Ellen Foley | Clark University (original) (raw)
Papers by Ellen Foley
African Studies Review, 2015
Gender, Place & Culture, 2019
The theme of this issue, Public Health Governance in Africa, is within the framework of CODESRIA’... more The theme of this issue, Public Health Governance in Africa, is within the framework of CODESRIA’s Governance Programme. It was the subject of an international conference held in Dakar, 19–20 November 2015. The French articles focus on research carried out in eight African countries, namely Senegal, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Chad. The English articles address various topics in Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa. Two articles deal with issues generally pertaining to the continent: they are the gendered dimension of epidemics and the challenges in ensuring access to medicines in the post-Doha period. The theme proved to be cross-cutting, which enabled the participants to address various topics. This diversity is presented in the special issue. This scientific meeting was attended by over a dozen scholars who presented their research findings. Among these papers, ten were selected – five in French and five in English – after o...
Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters Volume 30, 2022 - Issue 1, 2022
Medicine Anthropology Theory
In this Position Piece, we explore the hegemony of innovation and the construction of gendered fu... more In this Position Piece, we explore the hegemony of innovation and the construction of gendered futures in global health through the Sayana® Press, a device that delivers a version of the contraceptive drug commonly known as Depo-Provera. The device has generated tremendous enthusiasm amongst global family planning advocates for its effectiveness and ease of use, including administration by community level providers and self-injection. Claims about its potential are compelling: advocates hope it will dramatically increase access to contraceptives, and thereby unlock the social and material emancipatory promise of family planning. We offer preliminary observations about Sayana Press as an ethnographic and discursive object and further the scholarly conversation on humanitarian design by considering the gendered dimensions of global health technologies. The advent of Sayana Press reflects several significant trends in global health including the intensification of the innovation impera...
Medcine Anthropology Theory, 2022
In this Position Piece, we explore the hegemony of innovation and the construction of gendered fu... more In this Position Piece, we explore the hegemony of innovation and the construction of gendered futures in global health through the Sayana ® Press, a device that delivers a version of the contraceptive drug commonly known as Depo-Provera. The device has generated tremendous enthusiasm amongst global family planning advocates for its effectiveness and ease of use, including administration by community level providers and self-injection. Claims about its potential are compelling: advocates hope it will dramatically increase access to contraceptives, and thereby unlock the social and material emancipatory promise of family planning. We offer preliminary observations about Sayana Press as an ethnographic and discursive object and further the scholarly conversation on humanitarian design by considering the gendered dimensions of global health technologies. The advent of Sayana Press reflects several significant trends in global health including the intensification of the innovation imperative and the bypassing of investments in infrastructure-both bolstered by the recent rise of the 'self-care agenda'. Further, we suggest that global health technologies are also techniques in the Foucauldian sense-scripting new subjectivities and bodily norms towards gendered futurities. Finally, we note the dual role of the state in sexual and reproductive health as both source and object of reproductive governance.
Gender, Place & Culture, 2019
Abstract In this themed section, we identify three forms of populationism and bring them into con... more Abstract In this themed section, we identify three forms of populationism and bring them into conversation, which allows us to mount feminist challenges to present day forms of population control. These interventions are timely and necessary because of the continued prevalence of population control ideology and population alarmism in sustainable development and climate change policy and programs. We issue a direct challenge to scholarship that links population reduction with climate change adaptation and mitigation and the survival of the planet. The introduction provides an overview of our key argument, that seemingly disparate phenomena—technocratic approaches to fertility control, climate change securitization, Zika assemblages, neo-Malthusian articulations of the Anthropocene, and ‘climate-smart’ agriculture—are entangled with and expressions of demo, geo and biopopulationisms. We employ feminist critiques to contest these manifestations of population control that restrict bodies, reinforce boundaries, and create spaces of exclusion and violence.
