Papers by Paro Mishra
Asian Journal of Women's Studies, 2021
ABSTRACT This article examines the growing industry of digital self-tracking technologies designe... more ABSTRACT This article examines the growing industry of digital self-tracking technologies designed for the female body, popularly known as femtech. Focusing mainly on reproductive technologies and applications, it situates femtech within the broader historical context of excluding women from research on medicine and clinical trials. Approaching femtech as datafied body projects, we argue that, even though these digital reproductive health technologies enhance user capacity for self-knowledge by quantifying reproduction, they raise apprehensions about issues of reproductive surveillance. These datafied body projects are not only technology-driven, but are also shaped by the neo-liberal ethos in which the state-corporate nexus shifts the onus of health management to participatory individuated forms, deemed as “empowering,” while simultaneously harnessing this user-generated data for control and profit. Finally, we argue that merely representing women in all spheres of health and procuring data on the female body is insufficient to address the larger concerns of gender in health. A more close-grained approach that addresses the structural embeddedness of exploitation of the female body for profit and the masculine epistemology around which these technologies are built is necessary.
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This article examines datafication of the reproductive body in India through use of femtech mobil... more This article examines datafication of the reproductive body in India through use of femtech mobile phone applications (henceforth, apps). Femtech apps quantify reproductive processes such as periods, conception, pregnancy and hormonal health and promise their users greater 'self-awareness' and 'control' through 'self-management'. Most studies on femtech refer to users in the Global North, while there are few studies on femtech adoption in the developing countries. This article, based on qualitative and quantitative data, and informed by a feminist technoscience framework, illustrates how femtech's promise of empowerment through datafication of reproduction is fraught with contradictions and tensions, and has exclusionary and risky consequences for Indian users. It examines the gendered technological landscape's bearing on concrete practices of design and innovation, and shows how femtech reinforces gendered social
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Current Sociology, 2023
This article examines datafication of the reproductive body in India through use of femtech mobil... more This article examines datafication of the reproductive body in India through use of femtech mobile phone applications (henceforth, apps). Femtech apps quantify reproductive processes such as periods, conception, pregnancy and hormonal health and promise their users greater 'self-awareness' and 'control' through 'self-management'. Most studies on femtech refer to users in the Global North, while there are few studies on femtech adoption in the developing countries. This article, based on qualitative and quantitative data, and informed by a feminist technoscience framework, illustrates how femtech's promise of empowerment through datafication of reproduction is fraught with contradictions and tensions, and has exclusionary and risky consequences for Indian users. It examines the gendered technological landscape's bearing on concrete practices of design and innovation, and shows how femtech reinforces gendered social
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Anthropology & Aging, Nov 18, 2022
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Asian Journal of Women's Studies, 2021
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India's Economy and Society: Lateral Explorations, 2021
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Asian Journal of Women's Studies, 2021
This article examines the growing industry of digital self-tracking technologies designed for the... more This article examines the growing industry of digital self-tracking technologies designed for the female body, popularly known as femtech. Focusing mainly on reproductive technologies and applications, it situates femtech within the broader historical context of excluding women from research on medicine and clinical trials. Approaching femtech as datafied body projects, we argue that, even though these digital reproductive health technologies enhance user capacity for self-knowledge by quantifying reproduction, they raise apprehensions about issues of reproductive surveillance. These datafied body projects are not only technology-driven, but are also shaped by the neoliberal ethos in which the state-corporate nexus shifts the onus of health management to participatory individuated forms, deemed as "empowering," while simultaneously harnessing this user-generated data for control and profit. Finally, we argue that merely representing women in all spheres of health and procuring data on the female body is insufficient to address the larger concerns of gender in health. A more close-grained approach that addresses the structural embeddedness of exploitation of the female body for profit and the masculine epistemology around which these technologies are built is necessary.
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Anthropology & Aging, 2021
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Asian Bioethics Review, 2021
Editorial for Special Issue on 'Reproduction, Demography and Cultural Anxieties in India and China'
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Asian Bioethics Review, 2021
This paper reflects on the social consequences of biotechnological control of population for valu... more This paper reflects on the social consequences of biotechnological control of population for values and ethics of care within the family household in rural north India. Based on long-term ethnographic research, it illustrates the manner in which social practices intermingle with reproductive choices and new reproductive technologies, leading to a systematic elimination of female foetuses, and thus, imbalanced sex ratios. This technological fashioning of populations, the paper argues, has far-reaching consequences for the institutions of family, marriage and kinship in north India particularly in relation to care circulation within the family-household leading to a shifting local ethics of care.
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Conference Notice, 2020
As the most populous countries in the world, India and China have come to mark our collective con... more As the most populous countries in the world, India and China have come to mark our collective conscience in significant ways. Recent research suggests that reproduction continues to be a national obsession in both countries. The stance has however shifted considerably from fears of overpopulation and high fertility rates, to policies encouraging childbearing and addressing infertility through assisted reproduction. As a superpower, China is interested in facilitating birth amongst a chosen few; while India continues with its ambivalent posture on the domestic use of in-vitro fertilization and other reproductive technologies, prohibiting the transnational traffic of ‘unsuitable foreigners’ and ‘nonheteronormative families’ to avail of the same. Most importantly, by aggressively participating in regulating the use of these technologies, the Indian and Chinese states are also keenly redefining the intimate lives of their citizenry. This is seen most pointedly in the recent change in the shifts in the one-child policy of the Chinese state, and the newly drafted Indian Surrogacy Bill.
