In an article I wrote for Quillette a few years back, I discussed the high rates of infant and child mortality across societies throughout human history, before industrialization and the rise of more effective antiseptics and sanitation systems reduced these rates substantially.
I hope I’m not getting this horribly wrong, it seems abortion wasn’t recognized as a good thing, but as a necessary evil that remains an option at times, at the discretion of the women in the community. It wasn’t something to celebrate. While there is a flavor of “women’s prerogative” present, I’d expect that a woman who had multiple abortions (assuming modern safety, not tree limbs and poisons) would run afoul of the other women in the group/deep social strain.
I’d be really interested to know more about male policing of male sexuality in these societies. I would expect that if a young man was doing “too much” the other men would have a problem with that (even assuming he’s not sleeping with married women). Also, if a man is known to be the father of a woman who is having an abortion (unmarried) does the man acquire negative stigma? From the men? From the women? It sounds like the men don’t ‘know’ about the abortions (or refuse to admit they know), so perhaps just negative toward the ‘father’ from the women?
If you’ve got any suggested readings/keywords for looking into this I’d appreciate hearing! Im still in undergrad/quite new.
> I hope I’m not getting this horribly wrong, it seems abortion wasn’t recognized as a good thing, but as a necessary evil that remains an option at times, at the discretion of the women in the community.
Why do you assume it's at the discretion of the woman? I'm not much of an anthropologist but I can think of several societies (including some modern ones) where abortion decisions were not left up to the mother or even to women.
> Colonial contact likely also increased abortion among the Ainu, with the rise of encounters with foreign men seeking to solicit prostitution.
This seems to imply colonial contact with the Ainu began in the late 19th century century or roughly there (as that's when the reports are from). This is true for Europeans who first established a permanent presence on the island in the mid-19th century. (Though European traders had been there earlier.)
But this implicitly excludes the colonial relationship the Japanese or Chinese/Mongols/Manchus developed with the Ainu, including on Sakhalin. If this is on purpose then what was the difference?
It just struck me that this statement equates "colonial" with "European." But that is not my impression of the Ainu experience. Nor is it my impression that the Chinese or Japanese were not having sexual contact with local women.
You also said "colonial contact likely also increased abortion among the Ainu." But colonial contact by the Chinese and Japanese began somewhere between six hundred and fifteen hundred years before the report you quoted. Only the Russians were relatively new, having arrived in the mid-19th century.
How would an ethnographer tell us anything about how colonial contact changed them? Because the claim is that contact caused a change (an increase in abortions). Is the claim simply the presence of foreign men, whether new or old, probably increased abortions because their children were more frequently aborted?
You keep making unjustified assumptions, particularly as I didn't specify a time period, but here is a quote from the source I link to: "Among the Ainu, much more frequently than among the Gilyak, miscarriages are induced artificially. The life of the latter is much more normal in the framework of traditional customs, whereas that of the Ainu on Sakhalin Island has been influenced for two centuries by a powerful external factor, that of the Japanese. These interfere to an enormous extent in the life of the Ainu, they change it and import elements that are not exactly instrumental in furthering culture. Especially the women stand under the influence of foreign men who are only interested in satisfying their sexual urge. Hence stems the large number of secret affairs that Ainu women have with foreigners, and it gives rise to the type of women who are given to an only slightly veiled form of prostitution. In both cases they purposely avoid pregnancy and apply all methods to remove it in case it accidentally occurs."
Note they specify the Japanese but again I said "foreign men" and didn't try to pinpoint a narrow time period, but obviously the presence of foreign men engaging in prostitution is something that has to be post-colonial contact.
A report from 1895 about contemporary practices is going to be about the time period 1895. Colonial contact with the Ainu of Sakhalin began centuries before that time period (as the source notes). Long before the time period of the report. The question then results: How can we know how contact changed them ("increased abortions") when the time period of the cited study is centuries removed from initial contact?
I then asked: Are you talking about the Russians? Because that resolves the issue of how an 1895 report can refer to colonial contact as if it was new. They'd only arrived in large numbers some forty years earlier. If so, that seems like an odd distinction to draw. I was quite clear in my language ("seems" et al) that this is speculation on what you might mean, not an assertion of what you said.
You've given me my answer. You weren't talking about the Russians or drawing such a distinction. The reporter is not claiming there was a post-contact change but that, in their present time, abortions are commonly used when dealing with foreign men.
I took your words overly literally. When you said contact increased abortions I took that to mean that upon colonial contact abortions increased. What you actually meant was that the long run effects of colonization led to conditions that rendered abortions common centuries later. Admittedly, it's a minor sentence so getting that specific was probably unnecessary. Thanks for the clarification.
Does the reporter happen to mention anything about the change in Japanese colonial administration in the 1870s?
