1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910824526903321

Autore

Gammeltoft Tine M

Titolo

Haunting images : a cultural account of selective reproduction in Vietnam / / Tine M. Gammeltoft

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, California : , : University of California Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

0-520-27843-7

0-520-95815-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (332 p.)

Disciplina

179.7/609597

Soggetti

Abortion - Moral and ethical aspects - Vietnam

Abortion - Social aspects - Vietnam

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 -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Prologue -- Introduction -- 1. Sonographic Imaging and Selective Reproduction in Hanoi -- 2. A Collectivizing Biopolitics -- 3. Precarious Maternal Belonging -- 4. "Like a Loving Mother": Moral Engagements in Medical Worlds -- 5. "How Have We Lived?" Accounting for Reproductive Misfortune -- 6. Beyond Knowledge: Everyday Encounters with Disability -- 7. Questions of Conscience -- Conclusion -- Appendix: Core Cases -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Based on years of careful ethnographic fieldwork in Hanoi, Haunting Images offers a frank and compassionate account of the moral quandaries that accompany innovations in biomedical technology. At the center of the book are case studies of thirty pregnant women whose fetuses were labeled "abnormal" after an ultrasound examination. By following these women and their relatives through painful processes of reproductive decision making, Tine M. Gammeltoft offers intimate ethnographic insights into everyday life in contemporary Vietnam and a sophisticated theoretical exploration of how subjectivities are forged in the face of moral assessments and demands.Across the globe, ultrasonography and other technologies for prenatal screening offer prospective parents new information and



present them with agonizing decisions never faced in the past. For anthropologists, this diagnostic capability raises important questions about individuality and collectivity, responsibility and choice. Arguing for more sustained anthropological attention to human quests for belonging, Haunting Images addresses existential questions of love and loss that concern us all.