This book provides a unique ethnographic account of women living with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in India. It examines how contaminated environments and political–economic changes render urban middle-class women in India vulnerable to PCOS, a condition which has the potential to disrupt conventional, normative feminine biographies of marriage and childbearing.
The volume revolves around two main themes: how toxic landscapes, the endocrine disrupting chemicals suffusing them, and the political–economic environments related to them are linked to endocrine disorders such as PCOS; and how the biosocial disruptions caused by PCOS are both affecting women and reflective of changes in contemporary urban India. The author draws on anthropological fieldwork to investigate these connections through a fresh approach, combining a political ecological framework with perspectives from the anthropology of toxic exposures and health–environment systems.
The first of its kind, this volume will be indispensable to students and researchers of anthropology, particularly medical anthropology, medical sociology, human geography, science and technology studies, medical humanities, health–environment systems, endocrine disorders, public health, and South Asian studies.
Author(s): Gauri Pathak
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 165
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction: Contaminated Landscapes, Endocrine Disruption, and PCOS
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
The Rise of Metabolic Syndrome Disorders
Economic Liberalization
Post-Liberalization Sociocultural Transformations
Contaminated Landscapes
The Field Site and Methods
Living amid Toxicity
Notes
Chapter 2: “A New Normal”: Health Since Economic Liberalization
PCOS in the Media
A Lay Epidemiology of PCOS
Defective Modernization and Stress
Disruption of the Natural Order
Balancing the Traditional and the Modern
The Nutrition Transition
“A New Normal”
Health Since Economic Liberalization
Notes
Chapter 3: “Hormones Play Havoc with Your Body”: Toxic Locations and PCOS
An Ecosocial Approach
Early Adolescence and a Hypercompetitive Educational Environment
Adolescence and Delayed Intervention
Early Adulthood and “Modern” Identities
Marriage, Motherhood, and Balancing the “Modern” with the “Indian”
Structural Burdens and Local Biologies
Toxic Locations
Notes
Chapter 4: “Health Is No More a Priority”: PCOS and Clinical Encounters
Diagnostic Itineraries
Dermatologists
Gynecologists
Therapeutic Itineraries
Dermatologists
Gynecologists
Endocrinologists
Nutritionists and Dietitians
Homeopaths
Vaidya
Practitioners’ Perspectives on PCOS
Dietary Shifts
Lack of Routine
Stress
Pollution, Contamination, and Adulteration
Medical Objectivity and Medical Subjectivity
Medical Individualism
The Clinical Encounter and Barriers to Management
Clinical Encounters with PCOS
Notes
Chapter 5: “When You Are 17 or 18, It Doesn’t Bother You”: Living with PCOS
PCOS and Future Health Risks
PCOS and Presentability
PCOS and Subfertility
The Materiality of the Body
The Plastic Body
Medical Technology and Medicalized Possibilities
Embodied Subjectivities and Lived Experiences of PCOS
Notes
Chapter 6: “Kids Will Be a Bonus”: PCOS and Intimate Modernities
“It Doesn't Really Bother You”
Negotiating Subfertility
The Turn to Companionate Marriage
Pragmatism, Reproduction, and Companionate Marriage
“Supportive” Partners
Fertility, Gender Norms, and Middle-Class Distinction Projects
PCOS, Class, and Intimate Modernities
Notes
Chapter 7: Conclusion: Toxic Disruptions
Toxicity, Gender Nonconformity, and PCOS
The Intoxication of Toxic Locations
Harm Reduction
Toxicity and Uncertainty
PCOS and Toxic Worlding
Note
Bibliography
Index
