Environmental Hazards and Pregancy Loss: Ethnographics in Three Communities

“母性”一词基于文化和历史上对母性和自然的特定概念。随着我们步入二十世纪末，科学和技术的发展正在影响着这两者的意义。这项人种学研究的重点是暴露在环境毒素中的社区中的妊娠丢失问题，以了解这些变化。产科教科书、流行文学和助孕团体通常将流产和死产描述为“自然行为”。这种观点往往掩盖了影响这些事件的社区和环境中相关的人类影响。这项研究集中在纽约、路易斯安那州和马萨诸塞州的五个社区，这些社区经历了异常高的怀孕率，并且这些损失被归因于环境危害。调查员将收集和检查这些损失的口头第一人称描述。她还将审查法律、科学、社会科学和新闻报道。然后，将这些故事与那些没有将怀孕损失归因于环境危害的故事进行比较，以探索如果丢失被视为人类腐败的自然结果，生殖损失的经历将如何改变。流产和死产是重要的人类经历，人类学和科学技术研究的特殊工具和视角可以帮助人们更好地理解这些经历。流产和有毒物质污染的经历都挑战了人们对自己、他们的社区和环境的看法；交叉点提供了一个理想的场所，可以调查通常默认的、关于母亲、自然和科学技术的假设，以及对不同社会经济、民族和种族群体的潜在不同看法。本专题提供了一个有价值的视角来审视环境危机的亲身经历，并可以阐明环境争议中涉及的公平和性别问题。此外，这项研究将涉及广泛的文化关切问题，包括责任和指责问题以及民主决策问题。这项研究的结果将在专业会议上展示，并发展成一本针对学者和受过教育的非专业读者的书。

The term `mother nature` rests on culturally and historically specific notions of both motherhood and nature. As we reach the end of the twentieth century, scientific and technological developments are influencing the meanings of both. This ethnographic study focuses on the issue of pregnancy loss in communities exposed to environmental toxins, in order to understand these changes. Obstetrical textbooks, popular literature and pregnancy support groups commonly portray miscarriages and stillbirths as `acts of nature.` This view obscures often relevant human impacts in communities and environments that influence these events. This study focuses on five communities, in New York, Louisiana, and Massachusetts, which have experienced an unusually high rate of pregnancy loss, and where these losses have been attributed to environmental hazards. The investigator will collect and examine oral, first-person accounts of these losses. She will examine legal, scientific, social scientific, and journalistic accounts as well. The stories will then be compared with those produced when pregnancy loss is not attributed to environmental hazards, to explore the ways in which the experience of reproductive loss is changed if the loss is perceived as the result of a humanly-corrupted nature. Miscarriages and stillbirths are important human experiences to which the special tools and perspectives of anthropology and science and technology studies can contribute greater understanding. The experiences of pregnancy loss and toxic contamination each challenge persons' views of themselves, their communities and environments; the intersection presents an ideal site to investigate usually tacit, taken-for-granted assumptions about motherhood, nature and science and technology, as well as the potentially different perceptions of different socio-economic, ethnic, and racial groups. The topic offers a valuable perspective to examine the lived experience of environmental crisis and can illuminate issues of equity and gender involved in environmental controversies. Further, the study will address issues of broad cultural concern, including issues of responsibility and blame, and democratic decision making. Results of this research will be presented at professional meetings and developed into a book aimed at scholars and an educated lay audience.