Infertility around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies [Hardcover]

Marcia Inhorn (Editor), Frank van Balen (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2002

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The groundbreaking, interdisciplinary contributions in infertility Around the Globe offer new and challenging insights into the phenomenon of infertility. This innovative collection will change how infertility is theorized and how intervention programs are designed in social science, international public health, and medical circles; indeed, it will become the primary source book for international and comparative research on infertility in a variety of cultural settings. Reading this book was a distinct pleasure."-Lynn Morgan, co-editor of Fetal Subjects/Feminist Positions

From the Inside Flap

"Extremely well-written, innovative, and timely, Infertility Around the Globe is a definitive work. Together, the authors use infertility as the lens to examine numerous compelling social issues, generating a powerful argument that infertility is a globally significant phenomenon. This volume will attract anthropologists and other social scientists interested in the study of reproduction, as well as anyone interested in gender studies, women's studies, and international health."--Carolyn Sargent, co-editor of Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

"This groundbreaking, interdisciplinary book will change how infertility is theorized and how intervention programs are designed. It will become the primary sourcebook for international and comparative research in a variety of cultural settings. Reading this book was a distinct pleasure."--Lynn Morgan, co-editor of Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions

"A stunning achievement. Through its richly textured ethnographic accounts, this book beautifully explicates the universals and particularities of involuntary childlessness in disparate world regions. It challenges the myopic view that the heartbreak is limited to advanced industrial societies. This book is a much-needed antidote in a field mostly characterized by polemic and untested assumptions."--C. H. Browner, UCLA School of Medicine

"Scholarship on infertility too often has been culture-bound, focusing on Western versions of biosocial reproductive problems and on technological solutions. This innovative volume decenters that perspective, with studies on the ostracism of elder childless men in Kenya, political suspicions of vaccination campaigns in the Cameroons, new reproductive technologies for ultraorthodox use in Israel, and China's emergent eugenics. It enlarges the 'public' in public health."--Rayna Rapp, co-editor of Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 355 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (May 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520231082
• ISBN-13: 978-0520231085
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,659,061 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marcia C. Inhorn PhD, MPH, is the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs in the Department of Anthropology and The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. She also serves as Chair of the Council on Middle East Studies.

Before coming to Yale in 2008, Inhorn was a professor of medical anthropology at the University of Michigan and president of the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association.

A specialist on Middle Eastern gender and health issues, Inhorn has conducted research on the social impact of infertility and assisted reproductive technologies in Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Arab America over the past 20 years. She is the author of three books on the subject, Local Babies, Global Science: Gender, Religion, and In Vitro Fertilization in Egypt (Routledge, 2003), Infertility and Patriarchy: The Cultural Politics of Gender and Family Life in Egypt (U Pennsylvania Press, 1996) and Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions (U Pennsylvania Press, 1994), which have won the AAA's Eileen Basker Prize and the Diana Forsythe Prize for outstanding feminist anthropological research in the areas of gender, health, science, technology, and biomedicine.

She is also the editor or co-editor of six books, including Anthropology and Public Health: Bridging Differences in Culture and Society (Oxford U Press, 2009), Reproductive Disruptions: Gender, Technology, and Biopolitics in the New Millennium (Berghahn Books, 2007), and Infertility around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies (U California Press, 2002). She has been a visiting faculty member at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, where she has conducted studies on "Middle Eastern Masculinities in the Age of New Reproductive Technologies" and "Globalization and Reproductive Tourism in the Arab World." She is the founding editor of JMEWS (Journal of Middle East Women's Studies) of the Association of Middle East Women's Studies, and co-editor of the Berghahn Book series on "Fertility, Sexuality and Reproduction."