1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910456439403321

Autore

Mitchell Lisa Meryn

Titolo

Baby's first picture : ultrasound and the politics of fetal subjects / / Lisa M. Mitchell

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto, [Ontario] ; ; Buffalo, [New York] ; ; London, [England] : , : University of Toronto Press, , 2001

©2001

ISBN

1-282-03362-X

9786612033629

1-4426-7114-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (269 p.)

Disciplina

618.3/207543

Soggetti

Fetus - Ultrasonic imaging - Social aspects

Fetus - Ultrasonic imaging - Québec (Province) - Montréal

Pregnant women - Québec (Province) - Montréal - Attitudes

Medical personnel - Québec (Province) - Montréal - Attitudes

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introducing Ultrasound Fetal Imaging -- 2. Opening the Black Box: The Ontology of Fetal Ultrasound Images -- 3. The View from the Field -- 4. Being Pregnant and Coming to Know the Fetus -- 5. 'Showing the Baby': Sonographers' Accounts of Fetal Images -- 6. 'Seeing the Baby': Women's Perspectives on Ultrasound -- 7. Reconnections: Women, Ultrasound, and Reproductive Politics -- 8. Re-Visions: Other Ways of Seeing -- Appendix -- Notes -- References -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Appearing through developments in medicine, in volatile debates over abortion rights, in popular guides to pregnancy, and in advertisements for cars and long-distance telephone plans, the fetus has become an increasingly familiar part of our social landscape in Canada. Lisa Mitchell provides a critical anthropological perspective on the fetal subject, particularly as it emerges through the practice of ultrasound imaging.'Seeing the baby,' is now a routine and expected part of



pregnancy and prenatal care in Canada. Conventionally understood as a neutral and passive technology, ultrasound appears to be a 'window' through which to observe fetal sex, age, size, physical normality, and behaviour. However, Mitchell argues, what is seen through ultrasound is neither self-evident nor natural, but historically and culturally contingent and subject to a wide range of interpretation.Drawing upon fieldwork over the past ten years, the author includes observations at ultrasound clinics, interviews with pregnant women and their partners, and a discussion on how ultrasound's echoes become meaningful as 'baby's first picture' - a snapshot of the fetus in utero.Throughout, Mitchell probes our acceptance of this technology, our willingness to take fetal imaging for granted, and illuminates the links between this technologically mediated 'fetal reality' and the politics of gender and reproduction in Canada.