Gender, Place & Culture, 2019
Abstract Following the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 in Cairo, w... more Abstract Following the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 in Cairo, which prompted a discursive shift from population control to reproductive health and rights in international development, policy experts and scholars have relegated population control to the realm of history. This presents a unique challenge to feminist critics who seek to identify manifestations of population control in the present. In this article, we consider the potential of ‘populationism’ as terminology that may assist in clarifying varied new manifestations of population control. We explicate three interrelated populationist strategies that focus on optimizing numbers (demo), spaces (geo), and life itself (bio). Through our elaboration of these three populationisms and their interaction, we seek to inspire feminist, intersectional responses to the pernicious social, economic and environmental problems that technocratic populationist interventions obscure.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2017
Gender, Place & Culture, 2019
Abstract Following the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 in Cairo, w... more Abstract Following the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 in Cairo, which prompted a discursive shift from population control to reproductive health and rights in international development, policy experts and scholars have relegated population control to the realm of history. This presents a unique challenge to feminist critics who seek to identify manifestations of population control in the present. In this article, we consider the potential of ‘populationism’ as terminology that may assist in clarifying varied new manifestations of population control. We explicate three interrelated populationist strategies that focus on optimizing numbers (demo), spaces (geo), and life itself (bio). Through our elaboration of these three populationisms and their interaction, we seek to inspire feminist, intersectional responses to the pernicious social, economic and environmental problems that technocratic populationist interventions obscure.
Culture, Health & Sexuality, 2016
Senegal provides a unique example of a sub-Saharan African country with a legal framework for the... more Senegal provides a unique example of a sub-Saharan African country with a legal framework for the regulation of commercial sex work. While registering as a legal sex worker affords women access to valuable social and medical resources, sex work is condemned by Senegalese society. Women who engage in sex work occupy a socially marginal status and confront a variety of stigmatising discourses and practices that legitimate their marginality. This paper examines two institutions that provide social and medical services to registered sex workers in Dakar: a medical clinic and a non-governmental organisation. It highlights the discourses about sex work that women encounter within these institutions and in their everyday lives. Women's accounts reveal a variety of strategies for managing stigma, from discretion and deception to asserting self-worth. As registered sex workers negotiate their precarious social position, their strategies both reproduce and challenge stigmatising representations of sex work. Their experiences demonstrate the contradictory outcomes of the Senegalese approach to regulating sex work.
Social science & medicine (1982), Jan 20, 2014
In Senegal, recent data indicates that the HIV epidemic is increasingly driven by concurrent sexu... more In Senegal, recent data indicates that the HIV epidemic is increasingly driven by concurrent sexual partners among men and women in stable relationships. In order to respond to this changing epidemiological profile in Senegal, multi-lateral and national AIDS actors require information about these emerging trends in unstudied populations. To that end, this study has several objectives, first, to assess local dynamics of sexual behaviors among individuals at popular socializing venues in areas at increased risk of HIV transmission; and then to examine how particular venues may influence risks of HIV transmission. In 2013 we collected data at 314 venues in 10 cities in Senegal using PLACE methodology. These venues were listed with collaboration of 374 community informants. They are places where commercial sex workers, MSM, and individuals who are not part of any identified risk group socialize and meet new sexual partners. We conducted 2600 interviews at the 96 most popular venues. A s...
Global Public Health, 2011
This essay takes as its point of departure comparative analyses of the population control movemen... more This essay takes as its point of departure comparative analyses of the population control movement and the global AIDS response. We argue that the responses to both rapid population growth and AIDS reflect a particular model for approaching development issues: the global crisis model. This model provides a framework in which development issues become classified as (1) global in scope, (2) highly urgent and unique, (3) a threat to international stability and (4) addressable through a concerted global response. By reviewing the population control movement and the past, present and possible future of the AIDS response, we examine the evolution of the global crisis model and its consequences in shaping development priorities, problems and solutions. We argue that the model mobilises significant financial resources, but it skews the allocation of development assistance, creates narrow, technical interventions, and fails to examine or remedy the social inequalities that produce health and development disparities.
