions of gender and sexualities from the early 1970s onward, highlighting the role of ethnography as an epistemology pushing theoretical debate beyond anthropology.

Following Marilyn Strathern, social anthropologists have interrogated the “awkward relationship” between anthropology and feminism. This chapter revisits the awkwardness of British social anthropology by looking at its problematic relationship not only with feminism but also with anthropology “at home” and with ethical or moral judgments. Its focus is on cosmetic surgery and other quasi-medical cosmetic procedures such as the use of botulinum toxins (e.g., Botox) and dermal fillers. The chapter discusses the tension between anthropological and feminist approaches, revealed when the anthropologist is tasked with taking an ethical stance. It draws on the experience of the anthropologist having, in their early career, to defend anthropology “at home” and, in their late career, chairing a bioethical committee on the ethics of cosmetic procedures, and concludes that there are times when anthropology and feminism best serve each other by maintaining a mutually critical relation: by continuing to trouble each other.

This introductory chapter explains the inspirations behind the book’s creation, its structure, and the approach adopted, and provides an overview of the chapters and the manner in which each contributes to the volume and illuminates specific topics and debates in anthropological theory and in the anthropology of gender and sexuality.