Population, Reproduction, and Fertility in Melanesia
Population, Reproduction, and Fertility in Melanesia

Author: Stanley J. Ulijaszek

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9781571816443

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Human biological fertility was considered a important issue to anthropologists and colonial administrators in the first part of the 20th century, as a dramatic decline in population was observed in many regions. However, the total demise of Melanesian populations predicted by some never happened; on the contrary, a rapid population increase took place for the second part of the 20th century. This volume explores relationships between human fertility and reproduction, subsistence systems, the symbolic use of ideas of fertility and reproduction in linking landscape to individuals and populations, in Melanesian societies, past and present. It thus offers an important contribution to our understanding of the implications of social and economic change for reproduction and fertility in the broadest sense.

Islam and Assisted Reproductive Technologies
Islam and Assisted Reproductive Technologies

Author: Marcia C. Inhorn

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2012-07-01

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0857454919

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How and to what extent have Islamic legal scholars and Middle Eastern lawmakers, as well as Middle Eastern Muslim physicians and patients, grappled with the complex bioethical, legal, and social issues that are raised in the process of attempting to conceive life in the face of infertility? This path-breaking volume explores the influence of Islamic attitudes on Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) and reveals the variations in both the Islamic jurisprudence and the cultural responses to ARTs.

Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the Third Phase
Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the Third Phase

Author: Kate Hampshire

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2015-09-01

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1782388087

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Following the birth of the first “test-tube baby” in 1978, Assisted Reproductive Technologies became available to a small number of people in high-income countries able to afford the cost of private treatment, a period seen as the “First Phase” of ARTs. In the “Second Phase,” these treatments became increasingly available to cosmopolitan global elites. Today, this picture is changing — albeit slowly and unevenly — as ARTs are becoming more widely available. While, for many, accessing infertility treatments remains a dream, these are beginning to be viewed as a standard part of reproductive healthcare and family planning. This volume highlights this “Third Phase” — the opening up of ARTs to new constituencies in terms of ethnicity, geography, education, and class.

Fertility, Conjuncture, Difference
Fertility, Conjuncture, Difference

Author: Philip Kreager

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2017-09-01

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 1785336053

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In the last forty years anthropologists have made major contributions to understanding the heterogeneity of reproductive trends and processes underlying them. Fertility transition, rather than the story of the triumphant spread of Western birth control rationality, reveals a diversity of reproductive means and ends continuing before, during, and after transition. This collection brings together anthropological case studies, placing them in a comparative framework of compositional demography and conjunctural action. The volume addresses major issues of inequality and distribution which shape population and social structures, and in which fertility trends and the formation and size of families are not decided solely or primarily by reproduction.

Managing Reproductive Life
Managing Reproductive Life

Author: Soraya Tremayne

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2001-12-01

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1800734050

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Throughout history human societies have sought to manage their reproductive lives to make them fit in with their social, economic and biological conditions. But the different ways communities regulate their fertility, penetrating every aspect of their social life, are so varied and specific that they are often incomprehensible to outsiders. In this book a group of anthropologists set out to throw new light on the dynamics of human reproduction in the world today, looking at the intricate ways that people manage their reproductive life across different cultures, and highlighting the wider meaning of human reproduction and its impact on social organization. The importance of human agency, ethnic boundaries, the regulation of gender relations, issues of fertility and infertility, the significance of children and motherhood and the problems of two large vulnerable social groups, youth and refugees, are all considered in their broader social contexts.

Assisting Reproduction, Testing Genes
Assisting Reproduction, Testing Genes

Author: Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9781845456252

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Following the routinization of assisted reproduction in the industrialized world, technologies such as in vitro fertilization, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and DNA-based paternity testing have traveled globally and are now being offered to couples in numerous non-Western countries. This volume explores the application and impact of these advanced reproductive and genetic technologies in societies across the globe. By highlighting both the cross-cultural similarities and diverse meanings that technologies may assume as they enter multiple contexts, the book aims to foster understanding of both the technologies and the settings. Enhanced by cross-cultural perspectives, the book addresses the challenges that globalization presents to local understandings of science, technology, and medicine.

Parenthood between Generations
Parenthood between Generations

Author: Siân Pooley

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2016-04-01

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1785331515

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Recent literature has identified modern “parenting” as an expert-led practice—one which begins with pre-pregnancy decisions, entails distinct types of intimate relationships, places intense burdens on mothers and increasingly on fathers too. Exploring within diverse historical and global contexts how men and women make—and break—relations between generations when becoming parents, this volume brings together innovative qualitative research by anthropologists, historians, and sociologists. The chapters focus tightly on inter-generational transmission and demonstrate its importance for understanding how people become parents and rear children.

Patient-Centred IVF
Patient-Centred IVF

Author: Trudie Gerrits

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2016-08-01

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1785332279

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Contemporary Dutch policy and legislation facilitate the use of high quality, accessible and affordable assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) to all citizens in need of them, while at the same time setting some strict boundaries on their use in daily clinical practices. Through the ethnographic study of a single clinic in this national context, Patient-Centred IVF examines how this particular form of medicine, aiming to empower its patients, co-shapes the experiences, views and decisions of those using these technologies. Gerrits contends that to understand the use of reproductive technologies in practice and the complexity of processes of medicalization, we need to go beyond ‘easy assumptions’ about the hegemony of biomedicine and the expected impact of patient-centredness.

Pregnancy in Practice
Pregnancy in Practice

Author: Sallie Han

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2013-07-01

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 0857459880

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Babies are not simply born—they are made through cultural and social practices. Based on rich empirical work, this book examines the everyday experiences that mark pregnancy in the US today, such as reading pregnancy advice books, showing ultrasound “baby pictures” to friends and co-workers, and decorating the nursery in anticipation of the new arrival. These ordinary practices of pregnancy, the author argues, are significant and revealing creative activities that produce babies. They are the activities through which babies are made important and meaningful in the lives of the women and men awaiting the child’s birth. This book brings into focus a topic that has been overlooked in the scholarship on reproduction and will be of interest to professionals and expectant parents alike.

Thai in Vitro
Thai in Vitro

Author: Andrea Whittaker

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2015-06-01

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1782387331

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In Thailand, infertility remains a source of stigma for those couples that combine a range of religious, traditional and high-tech interventions in their quest for a child. This book explores this experience of infertility and the pursuit and use of assisted reproductive technologies by Thai couples. Though using assisted reproductive technologies is becoming more acceptable in Thai society, access to and choices about such technologies are mediated by differences in class position. These stories of women and men in private and public infertility clinics reveal how local social and moral sensitivities influence the practices and meanings of treatment.