Feminist Anthropology, Apr 8, 2020
Feminist Anthropology, 2020
Academia is frequently a hostile place where students, pre‐tenure scholars, women, people of colo... more Academia is frequently a hostile place where students, pre‐tenure scholars, women, people of color, disabled, queer, transgender, and nonbinary people face perpetual challenges. “You do not belong here” or “you are not good enough” can feel like a constant refrain. Yet some students find their path and pursue their graduate studies with determination, or even passion, joy, and a sense of satisfaction. A successful mentoring relationship with a faculty member can contribute to that success. This article tells the story of how two very differently positioned women in academia forged a unique mentoring relationship that produced unexpected and positive outcomes. One measure of this relationship's success is the student's transformation from hesitant master's student to confident doctoral student pursuing a self‐designed multidisciplinary doctoral degree. Less tangibly but no less important, the increasingly reciprocal and horizontal nature of this mentoring relationship all...
Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Oct 1, 2008
Http Dx Doi Org 10 2989 16085906 2010 545628, Jan 31, 2011
This article presents findings from a study of HIV/AIDS programmes for urban sex workers in Dakar... more This article presents findings from a study of HIV/AIDS programmes for urban sex workers in Dakar, Senegal. The objective of the research was to assess HIV prevention and treatment efforts to date, and to identify challenges that must be overcome in the long term to reduce the spread of HIV in Senegal. The research team organised four day-long community dialogues, in June 2008, with registered and unregistered sex workers in the Senegalese capital. In addition to these sessions, we conducted interviews with physicians employed by the Senegalese Ministry of Health, leaders of sex-worker organisations, and directors and staff at non-governmental organisations whose programmes target sex workers and other vulnerable groups. Our findings indicate that Senegal's public health strategies have been largely effective at containing the country's HIV epidemic, but not at addressing the social drivers of HIV transmission or protecting the rights of sexual minorities, such as sex workers and men who have sex with men. For Senegal's HIV/AIDS response to continue on a successful path, it must expand to include structural interventions and incorporate a human-rights approach.
Gender, Place & Culture A Journal of Feminist Geography, 2019
In this themed section, we identify three forms of populationism and bring them into conversation... more In this themed section, we identify three forms of populationism and bring them into conversation, which allows us to mount feminist challenges to present day forms of population control. These interventions are timely and necessary because of the continued prevalence of population control ideology and population alarmism in sustainable development and climate change policy and programs. We issue a direct challenge to scholarship that links population reduction with climate change adaptation and mitigation and the survival of the planet. The introduction provides an overview of our key argument, that seemingly disparate phenomena—technocratic approaches to fertility control, climate change securitization, Zika assemblages, neo-Malthusian articulations of the Anthropocene, and ‘climate-smart’ agriculture—are entangled with and expressions of demo, geo and biopopulationisms. We employ feminist critiques to contest these manifestations of population control that restrict bodies, reinfo...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
DifferenTakes, 2019
Editor's note: This year marks the 25 th anniversary of the 1994 International Conference on Popu... more Editor's note: This year marks the 25 th anniversary of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. ICPD is recognized by many as catalyzing a shift toward sexual and reproductive health and rights and women's empowerment and away from population control in family planning. However, as the DifferenTakes series has chronicled, many government policies, donor funding strategies , environmental group campaigns, and international family planning approaches have continued to rely on population control tactics in the years since ICPD. 1 These include the use of incentives, coercion and targets as well as an overreliance on long-acting reversible contraception and sterilization. In some countries, people living with HIV, people with disabilities, indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, as well as transgender and intersex people, continue to be forcibly and coercively sterilized. 2 In recognition of these harmful continuances, PopDev is pleased to publish this statement, which was collaboratively written in the spirit of feminist challenges to population control around the 1994 ICPD. 3 At the time of this publication, over 200 individuals and organizations from 26 countries have endorsed it. The statement recognizes and challenges population control in the time of climate change and promotes a social justice approach to addressing environmental racism, nationalism and hate, and to promoting reproductive health. Readers seeking to learn more can access "Confronting Populationism." 4-Anne Hendrixson NO. 94 FALL 2019 DifferenTakes is a publication of the Population and Development Program Hampshire College | Amherst, Massachusetts 413.559.5506 http://popdev.hampshire.edu Opinions expressed in this publication are those of the individual authors unless otherwise specified.
