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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research in western Kenya, this paper examines okuseno eshisero, a postpartum ritual, to show how care and violence are co-produced within reproductive practices oriented toward securing fertility under conditions of uncertainty and patriarchal authority.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research in Khwisero, western Kenya during the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper examines how care and violence are co-produced within reproductive practices oriented toward securing fertility under uncertainty. The analysis centres on okuseno eshisero, a postpartum ritual requiring husbands to perform minimal vaginal penetration after childbirth, widely understood as care that "opens the womb," restores reproductive balance, and prevents spiritual affliction. Methodologically, the paper attends to moments of hesitation, delay, refusal, and compliance in ritual practice, treating these not as deviations but as analytical sites where moral evaluations of care and violence become visible. I argue that care and violence are not stable categories but relational effects emerging through enactment, timing, and anticipated outcomes. Whether okuseno eshisero is experienced as protective care or embodied violence depends on how the ritual is performed, who controls its conditions, and whether it secures future fertility.

Theoretically, the paper advances a pragmatic approach to care and violence, showing their inseparability within gendered hierarchies of reproductive authority. While the ritual situates women's bodies within male-mediated moral orders, women actively navigate these constraints through strategic compliance, selective refusal, and alternative therapeutic itineraries. COVID-19 vaccination intensified these negotiations. Many women feared vaccines would "close the womb" prematurely, disrupting temporal and moral sequences through which reproductive futures are secured. Vaccine hesitancy emerges as pragmatic reproductive reasoning rather than misinformation, revealing care and violence as intertwined modes of navigating uncertain reproductive futures under conditions of gendered constraint.