Book contents
- People Before Markets
- People Before Markets
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contents by Topic
- Authors
- 1 Introduction: Why Are You Here?
- 2 Some Philosophical Help with “Neoliberalism”
- Part I Our World
- Part II Our Lives
- 12 Why Do Some People Want to Manage Human Fertility?
- 13 How Should Childbirth Happen?
- 14 Who Is Responsible for Children’s Food?
- 15 How Should We Care for the Elderly?
- 16 How Are People Who Take Drugs Treated?
- 17 How Should We Design Access to a Healthcare System?
- Part III Our Work
- Index
- References
12 - Why Do Some People Want to Manage Human Fertility?
from Part II - Our Lives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 October 2022
- People Before Markets
- People Before Markets
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contents by Topic
- Authors
- 1 Introduction: Why Are You Here?
- 2 Some Philosophical Help with “Neoliberalism”
- Part I Our World
- Part II Our Lives
- 12 Why Do Some People Want to Manage Human Fertility?
- 13 How Should Childbirth Happen?
- 14 Who Is Responsible for Children’s Food?
- 15 How Should We Care for the Elderly?
- 16 How Are People Who Take Drugs Treated?
- 17 How Should We Design Access to a Healthcare System?
- Part III Our Work
- Index
- References
Summary
When life throws you a problem, the solution our contemporary market moment proffers tends to be some sort of phone-based computer program, that is, an app. In this chapter, the authors take a look at apps designed to manage menstrual cycles. In so doing, the authors show that apps tend to individualize a problem, prize forms of efficiency and normative ideas of gender, all with a mystifying veneer of utopian market optimization and self-help. What’s interesting for us is the way that apps can individualize the problems they’re trying to solve and in so doing often seek to assist people in enhancing their human capital. The authors close with a contrast to anticapitalist punks seeking not individual optimization but collective liberation. In turn these punks offer those who menstruate a liberatory relationship with their own bodies.
Keywords
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- Information
- People before MarketsAn Alternative Casebook, pp. 223 - 248Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022