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Selling "genetically gifted" human eggs on the free market for a hefty price. In vitro fertilization. Fetal rights. Prenatal diagnosis. Surrogacy. All are instances of biomedical and social "advancements" with which we have become familiar in recent years. Yet these issues are often regarded as distinct or only loosely related under the rubric of reproduction. Barbara Katz Rothman demonstrates how they form a complex whole that demands of us in response a woman-centered, class-sensitive way of understanding motherhood. We need a social policy for dealing with mothers and motherhood that is consistent with feminist politics and feminist theory. Her book show how we as a society must first rec...
A man, a woman, and their biological children, all of the same race, the mythical "nuclear family" has been the bedrock of American cultural, religious, social, and economic life since the Revolutionary War, and even with all the changes we have absorbed in the last sixty years, it essentially remains so. Current trends in adoption, however, have begun to shift the dominant paradigm of the family in ways never before imagined. Professional estimates show that in the United States today, seven million families have been formed by adoption, and 700,000 of them are interracial. These still-growing numbers have begun to radically change the face of the traditional American family. Barbara Katz R...
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The much heralded "completion" of the human genome project in the year 2000 raises urgent questions: Do we now have a map of who we are? How will we control the uses of the potentially healing but also likely destructive and highly marketable information genetics brings us? Using her own life as well as her research, Barbara Katz Rothman presents an impassioned defense for the theory that humans are not "ready made from the factory", as one recent popular book on genetics put it, but social beings who grow, mature, and learn who they are.
As more and more women are having children when they are over thirty, amniocentesis, is becoming a routine part of prenatal care. In this groundbreaking book, Barbara Katz Rothman shows how this simple procedure can alter the way we think about childbirth and parenthood, forcing us to confront agonizing dilemmas: What do you do if there is a "problem" with the fetus? What kind of support is available if you decide to bring up a handicapped child? How can you come to terms with the decision to terminate a wanted pregnancy? Drawing on the experience of over 120 women and a wealth of expert testimony, Rothman's important book is a must for anyone thinking of having a child.
We are all citizens of the Biomedical Empire, though few of us know it, and even fewer understand the extent of its power. In this book, Barbara Katz Rothman clarifies that critiques of biopower and the "medical industrial complex" have not gone far enough, and asserts that the medical industry is nothing short of an imperial power. Factors as fundamental as one's citizenship and sex identity—drivers of our access to basic goods and services—rely on approval and legitimation by biomedicine. Moreover, a vast and powerful global market has risen up around the empire, making it one of the largest economic forces in the world. Katz Rothman shows that biomedicine has the key elements of an imperial power: economic leverage, the faith of its citizens, and governmental rule. She investigates the Western colonial underpinnings of the empire and its rapid intrusion into everyday life, focusing on the realms of birth and death. This provides her with a powerful vantage point from which to critically examine the current moment, when the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the power structures of the empire in unprecedented ways while sparking the most visible resistance it has ever seen.
The much heralded "completion" of the human genome project in the year 2000 raises urgent questions: Do we now have a map of who we are? How will we control the uses of the potentially healing but also likely destructive and highly marketable information genetics brings us? Using her own life as well as her research, Barbara Katz Rothman presents an impassioned defense for the theory that humans are not "ready made from the factory," as one recent popular book on genetics put it, but social beings who grow, mature, and learn who they are. The new genetics and race, illness, and procreation. Scientists are racing to unravel the code of life in our DNA sequences. But once we know the code, wil...
First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
'Consuming Motherhood' addresses the provocative question of how motherhood & consumption, as ideologies & as patterns of social action, mutally shape & constitute each other in contemporary life.