Reproduction in the Aftermath of Disasters

Research Abstract

(ISF grant)

I explore the impact of calamities on the cultural politics of reproduction and new reproductive technologies by examining the transformation of Japanese prenatal care and women's and men's reproductive experiences following the triple disaster of Japan's earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima power plant meltdown of March 11, 2011. My ethnography of pregnancy and pre-natal care in Japan in the decade preceding that disaster shows that women were held responsible for creating child health in utero, and thereafter for managing the child's physical and mental environment until adulthood. I inquire into how such a version of motherhood can be practiced under heightened environmental anxieties and ambiguous information about radioactivity danger; how socio-cultural regimes of "nurture" are transformed under environmental disruption; and the role of reproductive technologies, scientific knowledge and medical experts in such transformations.