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The everyday life of gender, religion, and medicine: an ethnograpy of an infertility treatment clinic in Iran
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Bamdad, Sara (2018) The everyday life of gender, religion, and medicine: an ethnograpy of an infertility treatment clinic in Iran. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3474721~S15
Abstract
Infertility treatment clinics are peculiar places. In them, social structures and norms are de-constructed and re-constructed; and complex relations, practices and feelings are negotiated. This thesis is a feminist ethnography of the everyday life of an infertility treatment clinic in Iran. Inspired by feminist studies of assisted conception conducted in Iran and beyond, as well as ethnographies of different clinics around the world, it examines the dynamic and complex intersections of religion, gender, and medicine in the clinic. Further, this thesis traces the relation between local negotiations of everyday life in these clinics and broader national and global forces.
In order to understand and analyse these intersections, I studied how men and women clinic users and staff negotiate the complexities of assisted conception and utilise strategies to normalise the complexities of assisted conception in their experiences and expressions. I use material collected over a 10-month period of fieldwork in one clinic in 2015-16; including observation and partial participation, informal conversations with over 50 clinic users, and also 13 and 17 formal interviews with clinic users and staff, respectively. My focus is on the representations of these complexities in the material and emotional life of the clinic and in religious regulations, and I demonstrate that the negotiation of these complexities is dynamic. This dynamism has multiple layers: within and between the triangle of religion, medicine and gender but also beyond the local and national changes, making the everyday life of assisted conception very unpredictable
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Fertility, Human -- Iran, Iran -- Social policy, Feminist theory -- Iran, Women -- Health and hygiene -- Iran, Fertility, Human -- Religious aspects | ||||
Official Date: | November 2018 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Sociology | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Steinberg, Deborah Lynn, Wright, Caroline, 1965- , Pereira, Maria do Mar | ||||
Sponsors: | Funds For Women Graduates ; University of Warwick. Department of Sociology | ||||
Extent: | xi, 224 leaves | ||||
Language: | eng |
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