Description
Book Synopsis Infertility and assisted reproductive technologies in India lie at the confluence of multiple cultural conceptions. These ‘conceptions’ are key to understanding the burgeoning spread of assisted reproductive technologies and the social implications of infertility and childlessness in India. This longitudinal study is situated in a number of diverse locales which, when taken together, unravel the complex nature of infertility and assisted conception in contemporary India.
Trade Review “This book is undoubtedly a valuable contribution to the emerging ethnographies from non-Western settings on assisted conception. It is also a pertinent reminder of the significance of religion in understanding the local variations in both managing and making sense of assisted conception. With its comparative gaze, it provides an important mirror, challenging Western assumptions.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI)
“This book is the first ethnography on infertility in India focusing on people’s cultural-religious experience with assisted reproductive technology and overall reveals valuable infertility experiences in India and the interactions between various players in the politics of conception and, thus, is an important source for future research on this topic.” • Anthropos
“At once a history, theodicy, and ethnography of procreative technologies in India, Bharadwaj’s lyrically written Conceptions provides a much-needed antidote to Western-centric narratives of India’s fertility markets. Bharadwaj draws on and develops the concepts of misrecognition and stigma to describe the ways patients and their families and physicians navigate infertility, surrogacy, gamete donation, and adoption in complexly gendered, classed, and generational ways in a country torn between population control and pronatalism in which science and religion are co-conspirators. I thoroughly recommend this fine book.” • Charis Thompson, University of California Berkeley
“…this is a much needed, eagerly anticipated and important book for those scholars who work within the broad field of social studies of reproduction, and specifically for those who study assisted reproductive technologies.” • Ayo Wahlberg, University of Copenhagen
“Surely, the book will become a 'must' for research on any related field, in university classes at every level of study, as well as a delightful reading for anyone interested in India, childbirth and infertility or the politics of healthcare, to mention but few.” • Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli, University of Haifa
Table of Contents Preface: Test-Tube Conceptions
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Conceptualising Conceptions: An Introduction
PART I
Chapter 1. Fertile Conceptions: Culture and Infertility
Chapter 2. Gendered Conceptions: Stigma, Blame and Infertility
PART II
Chapter 3. Contested Conception: The Medical Politics of Test-Tube Babies
Chapter 4. Politics of Conception: The State and Biomedicine
PART III
Chapter 5. Changing Conceptions? ‘Adoption’ of Assisted Conception
Chapter 6. Supplementary Conception: The Other Mother
PART IV
Chapter 7. Long Road to Conception: Emotional and Financial Costs
Chapter 8. In Search of Conception: Clinicians, Patients and Clinics
Afterword: Conceptions
Notes
Bibliography
