Demographic Desires

Through an exploration of the intertwined histories of hormonal contraception and population anxiety, in Demographic Desires: Medicine, Media, and Emergency Contraception in India, Appleton shows how discourses and practices of ‘family planning’ weave together the demographic desires of the Indian state and Indian women. In examining the relationship(s) between demographic desires of a nation, reproductive justice on the ground, and women’s everyday material conditions. In this book, Appleton posits that under neoliberal regimes of ‘empowered consumerism’ Emergency Contraceptive Pills (ECPs) introduced as non-prescription pills in 2005 bring histories of demographic control projects and demographic anxieties into the present. The book highlights the nuances of demographic realities which are co-constituted through historical and contemporary narratives, media images, public policy, and medical discourse. Addressing recurring questions about demography, women’s reproductive justice, and the visual manifestations of the neoliberal aspirations of Indians, this book contributes to conversations that provide an ‘alternarrative’ to demographic anxieties as a theoretical framing. Appleton proposes that demographic desires exist not in opposition to demographic anxiety, but rather as vital adjacent project. Demographic Desires brings together debates in medical anthropology, media and cultural studies, and a feminist engagement on the medical, scientific, and cultural to showcase the myriad ways emergency contraception in India offers new opportunities for complicating the relationship between contraception, mediated medicine, and demography.