Infertility around the globe : new thinking on childlessness, gender, and reproductive technologies / edited by Marcia C. Inhorn, Frank van Balen.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Inhorn, Marcia C., 1957-

Balen, Frank van.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Infertility--Developing countries.

Infertility.

Infertility--Social aspects.

Infertility--Psychological aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (356 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This exceptional collection of essays breaks new ground by examining the global impact of infertility as a major reproductive health issue, one that has profoundly affected the lives of countless women and men. Based on original research by seventeen internationally acclaimed social scientists, it is the first book to investigate the use of reproductive technologies in non-Western countries. Provocative and incisive, it is the most substantial work to date on the subject of infertility. With infertility as the lens through which a wide range of social issues is explored, the contributors address a far-reaching array of topics: why infertility has been neglected in population studies, how the deeply gendered nature of infertility sets the blame squarely on women's shoulders, how infertility and its treatment transform family dynamics and relationships, and the distribution of medical and marital power. The chapters present informed and sophisticated investigations into cultural perceptions of infertility in numerous countries, including China, India, the nations of sub-Saharan Africa, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Egypt, Israel, the United States, and the nations of Europe. Poised to become the quintessential reference on infertility from an international social science perspective, Infertility around the Globe makes a powerful argument that involuntary childlessness is a complex phenomenon that has far-reaching significance worldwide.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

1. Introduction. Interpreting Infertility: A View from the Social Sciences

2. The Uses of a "Disease": Infertility as Rhetorical Vehicle

3. Fertile Ground: Feminists Theorize Infertility

4. The Psychologization of Infertility

5. Infertile Bodies: Medicalization, Metaphor, and Agency

6. Deciding Whether to Tell Children about Donor Insemination: An Unresolved Question in the United States

7. Conceiving the Happy Family: Infertility and Marital Politics in Northern Vietnam

8. Positioning Gender Identity in Narratives of Infertility: South Indian Women's Lives in Context

9. Childlessness, Adoption, and Milagros de Dios in Costa Rica

10. Problematizing Fertility: "Scientific" Accounts and Chadian Women's Narratives

11. Is Infertility an Unrecognized Public Health and Population Problem? The View from the Cameroon Grassfields

12. Infertility and Matrilineality: The Exceptional Case of the Macua of Mozambique

13. Infertility and Health Care in Countries with Less Resources: Case Studies from Sub-Saharan Africa

14. The "Local" Confronts the "Global": Infertile Bodies and New Reproductive Technologies in Egypt

15. Rabbis and Reproduction: The Uses of New Reproductive Technologies among Ultraorthodox Jews in Israel

16. The Politics of Making Modern Babies in China: Reproductive Technologies and the "New" Eugenics

17. Conception Politics: Medical Egos, Media Spotlights, and the Contest over Test-Tube Firsts in India

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9786612356100

9781282356108

1282356100

9780520927810

0520927818

9781597346771

1597346772

OCLC:

475933605