Biocultural Perspective of Reproductive and Sexual Health with Special Reference to Adolescent Male

Abstract

The concept of reproductive and sexual health emerged from the International Conference on Population and Development (1994) followed by the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995). The domain of reproductive and sexual health includes biomedical issues as well as gender identities and roles, sexual orientation, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy and reproduction. The paper elucidates how anthropology can exercise its multidisciplinary framework to investigate the biocultural perspective of reproductive and sexual health. The authors argue in favour of conducting such researches for improving human reproductive quality, and family and social life as well. The paper also attempts to delineate the importance of studying biocultural perspective of reproductive and sexual health of adolescent males in global and local contexts, citing examples from the state of West Bengal, India.