FEMALE SEXUALITY, SOCIAL REPRODUCTION, AND THE POLITICS OF MEDICAL INTERVENTION IN NIGER - KEL-EWEY-TUAREG PERSPECTIVES

This essay explores connections between political institutions, forms of power, and women's health care concerns from a cultural anthropolog ical perspective. I focus on the roles of different medical establishm ents among the Kel Ewey Tuareg of Niger - Western-European sponsored, central state, traditional herbalism and Islamic scholarship - in crea ting, maintaining, and disputing these constructs, through the inventi on and elaboration of disease categories and through the selective app lication of medical and reproductive models and technology to women. I also explore women's attempts to manage these forces, as they draw up on a cultural inventory that is alternately supportive and in conflict with their interests.