Introduction

Several feminist scholars have argued that women's bodies are important sites by which political and cultural transitions are carried out and results are gauged. Victoria Bernal stresses “gender plays a significant role in the intersection of global and local cultures” (1997, 131). More importantly, feminist research has demonstrated that reproduction has a critical role in how a nation defines and imagines itself. Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp, in their landmark text Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction , claim that in its “biological and social senses” reproduction is “inextricably bound up with the production of culture” (1995, 2). Nira Yuval-Davis writes, “The central importance of women's reproductive roles in ethnic and national discourses becomes apparent when one considers that one usually joins the collectivity by being born into it” (2001, 123). Such scholars have forcefully critiqued theories of nationalism and citizenship in a rapidly globalizing world that have left out questions of gender and reproduction (cf. Anderson 1991; Gellner 1983; Smith 1995). In Morocco, reproduction is central to the state's recent development policies and plays a critical role in the ways that women are framed as citizens. A development report for the country, 50 Ans de Développement Humain et Perspectives 2025 (50 Years of Human Development and Prospects to 2025) even reads, “Thanks to the changes in matrimonial and procreative behaviors of Moroccan women…. and family planning programs in which a large portion of the female population participated, the country was able to manage the development of its population” (Royume du Maroc 2006, 8). Building on feminist critiques, this ethnography examines how women's reproductive and childrearing practices and their reproductive bodies have become integral to development programs in Morocco and distills the ways women interpret such practices and see themselves as becoming modern citizens.