Infertility in a Crowded Country

Holly Donahue Singh

Description

An interview with Dr. Holly Donahue Singh on the podcast Chat Masala

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Sujets

• Women's Studies
• Social Science
• HISTORY
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Physical
• Medical anthropology
• General officer
• South
• Anthropology
• General
• Asia
• India

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 06 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253063892
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

INFERTILITY IN A
CROWDED COUNTRY
Figure a.1. Map of India, 2001. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

Figure a.2. Map of Lucknow, India.
INFERTILITY IN A
CROWDED COUNTRY
Hiding Reproduction in India

Holly Donahue Singh
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
2022 by Holly Donahue Singh
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2022
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-06386-1 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06387-8 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06388-5 (ebook)
For Anushka and those growing with her around the world, in honor of those who have traveled on .
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Introduction: Hiding Reproduction
1. Aulad : Reproductive Desires
2. Preludes to Aulad : Making Mothers
3. Clinical Dreams: Measuring Hope
4. Reproductive Realities: Managing Inequality
5. Quietly Planning Families: Misdirecting Convention
Conclusion: Reproductive Openings and Reproductive Justice in Contemporary India
Afterword: Family Plans, Or, Waiting for Aulad
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BOOKS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES inevitably gather debts as they come into being. This book is certainly no exception. More than two decades have passed since I traveled from the United States to India on my very first plane ride, at the beginning of a trip that, unbeknownst to me, would set in motion a career. On its way to the present avatar, this project has taken many forms. As a writer, a scholar, and a researcher, I have been fortunate to have the blessing of presenting and discussing my work with many interlocutors, mentors, teachers, fellows, and friends over years and across thousands of miles of travels. They include the staff who managed the spaces and finances that have enabled my work, the caregivers who freed me for scholarship, and all who have helped me along the travels, moves, many career stages, and innumerable cups of chai. These contributions are essential to academic work, yet often remain invisible. As a scholar from a working-class and sometimes poor family, I would be remiss not to recognize their support.
First and foremost, my thanks and infinite gratitude go to the people in India who have shared their lives and their stories with me, creating the possibility of this book and the foundations for my continuing efforts as a scholar and as a human being. Inevit ably, despite my best efforts and in order to protect the confidentiality of my interlocutors and the people they put me in contact with in India who shared some of their most closely held stories, many will miss mention by name here. They may well recognize themselves in the text: social activists, medical professionals, teachers, students, people experiencing infertility, family members. For not recognizing them by name, I beg their forgiveness, their understanding, and their patience. Without them, this work and my career as a scholar could not be. Despite their best efforts, the responsibility for the remaining deficiencies in my analysis remains with me. I offer the text that follows as part of a journey toward better clarity in understanding the complexities of fertility and family on this small orb we all share, however small or large our physical or social space within it may be.
I would like to thank everyone who has commented on and responded to my work during the course of conferences and guest talks too numerous to list here, and which would surely be incomplete. Among them, Marcia Inhorn and the other organizers of and participants in Reproductive Disruptions: Childlessness, Adoption, and Other Reproductive Complexities at the University of Michigan in 2005 and Anindita Majumdar and the team that hosted Reframing the Biological Clock: Exploring Ageing and Reproduction in Contemporary Ethnographies in 2018 at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, India, stand out as organizers of bookending events for this project s inspiration to begin and to finish. Contributors to the Annual Conference on South Asia, Feminist Pre-Conference, and the American Institute of Indian Studies dissertation-to-book workshop; the American Anthropological Association and Society for Applied Anthropology; and the Population Association of America (PAA) annual meetings have also generously offered feedback. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers who dedicated their time to providing thorough and thoughtful feedback for improving the manuscript and to the wonderful editorial and other staff at Indiana University Press for seeing this book through completion and into the world, with special thanks to my kind and generous editor Jennika Baines, assistant editor Sophia Hebert, and director Gary Dunham.
Since 2017, I have been working as a faculty member at the University of South Florida s Judy Genshaft Honors College amid a buzzing community of undergraduate students, faculty, and staff who keep me engaged with their enthusiasm, questions, and curiosity about my work. Students Yesha Shukla and Sarah Lendavay both commented on the manuscript and helped in its preparation. The Department of Anthropology has also welcomed me into their intellectual community, as I encourage Honors students to explore what anthropology and related social science and humanistic endeavors have to offer. They are all wonderful in their own ways and deserving of recognition, most especially another Honors faculty member who started the journey with me, Ulluminair Salim, and her daughter, Nadira. Before Tampa, I found a home for one charmed year as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Engaging with my colleagues there proved crucial for many reasons, and special thanks are due to Nancy Riley, Sara Dickey, Krista Van Vleet, Divya Gupta, Vyjayanthi Ratnam Selinger, Tricia Welsch, Rachel Sturman, student assistant Ari Mehrberg, and Gary Lawless and Beth Leonard, among many other friends we made on campus and off during that brief, intense year.
This book benefited greatly from the intellectual, financial, and institutional support of the Population Studies Center (PSC) at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. A postdoctoral training fellowship funded by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (training grant T32 HD007339 and center grant R24 HD041028) under the NICHD-Kirschstein Postdoctoral Training program afforded me precious nonteaching time to focus on the publication of my work, while expanding and deepening my interdisciplinary connections with other scholars of family, health, and social issues. I thank my mentor, Tom Fricke, and other members of the Institute for Social Research at Michigan for bringing me into their community, and for offering me space, time, and resources to write and to continue my research program. Special thanks go to the other postdoctoral scholars at the PSC and in the Department of Anthropology, especially Apoorva Jadhav, Emily Smith-Greenaway, Yasmin Moll, and Sarah Besky. My time in Ann Arbor was also enriched by working with two enthusiastic undergraduates eager to learn about social science research in India: Nayna Rath and Prachi Bharadwaj.
Colleagues at the University of Notre Dame encouraged me to prioritize my writing and research agenda, despite my position as visiting teaching faculty. The Friday afternoon writing club, under the leadership of Susan Sheridan, served as a regular reminder to make time for my own scholarship amid the constant press of responsibilities to students and to the never-ending rounds of job applications and interviews. Mentors and colleagues at Notre Dame gave generously of their time to think with me about presenting myself and my work. Susan Blum, Agust n Fuentes, and Ian Kujit helped me navigate the university and job market. James McKenna and Carolyn Nordstrom offered their long-term perspectives on managing career, scholarship, and students while keeping self and family going. Meredith Chesson, Gabriel Torres, Jada Benn Torres, and Christopher Ball provided support and encouragement for knowing there would never be a balance of family and work responsibilities, but to keep going anyway. Donna Glowacki lent her ear and helped keep me grounded through a long period of uncertainty. Vania Smith-Oka and Rahul Oka welcomed us to South Bend and offered their advice and companionship. Their daughter, Kalpana, along with other children of the department, folded Anushka into their mix, and other members of the department graciously accepted their play as part of the ambiance of the place. My closest office neighbor, Cynthia Mahmood, shared her writing and her journeys, and invited me to do the same. Without the support of these colleagues, I might have given up on academic anthropology. I thank them for being there and for tolerating my moaning about early-morning classes and the polar vortex. Jonathan Marks and Agust n Fuentes brought humor and broad views that helped me begin to consider the idea of integrative anthropology as it is taking shape. Two undergraduate students, Diana Gutierrez and Mary Schmidt, did valuable work to support my research and my engagement with national organizations. During my time at Notre Dame, Daniel Jordan Smith from Brown Universit