Producción de textos literarios (escritos)

According to Wendy Griswold, author of “Culture and the Cultural Diamond,” the concept of culture is difficult to define (1994). Often culture refers to some combination of norms, values, beliefs, and expressive symbols. Griswold suggests that culture contains both implicit and explicit meanings (1994). More specifically, Griswold (1994:11) defines a cultural object as “shared significance embodied in form” or “a socially meaningful expression that is audible, or visible, or tangible, or can be articulated” (1994:11). Griswold (1994) suggests that the “cultural diamond” consists of four essential components of culture: cultural creators, cultural objects, cultural recipients, and the social world. Furthermore, culture is also a result of how these various aspects interact with one another allow culture to result from a collective production. In terms of infertility, cultural objects take various forms, such as success rates, the clinic environment, perceptions and beliefs of health care providers, the marketing of treatment options, and the infertility experiences as explained in popular media.

Studying culture includes the documentation and explanation of “the processes of producing and circulating meaning through the channels of the artifacts and practices of culture” (Lupton 2006:18). This allows sociologists to carefully examine the rules, norms, and symbolic meanings attached to the daily habits of everyday life, including procreation. As a result, seemingly individual characteristics and activities are understood to be highly influenced by socio-cultural norms, such as age, gender, sexuality, social class, and ethnicity. The same holds true for infertility. The culture of infertility is constructed through gender relations, knowledge, language, and the infertility experience itself (Mealey 2006). In

turn, this cultural understanding of infertility significantly influences how infertility is defined, and what can be done to overcome infertility both now and in the future (Earle and Letherby 2003).

Over the past few decades, scholars have touched on some of the cultural aspects of infertility and procreative technologies. In her study, The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of

Reproduction, Martin (1987) is one of the first to argue that the concepts of reproductive biology are permeated by cultural stereotypes. Specific cultural expectations can color even the most scientifically- grounded observations. Through her qualitative research, Martin aims to increase the awareness of the scientific community and the general public alike regarding the importance of analyzing science and medicine from a feminist perspective. With advances in procreative technologies, menstruation, conception, pregnancy, and menopause are no longer private matters. Instead, they become issues of public concern. Likewise, there has been a paradigm shift in our understanding of procreation and motherhood which are no longer seen as automatic and natural. Women are separated from

procreation since maternal function can be achieved through technology whether it be through in vitro fertilization, donor eggs, surrogacy or cloning. (Hanson 2004).

Martin (1987) clearly points out how women’s experiences with the medical community are rooted in social hierarchy and control. Michie and Cahn (1997:3) use the philosophies of Foucault to emphasize that the “most profound exercises of power are not those that take place in public spaces like the courtroom, the government, or police stations, but those that are so diffuse and pervasive that they turn individuals into self-policing subjects.” At a most basic level, science is seen belonging to men, and women’s bodies are often acted upon by this science (Britt 1998). According to Thompson

(2005:27-8), “Reproduction has rich literal and metaphorical meanings that spill well beyond the biological and permeate the public sphere and intimate lives alike.” The biological basis of procreation intertwines with the personal, political, and technological meanings.

Both the process of medicalizing procreation and infertility and the public buy-in to this medicalization has transformed the nature of the entire infertility experience and eventually culture surrounding infertility (Greil 1991). Similar to what has occurred with pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, Americans have come to define infertility as a medical problem and turn to medical professionals for solutions (Baumslag and Michels 1995; Earle and Letherby 2003; Mundy 2008). Consequently, the infertility field is shaped by industrialism, bureaucracy, competition, and moral uncertainty which typically dominate medicine.

Based on interviews with 550 infertile individuals, Greil (1991) concludes that the experience of infertility is dependent on the socio-cultural context framed by age, gender, occupation, social class and ethnicity. The actual ability of medicine to treat, and perhaps even cure, infertility is limited. Using an analytic framework to illustrate the “disparate medical encounters and emotional crisis” that together make up the experience of infertility, Michie and Cahn (1997) situate infertility into the larger cultural story of procreation. Individual choices about infertility and its treatment are obscured by social pressures and dominant reproductive narratives.

As procreative technologies expanded over the years to include in vitro fertilization, gamete donation, and surrogacy, the fundamental views on human reproduction and procreative processes have been redefined. In fact, the cultural values of scientific progress, consumer choice, and economic growth have expanded what we accept and expect in terms of the “facts of life.” Franklin (1997) utilizes narratives to compare, contrast, challenge, frame and re-frame the development of procreative

technologies within our cultural understanding of conception models. In their book Gender, Identity, and Reproduction: Social Perspectives, Earle and Letherby (2003:222) point out how issues of power, control, resistance, and agency work to challenge traditional discourses about procreation and the overall concept of “authorized knowledge.”

How people deal with “infertility” and “the treatment of infertility” varies greatly. Not everyone has the same access to appropriate information, support, and treatment options. Due to the

complicated structure of the medical system and availability of information, only the elite are usually able to access reproductive medicine (Letherby 2003; Inhorn and van Balen 2002). However, even this accumulation of information and services does not necessarily add up to knowledge, causing even the elite to feel powerless (Letherby 2003). As a result, many individuals who seek fertility care further add to their “burden on infertility” (Letherby 2003).

The dynamic relationships between technical, scientific, kinship, gender, emotional, legal, political, and financial aspects of infertility all works together to define nature, self, and society (Thompson 2005). Procreation includes personal, political, and technological meanings which have significantly changed over time in response to “identities, social stratification, certain techniques, scientific knowledge, law, politics, and our experienced of bodies and reproductive and parental roles have been produced, reproduced, and challenged” (Thompson 2005: 8). In turn, this “culture of infertility” shapes and reflects the overall infertility experience itself.

CHAPTER 3

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGY