Jeskanen, Carrie (2014) Performing Pregnancy:An Ethnography of American and Finnish Pregnant Women on Social Media. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
Preview |
Text (application/pdf)
1MBJeskanen_MA_F2014.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Spectrum Terms of Access. |
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Performing Pregnancy: An Ethnography of American and Finnish Pregnant Women on Social Media
Carrie Jeskanen
For too long, the voices of pregnant women have been neglected by anthropologists and other scholars. Academic research has focused instead on the relatively brief moment of childbirth rather than the preceding nine months of gestation or pregnancy. This largely unexplored area of women's lived experience is examined in this thesis. From June 2014 to the end of October 2014, I conducted online participant observation fieldwork following Twitter, YouTube, blogs, Instagram and Pinterest, to study the uses of social media by women in the United States and Finland during their pregnancies. Specifically, I compare women's experiences of pregnancy in the United States and Finland through an ethnographic analysis of their pregnancy vlogs and blogs. These are spaces where women can make visible the work of pregnancy. Furthermore, they provide valuable ethnographic data on how women use these forums as places to share common experiences and build a sense of community. In this thesis, I contradict much of the academic literature that focuses on how women are controlled during pregnancy and childbirth. Instead, I argue that vlogs and blogs can be seen as spaces where women assert agency and seek to develop a sense of control over their pregnancies.
| Divisions: | Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > Sociology and Anthropology |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
| Authors: | Jeskanen, Carrie |
| Institution: | Concordia University |
| Degree Name: | M.A. |
| Program: | Social and Cultural Anthropology |
| Date: | June 2014 |
| Thesis Supervisor(s): | Cole, Sally |
| ID Code: | 978722 |
| Deposited By: | CARRIE JESKANEN |
| Deposited On: | 07 Nov 2014 16:55 |
| Last Modified: | 18 Jan 2018 17:47 |
References:
ReferencesAnderson, Benedict
1983 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.
London: Verso.
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
N.d. Ultrasound Exams. http://www.acog.org/~/media/For%20Patients/faq025.pdf,
accessed April 12, 2014.
Amnesty International
2014 Human Rights Basics. http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/human-rights-basics,
accessed April 26, 2014.
Armstrong, Elizabeth
2000 Lessons in Control: Prenatal Education in the Hospital. Social Problems
47(1):583-605.
Beauvoir, Simone de
2011 [orig. 1949] The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books. Trans. Constance Borde
and Sheila Malovany-Chevalier.
Bergeron, Veronique
2007 The Ethics of Cesarean Section on Maternal Request: A Feminist Critique of the
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Position on Patient-Choice
Surgery. Bioethics 21(9):478-487.
Browner, C.H.
2000 Situating Women's Reproductive Activities. American Anthropologist 102(4):
773-788.
Brubaker, Sarah Jane and Heather E. Dillaway
2009 Medicalization, Natural Childbirth and Birth Experiences. Sociology Compass
3(1):31-48.
Cheyney, Melissa
2011 Reinscribing the Birthing Body: Homebirth as Ritual Performance. Medical
Anthropology Quarterly 25(4):519-542.
Craven, Christa
2005 Claiming Respectable American Motherhood: Homebirth Mothers, Medical
Officials, and the State. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 19(2):194-215.
Crawford, Kate
2009 Following You: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media. Continuum: Journal of
Media & Cultural Studies 23(4):525:535.
Davies, Katherine and Jane Wardle
1994 Body Image and Dieting in Pregnancy. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 38(8):
787-799.
Davis-Floyd, Robbie E.
1992 Birth as an American Rite of Passage. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Davis-Floyd, Robbie E. and Carolyn F. Sargent
1997 Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Department of Health and Human Services
N.d. Introduction. http://www.hhs.gov/strategic-plan/introduction.html, accessed March
22, 2014.
Department of Labor
N.d. Family and Medical Leave Act. http://www.dol.gov/whd/fmla, accessed March 22,
2014.
2012 Family and Medical Leave in 2012: Executive Summary.
http://www.dol.gov/asp/evaluation/fmla/FMLA-2012-Executive-Summary.pdf,
accessed May 11, 2014.
Dillaway, Heather and Sarah Jane Brubaker
2006 Intersectionality and Childbirth: How Women from Different Social Locations
Discuss Epidural Use. Race, Gender & Class 13(3/4):16-41.
Farmer, Paul
2003 Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on
the Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2005 The Uses of Haiti. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press.
