Publications.
Powis, Richard. 2024. Making Sure She Eats Right: Absent-Presence, Articulation, and Surveillance-Care in Senegalese Men’s Maternal Support. Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness. Oct 2024:1—13. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2024.2423166
In Senegal, where pregnancy is “women’s business,” men’s roles in prenatal and postpartum care are mediated by gendered expectations of what expectant fathers are allowed to know and do. Expectant fathers’ roles map onto masculine expectations of the authoritative, sovereign head-of-household. Using the state-authored Handbook of Mother and Child Health, I argue that state surveillance is refracted through preexisting masculine prenatal care roles, and that men willingly articulate themselves to the role of the surveillance state by relying on the Handbook as a guide for how to watch their pregnant partners and make sure they are adhering to its guidance. (Open Access)
Strong, Adrienne and Richard Powis. 2024. Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Eighth Edition. London: Routledge.
Divided thematically into five parts, the editors open each section with a succinct introduction to the principal issues. The book retains some of the classic chapters while offering new contributions and extended discussions throughout on methodology. It also has entirely new contributions that reflect more recent developments in the discipline, including more emphasis on LGBTQ+ communities, COVID, and migration. The new edition also features additional support for teaching and learning that, including a film list and discussion questions, now offered as supplemental online materials. The 8th edition of Gender in the Cross-Cultural Perspective continues to be an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate students encountering the anthropology of gender for the first time. (Routledge)
Powis, Richard and Emma N. Bunkley. 2023. Handbooks and health interpreters: How men are assets for their pregnant partners in Senegal. Social Science and Medicine. 331, Aug 2023, 116074. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116074
Our ethnographic insights challenge global health rhetoric that frames men as uninvolved in women and children's health and this study demonstrates that future interventions should take an asset-based approach to men's involvement. Senegalese men are uniquely positioned by gendered expectations to act as health interpreters for their pregnant partners. We conclude with specific, actionable recommendations for the Senegalese case. (Open Access)
Powis, Richard. 2022. (Mis)measuring men’s involvement in global health: the case of expectant fathers in Dakar, Senegal. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth. 22, 754. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-022-05093-0.
[This study] demonstrates that expectant fathers are involved in antenatal care in ways that USAID does not track through DHS. Further, I argue that USAID’s heterosexist, monogamous, and nuclear operationalization of “men’s involvement” aligns with a long history of Eurocentrism in development discourse which may be potentially harmful and obstructive to improving maternal and child health when the problem that is targeted is not a problem at all. This study is yet another case that demonstrates an urgent need of public and global health engagement with local stakeholders and ethnographic researchers. (Open Access)
Powis, Richard. 2022. “From Couvade to ‘Men’s Involvement’: Sociocultural Perspectives of Expectant Fatherhood.” In The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and Reproduction, edited by Sallie Han and Cecilia Tomori, 410—423. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003216452.
As anthropologists increasingly become interested in men, masculinities, and reproductive health, there is yet a paucity of ethnographic research into men’s involvement in prenatal care. Apart from a handful of publications in the last 30 years, men seldom appear in even the background of ethnographic vignettes that concern pregnancy, labor, or delivery. The relationship between men and pregnancy and childbirth is one of the oldest objects of study in North Atlantic anthropology under the term “couvade.” Popularized by E.B. Tylor in 1859, couvade went on to become the center of debates spanning almost a century that catalyzed paradigmatic shifts in anthropological theory. In the early twentieth century, couvade was fractured into “ritual” and psychiatric forms which were incidentally distinguished by geopolitical borders and race. These forms were read as gender-bending or pathological, respectively. Anthropological interest in couvade waned after the postmodern turn, but there has been a recent renaissance of interest in men’s involvement under the banners of gender equality, neoliberal health reform, and global health interventions following the trend of “men’s involvement.” This chapter illuminates a history of sociocultural perspectives of expectant fatherhood, broadens the definition of couvade in the twenty-first century, and provides some direction for future research. (PDF)
Powis, Richard. 2021. “Non fi daffa métti.” Visual Anthropology Review. 37:2(1—20). https://doi.org/10.1111/var.12239.
In Dakar, Senegal, skilled tradesmen must navigate boom-and-bust cycles of the economy—tempos disproportionately influenced by the Islamic calendar, foreign investment, and an individual’s access to social capital. Anticipating these cycles, drawing on community networks for support, and learning to weather the bad times can mean the difference between providing for your family and having your masculinity questioned. Both Dakar and its builders are always under construction, ever in progress. (PDF)
Powis, Richard. 2020. “Relations of Reproduction: Men, Masculinities, and Pregnancy in Dakar, Senegal.” Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2232. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/2232.
Around the world, global health initiatives aim to empower women by encouraging men to be more engaged husbands and fathers. In some forms, this means men attending prenatal exams and taking up a more equitable share of domestic responsibilities. In much of West Africa, spaces associated with women’s work or “issues” are sharply gender-designated, meaning that even if men are open to engaging, they may not be welcome. This dissertation research is an ethnographic exploration of the experiences of expectant fathers in Dakar, Senegal, the ways in which they not only navigate these gendered spaces, and how they renegotiate their own masculinities in the context of locally-produced gender norms, changing forms of marriage, religious notions of parenting, and economic precarity. My research finds that there is tension between men’s practices and gendered assumptions about men in global/national public health campaigns. I use the concept “absent presence” to examine the ways in which expectant fathers’ practices and expectations are simultaneously a crucial part of prenatal care in Dakar while also elided from consideration in global, state, and scholarly interventions. (PDF)