I hope I’m not getting this horribly wrong, it seems abortion wasn’t recognized as a good thing, but as a necessary evil that remains an option at times, at the discretion of the women in the community. It wasn’t something to celebrate. While there is a flavor of “women’s prerogative” present, I’d expect that a woman who had multiple abortions (assuming modern safety, not tree limbs and poisons) would run afoul of the other women in the group/deep social strain.
I’d be really interested to know more about male policing of male sexuality in these societies. I would expect that if a young man was doing “too much” the other men would have a problem with that (even assuming he’s not sleeping with married women). Also, if a man is known to be the father of a woman who is having an abortion (unmarried) does the man acquire negative stigma? From the men? From the women? It sounds like the men don’t ‘know’ about the abortions (or refuse to admit they know), so perhaps just negative toward the ‘father’ from the women?
If you’ve got any suggested readings/keywords for looking into this I’d appreciate hearing! Im still in undergrad/quite new.
> I hope I’m not getting this horribly wrong, it seems abortion wasn’t recognized as a good thing, but as a necessary evil that remains an option at times, at the discretion of the women in the community.
Why do you assume it's at the discretion of the woman? I'm not much of an anthropologist but I can think of several societies (including some modern ones) where abortion decisions were not left up to the mother or even to women.
> Colonial contact likely also increased abortion among the Ainu, with the rise of encounters with foreign men seeking to solicit prostitution.
This seems to imply colonial contact with the Ainu began in the late 19th century century or roughly there (as that's when the reports are from). This is true for Europeans who first established a permanent presence on the island in the mid-19th century. (Though European traders had been there earlier.)
But this implicitly excludes the colonial relationship the Japanese or Chinese/Mongols/Manchus developed with the Ainu, including on Sakhalin. If this is on purpose then what was the difference?
It just struck me that this statement equates "colonial" with "European." But that is not my impression of the Ainu experience. Nor is it my impression that the Chinese or Japanese were not having sexual contact with local women.
I did not mention “European” at all, you assumed it, I said “foreign men” very clearly in the excerpt you quoted, not “European“
You also said "colonial contact likely also increased abortion among the Ainu." But colonial contact by the Chinese and Japanese began somewhere between six hundred and fifteen hundred years before the report you quoted. Only the Russians were relatively new, having arrived in the mid-19th century.
How would an ethnographer tell us anything about how colonial contact changed them? Because the claim is that contact caused a change (an increase in abortions). Is the claim simply the presence of foreign men, whether new or old, probably increased abortions because their children were more frequently aborted?
You keep making unjustified assumptions, particularly as I didn't specify a time period, but here is a quote from the source I link to: "Among the Ainu, much more frequently than among the Gilyak, miscarriages are induced artificially. The life of the latter is much more normal in the framework of traditional customs, whereas that of the Ainu on Sakhalin Island has been influenced for two centuries by a powerful external factor, that of the Japanese. These interfere to an enormous extent in the life of the Ainu, they change it and import elements that are not exactly instrumental in furthering culture. Especially the women stand under the influence of foreign men who are only interested in satisfying their sexual urge. Hence stems the large number of secret affairs that Ainu women have with foreigners, and it gives rise to the type of women who are given to an only slightly veiled form of prostitution. In both cases they purposely avoid pregnancy and apply all methods to remove it in case it accidentally occurs."
Note they specify the Japanese but again I said "foreign men" and didn't try to pinpoint a narrow time period, but obviously the presence of foreign men engaging in prostitution is something that has to be post-colonial contact.
To state it as plainly as I can:
A report from 1895 about contemporary practices is going to be about the time period 1895. Colonial contact with the Ainu of Sakhalin began centuries before that time period (as the source notes). Long before the time period of the report. The question then results: How can we know how contact changed them ("increased abortions") when the time period of the cited study is centuries removed from initial contact?
I then asked: Are you talking about the Russians? Because that resolves the issue of how an 1895 report can refer to colonial contact as if it was new. They'd only arrived in large numbers some forty years earlier. If so, that seems like an odd distinction to draw. I was quite clear in my language ("seems" et al) that this is speculation on what you might mean, not an assertion of what you said.
You've given me my answer. You weren't talking about the Russians or drawing such a distinction. The reporter is not claiming there was a post-contact change but that, in their present time, abortions are commonly used when dealing with foreign men.
I took your words overly literally. When you said contact increased abortions I took that to mean that upon colonial contact abortions increased. What you actually meant was that the long run effects of colonization led to conditions that rendered abortions common centuries later. Admittedly, it's a minor sentence so getting that specific was probably unnecessary. Thanks for the clarification.
Does the reporter happen to mention anything about the change in Japanese colonial administration in the 1870s?