Men's Narratives of Vasectomy

Rearticulating Masculinity and Contraceptive Responsibility in San José, Costa Rica

Bibliographic Data

ID2288447
AuthorsTony Orlando Pomales (University of Iowa, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume27
Issue1
Pages23-42
Publication date2013-03-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Anthropology Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0745-5194 • E-ISSN: 1548-1387
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/maq.12014
PMID23674321
OpenAlexW1957780331
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited28

This article interrogates the modes by which cultural constructions of male contraceptive use emerge in Costa Rica by analyzing men's narratives of vasectomy. Drawing on ethnographic research data, I examine men's contraceptive decision making and perspectives on vasectomy and specify the ways they work through their vasectomy to rearticulate the relationship between masculinity and contraceptive responsibility and tensions in an emerging Costa Rican social modernity. Following Oudshoorn's (2003) analysis on male contraceptive research, this article highlights contraceptive technologies and men's narratives of these technologies as key sites for examining gender politics in contemporary societies and the materialization of new social orders. In the discussion, I argue that the men's narratives examined here potentiate creation of an "alternative technosociality" (Oudshoorn 2003) in Costa Rica, in which men taking contraceptive responsibility does not constitute performing a subordinate masculinity, but simply another way of acting as men

Ethnography · Family planning · Male contraceptive · Masculinity · Modernity · Narrative · Political science · Population · Research methodology · Sociology · Vasectomy · Anthropology · Demography · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Male Reproductive Health Studies · Reproductive Health and Technologies