Innovation and Maladjustment: Contraceptive Technologies in State-Socialist Poland, 1950s–1970s (January 2022)
A range of contraceptive technologies was available in Poland between the late 1950s and early 1970s. Following the legalization of abortion in 1956, a public health campaign, supported by the communist authorities, popularized contraception. Based on archival sources, press items, and popular medical literature, this article is the first systematic study of contraceptive technologies in postwar Poland before the pill, which also examines the trajectories of female barrier methods and spermicides. The availability and quality of these contraceptive products fluctuated in the centrally planned economy, and they were ascribed at times contradictory values. Thus, the circulation of contraceptive technologies was shaped by concurrent processes of innovation and maladjustment disconnected from the authorities' declarations of support for contraception as an alternative to abortion. Focusing on the materiality of contraceptive technologies sheds new light on the history of reproduction in postwar Poland.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska;
Agata Ignaciuk;
(2020)
Family Planning Advice in State-Socialist Poland, 1950s–80s: Local and Transnational Exchanges
(/isis/citation/CBB387865967/)
Article
Ghosh, Arunabh;
(September 2019)
Commentary: New Directions in the Study of PRC-Era Science
(/isis/citation/CBB174642040/)
Article
Donna J. Drucker;
(2021)
The Diaphragm in the City: Contraceptive Research at the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, 1925–1939
(/isis/citation/CBB597130193/)
Article
Marcin Stasiak;
(2021)
Objects, Agency, Discontinuity: Orthopaedic Devices and People with Polio-Related Disabilities in Poland after 1945
(/isis/citation/CBB659793713/)
Book
Alexey Golubev;
(2020)
The Things of Life: Materiality in Late Soviet Russia
(/isis/citation/CBB886155448/)
Article
Stewart, John;
(2000)
“Science Fights Death”: David Stark Murray, science, and socialism in interwar Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB000110499/)
Book
Maćkowiak, Zenon;
(2000)
Adam Wrzosek, Życie i działalność
(/isis/citation/CBB000330244/)
Article
Chiaki Shirai;
(April 2020)
Historical Dynamism of Childbirth in Japan: Medicalization and its Normative Politics, 1868–2017
(/isis/citation/CBB319096840/)
Article
Belfiore, Michael;
(Fall 2009)
Strong Armed
(/isis/citation/CBB945110039/)
Article
Mukharji;
(October 2019)
Akarnan: The Stethoscope and Making of Modern Ayurveda, Bengal, c. 1894–1952
(/isis/citation/CBB225854011/)
Article
Prinz, Benjamin;
(2018)
Operieren am blutleeren Herzen: Eine Geschichte chirurgischer Zeit zwischen Handwerk, Maschinen und Organismen, 1900–1950. (Operating upon the Bloodless Heart: A History of Surgical Time between Craft, Machines and Organisms, 1900–1950.)
(/isis/citation/CBB554037582/)
Article
Brazelton;
(April 2019)
Engineering Health: Technologies of Immunization in China's Wartime Hinterland, 1937–45
(/isis/citation/CBB731103057/)
Thesis
Saunders, Barry Ferguson;
(2001)
CT suite: The work of diagnosis in the age of noninvasive cutting
(/isis/citation/CBB001562634/)
Thesis
Tousignant, Noemi R.;
(2006)
Pain and the Pursuit of Objectivity: Pain-Measuring Technologies in the UnitedStates, c. 1890--1975
(/isis/citation/CBB001561511/)
Book
Vostral, Sharra Louise;
(2008)
Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene Technology
(/isis/citation/CBB000831088/)
Book
Noordwijk, Jakob van;
(2001)
Dialysing for Life: The Development of Artificial Kidney
(/isis/citation/CBB000101809/)
Book
Lock, Margaret;
Young, Allan;
Cambrosio, Alberto;
(2000)
Living and Working with the New Medical Technologies: Intersections of Inquiry
(/isis/citation/CBB000101544/)
Book
Cameron, John Stewart;
(2002)
History of the Treatment of Renal Failure by Dialysis
(/isis/citation/CBB000301784/)
Article
Gonçalo Santos;
(April 2020)
Birthing Stories and Techno-moral Change across Generations: Coping with Hospital Births and High-tech Medicalization in Rural South China, 1960s–2010s
(/isis/citation/CBB732387721/)
Book
Jacobson, Nora;
(2000)
Cleavage: Technology, Controversy, and the Ironies of the Man-Made Breast
(/isis/citation/CBB000111974/)
Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
NTM: Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin
Medical History
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
Annals of Science: The History of Science and Technology
Be the first to comment!