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Paper short abstract:

In the aftermath of conflict and independence, reproduction in Timor-Leste is shaped by both technoscientific logic of population and prosperity, and customary ways of replenishing kin. This paper considers how reproduction is transformed by socio-technical relationships in the absence of ART/NRTs.

Paper long abstract:

Reproduction in Timor-Leste is disrupted and transformed by both technoscientific logic and local ways of kin-making. Approximately a third of Timor-Leste’s total population died as a result of the Indonesian occupation (1975-99). 20 years after independence, in the central mountain town of Maubisse, families are remaking kinship groups by rebuilding ancestral houses, having children, and replacing lives lost during the conflict. Limited access to biomedical health care enables some lives to be saved, but customary practices of kin-making replenish the ‘empty land’ with a lively form of prosperity. Simultaneously in Timor-Leste’s post-conflict development landscape, demographics calculate are used to forecast the future economy. This often includes recommendations to lower fertility rates for better health outcomes and national prosperity. This technoscientific practice ties reproduction to economic outcomes (Murphy 2017), which clashes and converges with local ways of counting, calculating and remaking kin. How is reproduction shaped by both local calculations about balancing people and nature, as well as demographic technoscience and global health tools? Whilst a large body of scholarly work on reproduction focuses on ARTs/NRTs and the possibilities they hold for transforming reproduction via biomedical innovations and technology, there are huge inequalities in who has access to them. How are reproductive futures reconstructed in spaces where such technologies aren’t easily accessible? What other socio-technical relationships are being formed? This paper considers the strategies and mechanisms people use to make future kin in the absence of ARTs/NRTs and challenges what we consider to be transformative of reproduction.