Recovering political knowledge in public health: learning from sexual and reproductive health work

ABSTRACT

Like many areas of public health, sexual and reproductive health is concerned with politically contentious matters such as abortion and LGBT+ rights. Global setbacks at the hands of the far right highlight the extent to which the rights and practices underpinning sexual and reproductive health are politically mediated. Yet the political is often occluded in mainstream sexual and reproductive health responses. In this paper, I consider the recent travails of sexual and reproductive health in order to critique technocratic knowledge forms that dominate both sexual and reproductive health and public health responses. Exploring sexual and reproductive health responses across time and space, I identify alternative knowledge forms and approaches relevant to public health.

KEYWORDS:

• Politics
• sexual and reproductive health
• knowledge

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Funding

The author reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.