African Studies Review, 2015
Gender, Place & Culture, 2019
The theme of this issue, Public Health Governance in Africa, is within the framework of CODESRIA’... more The theme of this issue, Public Health Governance in Africa, is within the framework of CODESRIA’s Governance Programme. It was the subject of an international conference held in Dakar, 19–20 November 2015. The French articles focus on research carried out in eight African countries, namely Senegal, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Chad. The English articles address various topics in Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa. Two articles deal with issues generally pertaining to the continent: they are the gendered dimension of epidemics and the challenges in ensuring access to medicines in the post-Doha period. The theme proved to be cross-cutting, which enabled the participants to address various topics. This diversity is presented in the special issue. This scientific meeting was attended by over a dozen scholars who presented their research findings. Among these papers, ten were selected – five in French and five in English – after o...
Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters Volume 30, 2022 - Issue 1, 2022
Medicine Anthropology Theory
In this Position Piece, we explore the hegemony of innovation and the construction of gendered fu... more In this Position Piece, we explore the hegemony of innovation and the construction of gendered futures in global health through the Sayana® Press, a device that delivers a version of the contraceptive drug commonly known as Depo-Provera. The device has generated tremendous enthusiasm amongst global family planning advocates for its effectiveness and ease of use, including administration by community level providers and self-injection. Claims about its potential are compelling: advocates hope it will dramatically increase access to contraceptives, and thereby unlock the social and material emancipatory promise of family planning. We offer preliminary observations about Sayana Press as an ethnographic and discursive object and further the scholarly conversation on humanitarian design by considering the gendered dimensions of global health technologies. The advent of Sayana Press reflects several significant trends in global health including the intensification of the innovation impera...
Medcine Anthropology Theory, 2022
In this Position Piece, we explore the hegemony of innovation and the construction of gendered fu... more In this Position Piece, we explore the hegemony of innovation and the construction of gendered futures in global health through the Sayana ® Press, a device that delivers a version of the contraceptive drug commonly known as Depo-Provera. The device has generated tremendous enthusiasm amongst global family planning advocates for its effectiveness and ease of use, including administration by community level providers and self-injection. Claims about its potential are compelling: advocates hope it will dramatically increase access to contraceptives, and thereby unlock the social and material emancipatory promise of family planning. We offer preliminary observations about Sayana Press as an ethnographic and discursive object and further the scholarly conversation on humanitarian design by considering the gendered dimensions of global health technologies. The advent of Sayana Press reflects several significant trends in global health including the intensification of the innovation imperative and the bypassing of investments in infrastructure-both bolstered by the recent rise of the 'self-care agenda'. Further, we suggest that global health technologies are also techniques in the Foucauldian sense-scripting new subjectivities and bodily norms towards gendered futurities. Finally, we note the dual role of the state in sexual and reproductive health as both source and object of reproductive governance.
Gender, Place & Culture, 2019
Abstract In this themed section, we identify three forms of populationism and bring them into con... more Abstract In this themed section, we identify three forms of populationism and bring them into conversation, which allows us to mount feminist challenges to present day forms of population control. These interventions are timely and necessary because of the continued prevalence of population control ideology and population alarmism in sustainable development and climate change policy and programs. We issue a direct challenge to scholarship that links population reduction with climate change adaptation and mitigation and the survival of the planet. The introduction provides an overview of our key argument, that seemingly disparate phenomena—technocratic approaches to fertility control, climate change securitization, Zika assemblages, neo-Malthusian articulations of the Anthropocene, and ‘climate-smart’ agriculture—are entangled with and expressions of demo, geo and biopopulationisms. We employ feminist critiques to contest these manifestations of population control that restrict bodies, reinforce boundaries, and create spaces of exclusion and violence.
