Sanitizing Bodies: Biomedicalization and the Transformation of Menstrual and Childbirth Impurity in Banaras, India

Biomedicalization is a multi-sited and complex process in which previously non-medical \ud conditions are pathologized and treated with increasingly technoscientific interventions. \ud Part of this process includes the construction of patient’s bodies as sites of biomedical \ud knowledge and intervention. My thesis investigates how the biomedicalization of female \ud reproduction affected understandings and practices regarding menstruation and \ud childbirth impurity in the city of Banāras, India. The “sanitization” of female \ud reproductive bodies, or loss of ritual pollution, witnessed in the context of Banaras is \ud discussed and I suggest that the reconstruction of female bodies as sites of biomedical \ud knowledge informed and even challenged former understandings of the ritual pollution \ud and stigma associated with the processes of menstruation and childbirth. I compare my \ud findings to the critiques of medical anthropologists regarding the medicalization of \ud childbirth in the U.S. and consider the localized, complex, and at times, contradictory \ud affects of biomedicalization