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Caroline H Bledsoe

  • 886 Citations
1976 …2020

Research output per year

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Personal profile

Research Interests

Professor Bledsoe’s studies have centered on cultural visions of reproduction and the lifecourse in West Africa and beyond.  Specific themes have included marriage, fertility, child fosterage, health, contraception, aging, obstetrics, and migration.  Several West African studies have been followed by U.S. and European counterparts. 

Conceptually, the work has examined forms of ideation, regulation, and quantitative calculus as ethnographic terrain.  It asks, among other things, (a) the politics of knowledge and the law, and (b) how formal perspectives usually attributed to demography, economics, and medicine can be combined with the softer social sciences to probe the dynamics that shape life events and to derive insights into the mutual cultural construction of nature and science.

Education/Academic qualification

Anthropology, PhD, Stanford University

… → 1976

Anthropology, MA, Stanford University

… → 1972

General Studies, BA, University of Arizona

… → 1971

Research interests

  • Anthropology of reproduction
  • Child fostering
  • Contraception
  • Fertility
  • Lifecourse and cultural perceptions of time
  • Obstetrics
  • Politics of knowledge

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Research Output

Social dimensions of fertility behavior and consumption patterns in the Anthropocene

Barrett, S., Dasgupta, A., Dasgupta, P., Neil Adger, W., Anderies, J., van den Bergh, J., Bledsoe, C., Bongaarts, J., Carpenter, S., Stuart Chapin, F., Crépin, A. S., Daily, G., Ehrlich, P., Folke, C., Kautsky, N., Lambin, E. F., Levin, S. A., Mäler, K. G., Naylor, R., Nyborg, K. & 6 others, Polasky, S., Scheffer, M., Shogren, J., Jørgensen, P. S., Walker, B. & Wilen, J., Mar 24 2020, In : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 117, 12, p. 6300-6307 8 p.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article

Open Access

    • The politics of AIDS, condoms, and heterosexual relations in Africa: Recent evidence from the local print media

    Bledsoe, C., Jan 1 2019, Births and Power: Social Change and the Politics of Reproduction. Taylor and Francis, p. 197-223 27 p.

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

    • The politics of children: Fosterage and the social management of fertility among the mende of Sierra Leone

    Bledsoe, C., Jan 1 2019, Births and Power: Social Change and the Politics of Reproduction. Taylor and Francis, p. 81-100 20 p.

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

    • 4 Scopus citations

    Fertility and Culture: Anthropological Insights

    Bledsoe, C. H., Mar 26 2015, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: Second Edition. Elsevier Inc, p. 1-5 5 p.

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

    • Review of Balancing Men, Morals and Money: Women's Agency between HIV and Security in a Malawi Village by Janneke Verheijen

    Bledsoe, C. H., 2014, In : Population and Development Review. 40, 1, p. 161-164 4 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review

    Open Access