Gender, Place & Culture, 2019
Abstract Following the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 in Cairo, w... more Abstract Following the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 in Cairo, which prompted a discursive shift from population control to reproductive health and rights in international development, policy experts and scholars have relegated population control to the realm of history. This presents a unique challenge to feminist critics who seek to identify manifestations of population control in the present. In this article, we consider the potential of ‘populationism’ as terminology that may assist in clarifying varied new manifestations of population control. We explicate three interrelated populationist strategies that focus on optimizing numbers (demo), spaces (geo), and life itself (bio). Through our elaboration of these three populationisms and their interaction, we seek to inspire feminist, intersectional responses to the pernicious social, economic and environmental problems that technocratic populationist interventions obscure.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2017
Gender, Place & Culture, 2019
Abstract Following the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 in Cairo, w... more Abstract Following the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 in Cairo, which prompted a discursive shift from population control to reproductive health and rights in international development, policy experts and scholars have relegated population control to the realm of history. This presents a unique challenge to feminist critics who seek to identify manifestations of population control in the present. In this article, we consider the potential of ‘populationism’ as terminology that may assist in clarifying varied new manifestations of population control. We explicate three interrelated populationist strategies that focus on optimizing numbers (demo), spaces (geo), and life itself (bio). Through our elaboration of these three populationisms and their interaction, we seek to inspire feminist, intersectional responses to the pernicious social, economic and environmental problems that technocratic populationist interventions obscure.
Culture, Health & Sexuality, 2016
Senegal provides a unique example of a sub-Saharan African country with a legal framework for the... more Senegal provides a unique example of a sub-Saharan African country with a legal framework for the regulation of commercial sex work. While registering as a legal sex worker affords women access to valuable social and medical resources, sex work is condemned by Senegalese society. Women who engage in sex work occupy a socially marginal status and confront a variety of stigmatising discourses and practices that legitimate their marginality. This paper examines two institutions that provide social and medical services to registered sex workers in Dakar: a medical clinic and a non-governmental organisation. It highlights the discourses about sex work that women encounter within these institutions and in their everyday lives. Women's accounts reveal a variety of strategies for managing stigma, from discretion and deception to asserting self-worth. As registered sex workers negotiate their precarious social position, their strategies both reproduce and challenge stigmatising representations of sex work. Their experiences demonstrate the contradictory outcomes of the Senegalese approach to regulating sex work.
Social science & medicine (1982), Jan 20, 2014
In Senegal, recent data indicates that the HIV epidemic is increasingly driven by concurrent sexu... more In Senegal, recent data indicates that the HIV epidemic is increasingly driven by concurrent sexual partners among men and women in stable relationships. In order to respond to this changing epidemiological profile in Senegal, multi-lateral and national AIDS actors require information about these emerging trends in unstudied populations. To that end, this study has several objectives, first, to assess local dynamics of sexual behaviors among individuals at popular socializing venues in areas at increased risk of HIV transmission; and then to examine how particular venues may influence risks of HIV transmission. In 2013 we collected data at 314 venues in 10 cities in Senegal using PLACE methodology. These venues were listed with collaboration of 374 community informants. They are places where commercial sex workers, MSM, and individuals who are not part of any identified risk group socialize and meet new sexual partners. We conducted 2600 interviews at the 96 most popular venues. A s...
Global Public Health, 2011
This essay takes as its point of departure comparative analyses of the population control movemen... more This essay takes as its point of departure comparative analyses of the population control movement and the global AIDS response. We argue that the responses to both rapid population growth and AIDS reflect a particular model for approaching development issues: the global crisis model. This model provides a framework in which development issues become classified as (1) global in scope, (2) highly urgent and unique, (3) a threat to international stability and (4) addressable through a concerted global response. By reviewing the population control movement and the past, present and possible future of the AIDS response, we examine the evolution of the global crisis model and its consequences in shaping development priorities, problems and solutions. We argue that the model mobilises significant financial resources, but it skews the allocation of development assistance, creates narrow, technical interventions, and fails to examine or remedy the social inequalities that produce health and development disparities.
