This thesis is an exploration of infertility and assisted conception in contemporary India. It explores some of the prominent themes underpinning the cultural engagement with reproductive disruption and seeks to understand how people - inflicted infertile individuals and treatment providers - grapple with conception gone-awry. In doing this, the research locates both clinical and non-clinical responses to the process of assisted conception, within the wider cultural context that views infertility as highly undesirable. The research is multi-sited and attempts to connect a number of disparate domains in which the experience of infertility and the promotion and management of its treatment lies dispersed. This has principally entailed an eclectic engagement with a number of diverse 'locales,' such as the political economy of health in India, the mass media as a field for promoting and contesting assisted conception, ancient norms and ideas about fertility and their reverberation in contemporary Hindu conceptual domain. The thesis highlights the importance of this cultural frame for producing stigma and as a 'sense making' resource for understanding assisted conception. Taken together, these locales unravel the complex nature of infertility and assisted conception in India.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:368394 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Bharadwaj, Aditya |
| Publisher | University of Bristol |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1983/6230e8a5-4afd-4d79-911b-0b0950fced06 |
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