Front cover image for Contraception : a history

Contraception : a history

"In this new book Robert Jutte offers a history of contraception from the ancient world to the present day. He distinguishes two broad phases: first, a long phase, extending from the ancient world up to the eighteenth century, in which birth control was part of a traditional form of sexual knowledge - what Jutte calls, following the French social philosopher Michel Foucault, the 'ars erotica'. In the second phase, which began in the nineteenth century, practices of birth control are increasingly shaped by the emerging models of scientific knowledge, while still retaining some vestiges of the erotic arts."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©2008
Polity, Cambridge, UK, ©2008
History
x, 255 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780745632704, 9780745632711, 074563270X, 0745632718
71541738
Ars erotica : the early art of contraception (The economics of sexual reproduction : birth control in the ancient world?
Calls for greater fertility : origin of the ethics of procreation in Judaism, Christianity and Islam
The not so secret wisdom of ancient medicine
Poetic truth : deliberate infertility as a theme in ancient literature
Unfruitful activities : "suppositories for women" and herbal potions)
Transformations : the supposed repression of knowledge about contraception in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times (A history of demographics and the origins of birth control
Secreta mulierum : female wisdom on pregnancy and contraception
Sexual desire and atonement : the theology of the "sinful flesh"
Castration, condoms, Casanovas : old and new methods of contraception)
The beginnings of scientia sexualis in the Nineteenth Century : the impact of moral and political imperatives on the debate about contraception ((Neo- ) Malthusianism and its demographical implications
A fresh approach to knowledge : sex education pamphlets and their readers
Sexual politics : intensified control and resistance to it
The practice of "being careful" : between tradition and progress)
An everyday regime : the "democratization" of birth control in the twentieth century (The promise of deliverance : contraception as emancipation
The "Nationalization" of contraception : enforced sterilization and national birth control programmes
Changes iin sexual morality and the waning influence of religion
Simultaneous existence of old and new methods of contraception)
Future prospects (The "Pill for men" : the contraceptive of the future?)
Originally published as: Lust ohne Last : Geschichte der Empfängnisverhütung von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Originalausg. ©2003
Translated from the German