Marginal matters: pregnancy loss as a social event

Social Science & Medicine
Erica van der Sijpt

Abstract

Studies on fertility in Africa have known a major paradigm shift when demographic concerns about 'overpopulation' came to be replaced by new ideas about reproductive health, rights, and choices during the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). Whereas this shift has allowed for more recognition of losses during pregnancy which had been virtually absent in previous demographic accounts of high fertility rates, the new discourse on rights and choices turns most of its attention to induced loss. Losses that spontaneously occur remain merely bound to the medical realm. Yet this paper shows that for many women in Africa and elsewhere, spontaneous pregnancy loss is a daily life reality which is inherently related to many social affairs, i.e. life and death, illness and suffering, marriage and kinship, the body and personhood. The rather reductionist biomedical discourse prevalent in the global health arena largely ignores these themes and social complexities--thus causing a gap between health policies and daily life realities for women. Drawing on eleven months of anthropological fieldwork in Cameroon in 2004 and 2008, this article explores the way in which socio-cultural insights could contribute to a be...Continue Reading

Citations

Jun 20, 2013·BMC International Health and Human Rights·Helle M AlvessonLucie Laflamme
Jan 18, 2013·Culture, Health & Sexuality·Nicole Webster
Dec 25, 2012·BMC Health Services Research·Helle M AlvessonLucie Laflamme
Jan 23, 2016·Lancet·Juliet KiguliByamugisha Josaphat
Oct 15, 2010·Social Science & Medicine·Bregje de KokPatricia Jeffery

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