In the late 20th century, both countries woke up to the need to manage the fallout of their population policies. These policies, combined with new sex determination technologies and widely prevalent culture of son-preference have exacerbated gender inequality in the form of skewed sex ratios. The resulting bride shortages have led to a marriage crisis and stoked local as well as global social anxieties. In China, there are fears of environmental and industrial pollution leading to a diminution in sperm quality; in India ethnically varying fertility transitions are deployed to further religious and political agendas; globally there is the spectre of ‘surplus’ men and ‘scarce’ women in rising Asia. Additionally, with crucial generational shifts posing a threat to the earlier stability of marriage and child-centeredness, reproduction and reproductive processes are provoking yet newer moral and cultural anxieties. Resulting familial, kinship and policy shifts are paramount in the ways in which China and India are approaching reproductive technologies and demographic transformation. Here, cultural peculiarities are beginning to provide new forms of engagement with the decades-long state, research, and policy obsessions with population. There is little doubt that we need newer and more nuanced research paradigms than the ones informed by earlier understandings of population rhetoric. We need to understand the emerging familial configurations of third-party donor families facilitated through IVF, commercial surrogacy and bride-shortage related marriage migration and inter-generational care deficit among the many other social phenomena that are resulting from newer demographic trends.
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Book Reviews by Paro Mishra
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2022
The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, impor... more The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are "All rights reserved", unless otherwise stated.
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Gender, Place and Culture, 2021
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Chapter in Edited Volume by Paro Mishra
Femtech: Intersectional Interventions in Women's Digital Health, 2023
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India's Economy and Society:Lateral Explorations, 2021
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Drawing on ethnographic research in Sonipat and Hisar districts of the north-Indian state of Hary... more Drawing on ethnographic research in Sonipat and Hisar districts of the north-Indian state of Haryana, a region known for its historically imbalanced sex ratio, this chapter lays bare the implications of exclusion from marriage for bachelors. It critiques the homogenized portrayal of bachelors as prone to violence and shows that their lived realities are complex and multi-dimensional. The narrative of violence only offers a partial picture and there exists a more common, less sensational and yet unexplored narrative of ambivalence and helplessness as characterizing the masculinity of these men; one in which they imagine themselves and are imagined by others as incomplete and leading a burdened existence. In doing so this chapter not only unravels the linkages that exist between marriage and sexuality in the Indian context but also maps out the implications that exclusion from marriage has on the sexuality of bachelors.
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Papers by Paro Mishra
In the late 20th century, both countries woke up to the need to manage the fallout of their population policies. These policies, combined with new sex determination technologies and widely prevalent culture of son-preference have exacerbated gender inequality in the form of skewed sex ratios. The resulting bride shortages have led to a marriage crisis and stoked local as well as global social anxieties. In China, there are fears of environmental and industrial pollution leading to a diminution in sperm quality; in India ethnically varying fertility transitions are deployed to further religious and political agendas; globally there is the spectre of ‘surplus’ men and ‘scarce’ women in rising Asia. Additionally, with crucial generational shifts posing a threat to the earlier stability of marriage and child-centeredness, reproduction and reproductive processes are provoking yet newer moral and cultural anxieties. Resulting familial, kinship and policy shifts are paramount in the ways in which China and India are approaching reproductive technologies and demographic transformation. Here, cultural peculiarities are beginning to provide new forms of engagement with the decades-long state, research, and policy obsessions with population. There is little doubt that we need newer and more nuanced research paradigms than the ones informed by earlier understandings of population rhetoric. We need to understand the emerging familial configurations of third-party donor families facilitated through IVF, commercial surrogacy and bride-shortage related marriage migration and inter-generational care deficit among the many other social phenomena that are resulting from newer demographic trends.
Book Reviews by Paro Mishra
Chapter in Edited Volume by Paro Mishra
In the late 20th century, both countries woke up to the need to manage the fallout of their population policies. These policies, combined with new sex determination technologies and widely prevalent culture of son-preference have exacerbated gender inequality in the form of skewed sex ratios. The resulting bride shortages have led to a marriage crisis and stoked local as well as global social anxieties. In China, there are fears of environmental and industrial pollution leading to a diminution in sperm quality; in India ethnically varying fertility transitions are deployed to further religious and political agendas; globally there is the spectre of ‘surplus’ men and ‘scarce’ women in rising Asia. Additionally, with crucial generational shifts posing a threat to the earlier stability of marriage and child-centeredness, reproduction and reproductive processes are provoking yet newer moral and cultural anxieties. Resulting familial, kinship and policy shifts are paramount in the ways in which China and India are approaching reproductive technologies and demographic transformation. Here, cultural peculiarities are beginning to provide new forms of engagement with the decades-long state, research, and policy obsessions with population. There is little doubt that we need newer and more nuanced research paradigms than the ones informed by earlier understandings of population rhetoric. We need to understand the emerging familial configurations of third-party donor families facilitated through IVF, commercial surrogacy and bride-shortage related marriage migration and inter-generational care deficit among the many other social phenomena that are resulting from newer demographic trends.