controlling births and bodies in village China

This article seeks to deepen the understanding of reproductive politics by conjoining a feminist analytics of reproductive control with a demographic dissection of reproductive process and outcome, as well as a political‐economic enquiry into state domination and accommodation. Focusing on China's one‐child‐per‐family birth control program, it argues that women are not only victims but also agents in the practice of controlling births and making population policy in China's villages. In Shaanxi Province, peasants have contested policy elements they do not like, forcing local officials to negotiate the terms of policy implementation. Resistance to the policy has had contradictory effects, however: while increasing the number of children allowed, it has put women's bodies at risk and reinforced their social subordination. Ironically, resistance has worked to reproduce the very state control over childbearing that women have contested. [reproductive politics, the body, feminism, demography, political economy, China]