Embodying Culture: Pregnancy in Japan and Israel (Studies in Medical Anthropology) - Softcover

Ivry, Tsipy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813546362 ISBN 13: 9780813546360

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Embodying Culture is an ethnographically grounded exploration of pregnancy in two different cultures—Japan and Israel—both of which medicalize pregnancy. Tsipy Ivry focuses on "low-risk" or "normal" pregnancies, using cultural comparison to explore the complex relations among ethnic ideas about procreation, local reproductive politics, medical models of pregnancy care, and local modes of maternal agency.

The ethnography pieces together the voices of pregnant Japanese and Israeli women, their doctors, their partners, the literature they read, and depicts various clinical encounters such as ultrasound scans, explanatory classes for amniocentesis, birthing classes, and special pregnancy events.

The emergent pictures suggest that athough experiences of pregnancy in Japan and Israel differ, pregnancy in both cultures is an energy-consuming project of meaning-making— suggesting that the sense of biomedical technologies are not only in the technologies themselves but are assigned by those who practice and experience them.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"Embodying Culture" is an ethnographically grounded exploration of pregnancy in two different cultures--Japan and Israel--both of which medicalize pregnancy. Tsipy Ivry focuses on "low-risk" or "normal" pregnancies, using cultural comparison to explore the complex relations among ethnic ideas about procreation, local reproductive politics, medical models of pregnancy care, and local modes of maternal agency.

About the Author:

Tsipy Ivry is a lecturer in anthropology at the department of sociology and anthropology at the University of Haifa, Israel.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0813546362
• ISBN 13: 9780813546360
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312