Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America (The Anthropology of Everyday Life) - Softcover

Rapp, Rayna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415916453 ISBN 13: 9780415916455

Publisher: Routledge, 2000

Synopsis

Rich with the voices and stories of participants, these touching, firsthand accounts examine how women of diverse racial, ethnic, class and religious backgrounds perceive prenatal testing, the most prevalent and routinized of the new reproducing technologies. Based on the author's decade of research and her own personal experiences with amniocentesis, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus explores the "geneticization" of family life in all its complexity and diversity.

About this title

About the Author:

Rayna Rapp is Professor of Anthropology at the New School for Social Research and has been active in the movements to establish U.S. women's studies and reproductive rights for more than twenty-five years. Rapp has researched prenatal diagnosis as an anthropologist and as a feminist activist for over a decade, and is editor of the classic Toward an Anthropology of Women (1975) and co-editor of Conceiving the New World Order (1995).

Review:

""Testing Women, Testing the Fetus is a compelling ethnography of the lived experience of geneticization of American society. It is a deeply human account of the embeddedness of reproductive technologies in fundamental social processes involving gender, class, political economy, and moral contestation. From family homes through clinics and hospitals to laboratories and disability settings, this incisive study takes the reader across a huge landscape of people and power participating in technological transformation in America. A richly rewarding read!."
-Arthur Kleinman, M.D., Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology, Harvard University
"If you like to know everything about a subject before making a decision--and you're facing an amnio--you'll get support and information from "Testing Women, Testing the Fetus....Rapp shares a wide variety of compelling human stories that are rarely told."
-"Colorado Parent, Feb. 2000
"[A] monumental and challengingstudy....A rigorous illumination of both the scientific and the social practices of amniocentesis. So impressive is this achievement, indeed, that I think it possible to say that "Testing Women, Testing the Fetus may provide us with a model of intellectual deportment that anthropologists, genetic counselors, medical professionals, bioethicists, research scientists, and even cultural critics--yes them too--will do well to acknowledge and emulate."
-"Tikkun
"This is a complicated late-twentieth-century tale in which we never lose sight of the human minds and persons behind it. An account shot through with quite dazzling perceptions of particular, located dilemmas which epitomize the intersections of genetic knowledge, prejudice and diagnosis. With remarkable skill, the author brings each dilemma back to its moment of human impact. A rare book in the field, it documents in vivid detail the complexity of the social circumstances surrounding genetic testing, quite as much as thecultural and technological. This brilliant study has been long awaited--it will exceed expectations."
-Marilyn Strathern, Professor of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University and author of "The Gender of the Gift
"Rapp's deep analysis is relevant to women of every ethnic, religious and class background and asks the necessary questions preceding each potentially difficult choice."
-"Daily News

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0415916453
• ISBN 13: 9780415916455
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 376