Paper short abstract:

Temporal representations of past and present fertility patterns are explored as modern contraception becomes widely available in eastern Congo-DR for the first time. Emerging discourse on ‘the future’ is analyzed as fertility is linked to intimate gendered, cultural and political power dynamics.

Paper long abstract:

Modern contraceptive methods have been introduced by various actors into sub Saharan African contexts for decades. In some settings, however, it is only recently that a variety of modern methods has become widely known and accessible to the larger population, especially in rural areas. Questions surrounding the ownership of gendered bodies and control over fertility are foundational features of social organization. Therefore, modern contraception as a technology necessarily enters into the most intimate spaces of individual and collective gendered, generational, cultural and political power dynamics while also framing the discourse surrounding culturally permissible fertility practices.

During ethnographic explorations of fertility patterns and practices in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, participants often framed discussions surrounding the relatively recent introduction of modern contraception temporally. This paper explores how different individuals view and discuss fertility practices using ambiguously-defined periods in time, providing differing perspectives on fertility norms and the memory of conditions surrounding, producing and changing those norms over time. Discourse on 'the future' includes larger, modern theoretical concepts such as 'development' and interpretations of 'the nation' melding practices from 'before' and 'today' into a narrative about what will and/or needs to be in future. Diverging memories of fertility in the past, representations of fertility in the present and imaginations of the future reveal the actual and/or imagined power shifts modern contraceptives insinuate for different actors and if those actors stand to gain or lose under changing and uncertain future social norms.