Navigating Miscarriage: Social, Medical and Conceptual Perspectives

by Susie Kilshaw (Editor), Katie Borg (Editor)

Overview

Miscarriage is a significant women's health issue. Research has consistently shown that one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. This collected volume explores miscarriage in diverse historical and cultural settings with contributions from anthropologists, historians and medical professionals. Contributors use rich ethnographic and historical material to discuss how pregnancy loss is managed and negotiated in a range of societies. The book considers meanings attached to miscarriage and how religious, cultural, medical and legal forces impact the way miscarriage is experienced and perceived.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781800736313
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	02/10/2023
Series:	Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives , #45
Pages:	252
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Susie Kilshaw is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, UniversityCollege London. Her publications include Pregnancy and Miscarriage in Qatar: Women, Reproduction and the State (2020, I.B. Tauris) and Impotent Warriors: Gulf War Syndrome, Vulnerability and Masculinity (2009, Berghahn).

Katie Borg has completed field work on traditional healers in the Namitembo district near Zomba in Malawi. She currently works as an asthma nurse specialist for Oxford UniversityHospitals NHS Foundation Trust and as clinical research nurse at the University of Oxford.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Ambiguities and Navigations
Susie Kilshaw

Chapter 1. Does Twenty-First-Century Technology Change the Experience of Early Pregnancy and Miscarriage?
Pedro Melo and Ingrid Granne

Chapter 2. The Meanings of Miscarriage in Twentieth-Century Britain
Rosemary Elliot

Chapter 3. Alleviating the Ambiguities Around Miscarriage: Discursive Tactics in Cameroon and Romania
Erica van der Sijpt

Chapter 4. Some Babies Cannot be Stopped from Falling: Miscarriage in Pakistani Punjab
Kaveri Qureshi

Chapter 5. God’s Design; Thwarted Plans: Women’s Experience of Miscarriage in Qatar and England
Susie Kilshaw

Chapter 6. ‘It Felt like the Longest Time of my Life’: Using Foetal Dopplers at Home to Manage Anxiety about Miscarriage
Aimee Middlemiss

Chapter 7. Miscarriages and its Resulting Losses during Commercial Surrogacy in India
Sayani Mitra

Chapter 8. Unwitnessed Ceremonies: Funeral Services for Pre-24-Week Pregnancy Losses in England
Karolina Kuberska

Conclusions
Susie Kilshaw

Index

Editorial Reviews

“Twenty percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, demonstrating that this is an important issue that impacts many people. The book makes an important contribution to the literature with informative chapters that will assist those who have experienced miscarriage and clinicians who deal with a broad spectrum of patients experiencing pregnancy loss and other infertility problems. The book also offers a pathbreaking guide for scholars researching the multifarious aspects of this social and medical problem. Recommended. All readers.” • Choice

“As a whole, Navigating Miscarriage offers conceptual depth that will contribute to important conversations in advanced anthropology classrooms. Some chapters will also be accessible to earlier students…The collection would also be well placed in training programs for health care professionals to encourage greater intercultural competency and empathy for patients with a wide range of experiences and expectations.” • Medical Anthropology Quarterly

“The book offers fresh perspectives and gives the reader much to consider. Overall, this sensitively written, accessible and diverse collection offers a breath of rewarding anthropological insight into miscarriage and will prove useful for practitioners, academics, and all of those interested in or affected by pregnancy loss.” • Mortality

“Navigating Miscarriage will enhance the curricula of courses in obstetrics, public health, sociology, anthropology, and history and could be of great interest to individuals navigating their own experiences with pregnancy loss…And it makes a significant contribution as an effort to expand scholarship on miscarriage beyond Euro-America, critically examine discourses and categories of miscarriage, and demonstrate a diversity of experiences of this common yet underacknowledged reproductive event.” • American Ethnologist

“This is an interesting collection of chapters developing anthropological perspectives around miscarriage and pregnancy loss from a wide variety of angles.” • Sara Randall, UniversityCollege London

“The book’s major strength is the diverse approaches to pregnancy loss, across countries and healthcare systems, traced by the contributors — offering a timely contribution to the social study of reproduction.” • Ben Kasstan, University of Sussex

From the Publisher