Documents that matter: Sterilization paperwork in rural India.

Female sterilization, or tubal ligation, is rural India's most prevalent form of contraception. The paperwork surrounding this procedure provides an interesting lens through which to investigate the state, its institutions and their material conditions. The production and circulation of this paperwork uncover the state as an illegible and unpredictable entity that materializes in people's everyday lives through bureaucratically futile certificates. In this article, the author looks at sterilization paperwork as a tool to tell stories about the state and its institutions as individual women seek and undergo tubal ligation in a government facility in rural India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]