Unveiled “intimate choices” in rural and urban China

Abstract

Reproductive practices like childbirth cannot be simple and take place only within households and communities when science and technology become solutions to social issues. Science and technology bring not only choices to reproductive consumers but also challenges. However, we know very little about how people actually make decisions when it comes to reproductive matters. Santos’ Chinese village life today and Gottschang’s Formulas for motherhood in Chinese hospital generously discuss this issue of reproductive choices and struggles in a context — China — that has been undergoing profound largescale social and cultural transformations since the 1980s and 1990s. Santos’ monograph is not just about matters of reproduction, but this theme is central to the main argument of the book regarding the increasing role of science and technology in the governance of family and community life. I chose these two books because they speak to each other in the way they approach the increasing medicalization and technologization of reproductive practices (such as family planning, pregnancy, childbirth, and/or postpartum recovery) from the perspective of women and their families. The two books provide a highly detailed and nuanced ethnographic picture of women’s reproductive experiences and changing Unveiled “intimate choices” in rural and urban China