Population Politics and Development

This book uses political and socio-anthropological theory to examine the relationship between power, interest, and agency within population and family planning discourse across Africa, with particular emphasis on case studies from Tanzania.

'Lisa Ann Richey has written a highly engaging and thoroughly researched account of population politics in Tanzania. Based on extensive fieldwork in three regions of the country, Richey provides an insightful feminist critique of global population discourse and local family planning practice. Population Politics and Development should be read by anyone interested in the history of global population policy and in the ways it shapes African women's lives'. - Frances Vavrus, Associate Professor of International and Transcultural Studies, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA

'Lisa Ann Richey carefully and eloquently elucidates the complex web of relationships between international population policies, the Tanzanian state, and the main target of population programs - poor women seeking reproductive health and family services at the local level. Theoretically sophisticated but grounded in solid clinic-level field work, this pathbreaking book should trigger challenges and changes to current neo-liberal models of development, women's health, and HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention in Africa.' - Betsy Hartmann, Director, Population and Development Program, Hampshire College, UK and author of Reproductive Rights and Wrongs

'This book demonstrates the crucial importance of evaluating local and global development initiatives together. Building her argument around a detailed examination of an integrated reproductive health project in Tanzania, Richey leaves no doubt that this 'double vision' is necessary if development is to be more than empty rhetoric evaded and ignored by local praxis.' - Jane Parpart, Visiting Professor of Gender Studies, University of the West Indies

LISA ANN RICHEY holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and is Associate Professor of Development Studies, Department of Society and Globalisation, Roskilde University, Denmark.