The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, marked a transition from a `population control` to a `women's empowerment` regime in international population policy. Located in a long history of struggle over the ideologies, goals, and instruments of population policy, the new regime promised a radical reconfiguration of this international political issue. Applying an approach from science and technology studies - actor-network theory - this dissertation research project explores the ways in which the population network, as a complex ensemble of linked socio-technical elements, disciplines the potentially destabilizing effect of the women's empowerment regime. As this new regime is defined and implemented, it is made to variously support and reintroduce existing methods of intervention, particularly the supposedly outmoded focus on contraceptive delivery. By tracing the history of the Cairo consensus on women's empowerment, and the initiatives that are implementing it, this research reveals how a network produces seemingly coherent policies through mutual reinforcement among disparate elements. The project centers of the activities of several key policy institutions, as well as on the ideas and concepts underpinning policy.
