Infertility and Intimacy in an Online Community by Paulina Billett & Anne-Maree Sawyer

Author:Paulina Billett & Anne-Maree Sawyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781137449818
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Disciplining the Body (and the Mind)

In an effort to maximise their health—and thus their chances of falling pregnant—many of the women engaged in specific practices of self-care and self-regulation, most often through diet and exercise. Sociologically, we can understand the broader context of these efforts with reference to the concepts of risk, individualisation, and governmentality. Beck’s (1992) seminal “risk society” thesis is pertinent to situating the women’s infertile bodies in contemporary discourses and health-care practices. As Beck and others (e.g. Giddens 1991; Lupton 2013) have argued, risk consciousness is pervasive in everyday life. The rise of risk consciousness is related, in part, to processes of individualisation; traditional guides and routines that previously structured the life-course have given way to an emphasis on reflexivity and individuality, now central defining features of contemporary life. Our lives have become disembedded from the shaping influences of class, gender, ethnicity and community, which no longer determine our biographical paths to the same extent as in the past. As a consequence, we have more freedom to “write” our own biographies, to author our identities by choosing from an array of possibilities (Giddens 1991). While choice is liberating, it also produces insecurity and a burden on individual responsibility. The spectre of risk is ever-present: the risk of making the wrong choice, of trusting the wrong expert. In an era in which experts and expert knowledge are no longer seen as infallible—coupled with the increasing influence of consumer health movements and the plethora of information available on the Internet—individuals are required to reflexively sift through and assess the knowledge at hand. The downside of individualisation, as Lupton (2012, p. 331) has argued, is that “people are blamed for making the wrong choices when things go wrong in their lives.” Posting about their self-care practices, the women of Stronger Together frequently blamed themselves for failing to maintain what were seemingly very arduous regimes.

A further interpretive lens relevant to the women’s self-care practices concerns the Foucauldian related concepts of the “neoliberal government” of citizens and “biopolitics” (Lupton 2012). In neoliberal regimes:[C]itizens are expected to take responsibility for their own actions and welfare … to voluntarily position themselves as responsible for themselves, to monitor, regulate and discipline their own bodies in their own interest …

Foucault’s concept of biopolitics is related to neoliberalism. Biopolitics refers to the apparatuses of expert knowledge and practice which represent and discipline human embodiment … All citizens in modern neoliberal societies are made aware of their responsibilities to conform to expert advice concerning the monitoring, regulation and disciplining of their bodies. Health promotion, medical testing regimes and public health activities are all agents of the government of citizens’ health. The management of the health of one’s body has become a feature of good citizenship, a dimension of the ‘care of the self’ . (Lupton 2012, p. 335)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.