title: Female sexuality, social reproduction, and the politics of medical intervention in Niger: Kel Ewey Tuareg perspectives.
abstract: This essay explores connections between political institutions, forms of power, and women's health care concerns from a cultural anthropological perspective. I focus on the roles of different medical establishments among the Kel Ewey Tuareg of Niger--Western-European sponsored, central state, traditional herbalism and Islamic scholarship--in creating, maintaining, and disputing these constructs, through the invention and elaboration of disease categories and through the selective application of medical and reproductive models and technology to women. I also explore women's attempts to manage these forces, as they draw upon a cultural inventory that is alternately supportive and in conflict with their interests.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Houston, TX 77204, USA.
authors.forename: S J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Rasmussen
mesh_terms: D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D005298:Fertility; D006298:Health Services Administration; D006801:Humans; D008393:Marriage; D008519:Medicine, Traditional; D009548:Niger; D010268:Parapsychology; D012424:Rural Population; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D014930:Women / Q000523:psychology*; D016387:Women's Health