Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Department of Social Sciences - Berlin Graduate School of Social Science

Cohort

BGSS Generation 2022

Title

The Provision of Reproduction Knowledge Across Europe

Supervisor

Dr. Hannah Zagel

Abstract

My dissertation studies reproduction knowledge in the life-course in a comparative European perspective. Central to the dissertation is the question of how states systematically provide different types of knowledge about reproduction. As central vehicles of knowledge transmission, my focus is initially on schools and specifically the school-based sexuality education; additional forms of public knowledge provision and their relevance to reproduction knowledge in later stages of the life-course will be examined, too. The dissertation is paradigmatically embedded in the sociology of knowledge and draws on the theory of “reproduction regimes” and knowledge regimes.
As a first step, the novel concept of reproduction knowledge will be theoretically developed and a typology of different types of reproduction knowledge will be generated. For this, I assume systematic conceptual differences in both type and depth of reproduction knowledge, with respectively different normative nuances. As a key component in the transmission of reproduction knowledge, the school-based sexuality education continues, to day, to function as a main source of reproduction knowledge for a majority of students. Hence, it is crucial to understand the type of reproduction knowledge which is passed on in schools. Therefore, national sexuality education curricula will be analysed with regard to the typology of different types of reproduction knowledge.
The second focus of the dissertation is the connection between different types of reproduction knowledge and the political regulation of sexuality education. Using nationally comparative data on the latter, the typology of reproduction will be compared with different levels of regulation.
Lastly, I will examine the effects of types of reproduction knowledge on reproduction outcomes in later life stages. Specifically, it will be analysed how country difference in unplanned and/or mistimed pregnancies can be seen as a result of different types of reproduction knowledge.