Embodying Culture : : Pregnancy in Japan and Israel / / Tsipy Ivry.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Rutgers University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Ivry, Tsipy,
• Place / Publishing House: New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [2009]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in Medical Anthropology
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (312 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Pregnancy, Cultural Comparison, Multisited Ethnographies -- Part One. The Doctoring of Pregnancy -- Part Two. Experiencing Pregnancy -- Part Three. Embodying Culture: Toward an Anthropology of Pregnancy -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index