Fox, Pauline and Chryseus Yamaguchi
1997 Body Image Change in Pregnancy: A Comparison of Normal Weight and
Overweight Primigravidas. Birth 24(1):35-40.
Getz, Linn and Anne Luise Kirkengen
2003 Ultrasound Screening in Pregnancy: Advancing Technology, Soft Markers for
Fetal Chromosomal Aberrations, and Unacknowledged Ethical Dilemmas. Social
Science and Medicine 56:2045-2057.
Goldman, Dana P. and Elizabeth A. McGlynn
2005 U.S. Health Care: Facts About Cost, Access and Quality.
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/corporate_pubs/2005/RAND_CP484.1.pdf
accessed May 11, 2014.
Groth, Susan W., Dianne Morrison-Beedy & Ying Meng
2012 How Pregnant African-American Women View Pregnancy Weight Gain. Journal
of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing 41(6):798-808.
Health Resources and Services Administration
N.d. Women's Preventive Services and Guidelines.
http://www.hrsa.gov/womensguidelines, accessed March 28, 2014.
HealthCare.gov
N.d. Prevention and Getting Care. https://www.healthcare.gov/where-can-i-get-free-or-
low-cost-care/, accessed March 28, 2014.
Ivry, Tsipy
2010 Embodying Culture: Pregnancy in Japan and Israel. New Brunswick, New Jersey:
Rutgers University Press.
Horton, Sarah, Cesar Abadía, Jessica Mulligan and Jennifer Jo Thompson
2014 Critical Anthropology of Global Health "Takes a Stand" Statement: A Critical
Medical Anthropological Approach to the U.S.'s Affordable Care Act. Medical
Anthropology Quarterly 28(1):1-22.
Kela
N.d. Benefits for Families with Children. Kela.
http://www.kela.fi/web/en/families, accessed March 8, 2014.
Lazarus, Ellen S.
1994 What Do Women Want?: Issues of Choice, Control, and Class in Pregnancy and
Childbirth. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 8(1):25-46.
Malacrida, Claudia and Tiffany Boulton
2012 Women's Perceptions of Childbirth 'Choices': Competing Discourses of
Motherhood, Sexuality, and Selflessness. Gender & Society 26(5):748-772.
Mann, Jonathan M. and Scott Burris
1998 Public Health and Human Rights. Human Rights 25(4):2-5.
Mann, Jonathan M.; Sofia Gruskin; Michael A. Grodin, & George J. Annas
1999 Health and Human Rights. New York: Routledge.
Markens, Susan, C.H. Browner and Nancy Press.
1997 Feeding the Fetus: On Interrogating the Notion of Maternal-Fetal Conflict.
Feminist Studies 23(2):351-372.
Martin, Emily
2001 The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon
Press.
Merriam-Webster
2013 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/social%20media, accessed
April 26, 2014
Ministry of Social Affairs & Health
2013 Health Care in Finland. http://www.stm.fi/c/document_library/get_file?folderId=
6511570&name=DLFE-26813.pdf, accessed March 2, 2014.
New York State of Health
N.d. Individuals & Families: Overview. https://nystateofhealth.ny.gov/individual,
accessed March 23, 2014.
Postill, John and Sarah Pink
2012 Social Media Ethnography: The Digital Researcher in a Messy Web. Media
International Australia 145:123-134.
Rapp, Rayna
1997 Real-Time Fetus: The Role of the Sonogram in the Age of Monitored
Reproduction. In Cyborgs and Citadels: Anthropological Interventions into Emerging
Sciences and Technologies. Eds. Gary L. Downey and Joseph Dumit. Santa Fe, New
Mexico: School of American Research.
Ryan, Maura A.
2008 Health and Human Rights. Theological Studies 69(1):144-163.
Rylko-Bauer, Barbara & Paul Farmer
2002 Managed Care or Managed Inequality? A Call for Critiques of Market-Based
Medicine. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 16(4):476-502.
Smith-Nonini, Sandy
2006 Conceiving the Health Commons: Operationalizing a Right to Health. Social
Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 50(3):233-245.
Walker, Lorraine W.
2007 Managing Excessive Weight Gain During Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period.
Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing 36(5):490-500.
Wetterberg, Anna
2004 My Body, My Choice…My Responsibility: The Pregnant Woman as Caretaker of
the Fetal Person. Berkeley Journal of Sociology 48:26-49.
All items in Spectrum are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved. The use of items is governed by Spectrum's terms of access.
Repository Staff Only: item control page
Download Statistics
Download Statistics