In this article, I use radiation-shielding maternity clothes (cloak) as a window to explore motherhood and reproductive uncertainty in urban China. By engaging with literature on scientific uncertainty and intensive mothering, I argue that the scientific uncertainty over the possible negative impact of electromagnetic radiation (EMF) on pregnancy has led to a situation in which uncertainty is being socially reproduced by experts, markets, and policy makers through different media channels. Middle-class mothers do not fully believe that the cloak is scientifically trustworthy. But under the influence of social networks and the ambient awareness of the reproductive crisis related to environmental pollution and the pressures of modern life, middle-class mothers still choose to wear the clothes for a variable period of pregnancy for psychological feelings of safety. In the end, they choose to cloak their pregnancies (to perform responsible motherhood) but immediately claim their suspicions of the cloak (to perform their scientific knowledge).
...More
Article
Yu, Y. S.;
(2015)
Obstetric Medical Book and Women's Childbirth in Qing Dynasty: The Case of the Treatise on Easy Childbirth
(/isis/citation/CBB001422435/)
Book
Sandra Bärnreuther;
(2021)
Substantial Relations: Making Global Reproductive Medicine in Postcolonial India
(/isis/citation/CBB296718154/)
Book
Claire L. Wendland;
(2022)
Partial Stories: Maternal Death from Six Angles
(/isis/citation/CBB810298928/)
Article
Vailly, Joëlle;
(2014)
Genetic Testing, Birth, and the Quest for Health
(/isis/citation/CBB001421197/)
Book
Sarah S. Richardson;
(2021)
The Maternal Imprint: The Contested Science of Maternal-Fetal Effects
(/isis/citation/CBB755948278/)
Article
Lisa Sigl;
(May 2016)
On the Tacit Governance of Research by Uncertainty: How Early Stage Researchers Contribute to the Governance of Life Science Research
(/isis/citation/CBB119230475/)
Book
Miranda R. Waggoner;
(2017)
The Zero Trimester: Pre-Pregnancy Care and the Politics of Reproductive Risk
(/isis/citation/CBB589678157/)
Article
Erik Børve Rasmussen;
(December 2020)
Making and managing medical anomalies: Exploring the classification of ‘medically unexplained symptoms’
(/isis/citation/CBB131501262/)
Article
Jorge Castillo-Sepúlveda;
Francisco Tirado;
Ana Gálvez;
(2023)
Biopolitics and speculative objects in Chilean health projects
(/isis/citation/CBB679456149/)
Article
Knaapen. Loes;
(October 2013)
Being ‘evidence-based’ in the absence of evidence: The management of non-evidence in guideline development
(/isis/citation/CBB444983980/)
Article
Kruse, Corinna;
(October 2013)
The Bayesian approach to forensic evidence: Evaluating, communicating, and distributing responsibility
(/isis/citation/CBB366782410/)
Article
Alice Street;
(December 2011)
Artefacts of not-knowing: The medical record, the diagnosis and the production of uncertainty in Papua New Guinean biomedicine
(/isis/citation/CBB480850883/)
Article
Martine Lappé;
(October 2016)
The maternal body as environment in autism science
(/isis/citation/CBB810340394/)
Article
Vivienne Moore;
Megan Warin;
(2022)
The Reproduction of Shame: Pregnancy, Nutrition and Body Weight in the Translation of Developmental Origins of Adult Disease
(/isis/citation/CBB055076230/)
Article
Chen-I. Kuan;
(March 2020)
Understanding Technology in Birth Care from the Experiences of Taiwanese Obstetricians
(/isis/citation/CBB354618982/)
Article
Natali Valdez;
(2022)
The Politics of Postgenomic Reproduction: Exploring Pregnant Narratives from within a Clinical Trial
(/isis/citation/CBB617544692/)
Article
Martina Fuchs;
Martin Schalljo;
(2017)
Global Encounters Challenge Western Rationality Assumptions
(/isis/citation/CBB519729121/)
Article
Lyle Fearnley;
(September 2020)
Viral Sovereignty or Sequence Etiquette? Asian Science, Open Data, and Knowledge Control in Global Virus Surveillance
(/isis/citation/CBB925083175/)
Article
Larry Au;
Renan Gonçalves Leonel da Silva;
(January 2021)
Globalizing the Scientific Bandwagon: Trajectories of Precision Medicine in China and Brazil
(/isis/citation/CBB422379363/)
Article
Zo Lin;
En-Chieh Chao;
(2021)
Weeds are Herbs: Botanic Arts of Foraging, Classifying, and Cooking
(/isis/citation/CBB704576365/)
Be the first to comment!