Decolonizing Reproductive Rights in Latin America: The Cases of Forced Sterilization in Peru

— —

Julieta Chaparro-Buitrago (The University of Cambridge, England)

Decolonizing Reproductive Rights in Latin America

The Cases of Forced Sterilization in Peru

Julieta Chaparro-Buitrago (The University of Cambridge, England)

$165.95

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

Bristol University Press
22 October 2025

Sexual abuse & harassment; Feminism & feminist theory; Gender studies, gender groups; Social & cultural anthropology; Human reproduction, growth & development

Series: Decolonization and Social Worlds

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Peru, this book examines forced sterilization through various registers, from the ways women speak about reproductive abuse to urban feminist activism and bureaucratic responses. The author argues that a hierarchy of discourse shapes the dominant understanding of reproductive abuse, rooted in repronormativity. This focus often overlooks other harms, such as loss of strength and changes that are less easily measured. The book shows that these different perspectives are not isolated but overlap and clash.

Introducing dissonance as a decolonial feminist methodology, the book analyses how colonial, racialized and gendered histories shape legal and experiential incommensurability , and the hierarchies of discourse. The first ethnography on sterilization cases in Peru, this book contributes to reproduction, Latin American and feminist decolonial studies.

By: Julieta Chaparro-Buitrago (The University of Cambridge England)
Imprint: Bristol University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781529236057
ISBN 10: 1529236053
Series: Decolonization and Social Worlds
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 22 October 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , General/trade , Undergraduate , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Introduction 1. Masters of their Own Destiny: Women’s Rights and Forced Sterilization in the 1990s 2. Grammar of Reproductive Abuse: “Ya no Tenemos Fuerza” 3. Grammar of Reproductive Abuse: Alteraciones and Animal Analogies 4. Contingent Consonances: Survivors’ and Feminists’ Activism 5. Non-Performativity and the Bureaucratization of Harm, or How States Deal with Reproductive Violence

Julieta Chaparro-Buitrago is Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam.

Reviews for Decolonizing Reproductive Rights in Latin America: The Cases of Forced Sterilization in Peru

‘Such a timely and humanizing offering to counter the current repressive historical moment in Peru and beyond! This impressively nuanced and multi-sited ethnography uplifts Indigenous peasant women’s understandings of their varied experiences with forced sterilization, thereby expanding the coloniality of gender critique to include reproduction.’ Pascha Bueno-Hansen, University of Delaware ‘A necessary book about a shameful and unpunished event. The book not only provides a critique of human and reproductive rights but also brings us closer to the feelings and thoughts of the victims, recognizing their agency.’ Márgara Millán, National Autonomous University of México