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Refusing cesarean sections to protect fertile futures:
Author(s) -
LOWE LUCY
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/amet.12759
Subject(s) - somali , refugee , context (archaeology) , futures contract , resistance (ecology) , situated , politics , gender studies , political science , sociology , economic growth , law , geography , business , economics , biology , ecology , philosophy , linguistics , archaeology , finance , artificial intelligence , computer science
ABSTRACT While cesarean sections are increasingly used worldwide, Somali refugee women in Kenya are rejecting the operation in attempts to protect their future reproductive capacities. In a context of displacement and insecurity, women's reproductive bodies can be crucial to their security and strategies for onward migration. Somali women's resistance to C‐sections mirrors prevalent practices of female circumcision, since they are both perceived by physicians as medically harmful but by women as essential to achieving gendered expectations of marriage and motherhood. The strategic modification and protection of reproductive capacities are situated in multifaceted social and political ruptures, and women's refusal of surgery is part of a long‐term, future‐oriented pursuit of motherhood and survival. [ motherhood , refugees , cesarean section , female circumcision , migration , resistance , Somalia , Kenya ]