Feminist Anthropology, Apr 8, 2020
Feminist Anthropology, 2020
Academia is frequently a hostile place where students, pre‐tenure scholars, women, people of colo... more Academia is frequently a hostile place where students, pre‐tenure scholars, women, people of color, disabled, queer, transgender, and nonbinary people face perpetual challenges. “You do not belong here” or “you are not good enough” can feel like a constant refrain. Yet some students find their path and pursue their graduate studies with determination, or even passion, joy, and a sense of satisfaction. A successful mentoring relationship with a faculty member can contribute to that success. This article tells the story of how two very differently positioned women in academia forged a unique mentoring relationship that produced unexpected and positive outcomes. One measure of this relationship's success is the student's transformation from hesitant master's student to confident doctoral student pursuing a self‐designed multidisciplinary doctoral degree. Less tangibly but no less important, the increasingly reciprocal and horizontal nature of this mentoring relationship all...
Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Oct 1, 2008
Http Dx Doi Org 10 2989 16085906 2010 545628, Jan 31, 2011
This article presents findings from a study of HIV/AIDS programmes for urban sex workers in Dakar... more This article presents findings from a study of HIV/AIDS programmes for urban sex workers in Dakar, Senegal. The objective of the research was to assess HIV prevention and treatment efforts to date, and to identify challenges that must be overcome in the long term to reduce the spread of HIV in Senegal. The research team organised four day-long community dialogues, in June 2008, with registered and unregistered sex workers in the Senegalese capital. In addition to these sessions, we conducted interviews with physicians employed by the Senegalese Ministry of Health, leaders of sex-worker organisations, and directors and staff at non-governmental organisations whose programmes target sex workers and other vulnerable groups. Our findings indicate that Senegal's public health strategies have been largely effective at containing the country's HIV epidemic, but not at addressing the social drivers of HIV transmission or protecting the rights of sexual minorities, such as sex workers and men who have sex with men. For Senegal's HIV/AIDS response to continue on a successful path, it must expand to include structural interventions and incorporate a human-rights approach.
Gender, Place & Culture A Journal of Feminist Geography, 2019
In this themed section, we identify three forms of populationism and bring them into conversation... more In this themed section, we identify three forms of populationism and bring them into conversation, which allows us to mount feminist challenges to present day forms of population control. These interventions are timely and necessary because of the continued prevalence of population control ideology and population alarmism in sustainable development and climate change policy and programs. We issue a direct challenge to scholarship that links population reduction with climate change adaptation and mitigation and the survival of the planet. The introduction provides an overview of our key argument, that seemingly disparate phenomena—technocratic approaches to fertility control, climate change securitization, Zika assemblages, neo-Malthusian articulations of the Anthropocene, and ‘climate-smart’ agriculture—are entangled with and expressions of demo, geo and biopopulationisms. We employ feminist critiques to contest these manifestations of population control that restrict bodies, reinfo...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
DifferenTakes, 2019
Editor's note: This year marks the 25 th anniversary of the 1994 International Conference on Popu... more Editor's note: This year marks the 25 th anniversary of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. ICPD is recognized by many as catalyzing a shift toward sexual and reproductive health and rights and women's empowerment and away from population control in family planning. However, as the DifferenTakes series has chronicled, many government policies, donor funding strategies , environmental group campaigns, and international family planning approaches have continued to rely on population control tactics in the years since ICPD. 1 These include the use of incentives, coercion and targets as well as an overreliance on long-acting reversible contraception and sterilization. In some countries, people living with HIV, people with disabilities, indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, as well as transgender and intersex people, continue to be forcibly and coercively sterilized. 2 In recognition of these harmful continuances, PopDev is pleased to publish this statement, which was collaboratively written in the spirit of feminist challenges to population control around the 1994 ICPD. 3 At the time of this publication, over 200 individuals and organizations from 26 countries have endorsed it. The statement recognizes and challenges population control in the time of climate change and promotes a social justice approach to addressing environmental racism, nationalism and hate, and to promoting reproductive health. Readers seeking to learn more can access "Confronting Populationism." 4-Anne Hendrixson NO. 94 FALL 2019 DifferenTakes is a publication of the Population and Development Program Hampshire College | Amherst, Massachusetts 413.559.5506 http://popdev.hampshire.edu Opinions expressed in this publication are those of the individual authors unless otherwise specified.