ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins by tracing the identification of son preference through the 'discovery' of female infanticide by the British in the nineteenth century in India and the significance of this to the 'civilizing mission's' utilization of gender for its wider objectives of social control through social reform. It looks to contemporary engagements with son preference through a postcolonial lens. The book illustrates how son preference is understood within a number of different strands of thought. It highlights anti-sex selection activism as a distinctive political and civil society movement. The book focuses upon responses to son preference and sex selection, examining policy and official anti-female foeticide activism, as well as other 'acts' of anti-foeticide and anti-son preference.
