TY  - BOOK
AU  - Mitchell,Lisa M.
TI  - Baby's First Picture: Ultrasound and the Politics of Fetal Subjects 
SN  - 9780802083494
AV  - RG527.5.U48 M55 2001
U1  - 618.3/207543 21
PY  - 2001///]
CY  - Toronto : 
PB  - University of Toronto Press, 
KW  - Fetus
KW  - Ultrasonic imaging
KW  - Social aspects
KW  - Québec (Province)
KW  - Montréal
KW  - Case studies
KW  - Medical personnel
KW  - Attitudes
KW  - Pregnancy
KW  - Pregnant women
KW  - Social perception
KW  - SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social
KW  - bisacsh
N1  - restricted access
N2  - Appearing through developments in medicine, in volatile debates over abortion rights, in popular guides to pregnancy, and in advertisements for cars and long-distance telephone plans, the fetus has become an increasingly familiar part of our social landscape in Canada. Lisa Mitchell provides a critical anthropological perspective on the fetal subject, particularly as it emerges through the practice of ultrasound imaging.'Seeing the baby,' is now a routine and expected part of pregnancy and prenatal care in Canada. Conventionally understood as a neutral and passive technology, ultrasound appears to be a 'window' through which to observe fetal sex, age, size, physical normality, and behaviour. However, Mitchell argues, what is seen through ultrasound is neither self-evident nor natural, but historically and culturally contingent and subject to a wide range of interpretation.Drawing upon fieldwork over the past ten years, the author includes observations at ultrasound clinics, interviews with pregnant women and their partners, and a discussion on how ultrasound's echoes become meaningful as 'baby's first picture' - a snapshot of the fetus in utero.Throughout, Mitchell probes our acceptance of this technology, our willingness to take fetal imaging for granted, and illuminates the links between this technologically mediated 'fetal reality' and the politics of gender and reproduction in Canada
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781442671140
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9781442671140/original
ER  -