Environmental Hazards and Pregancy Loss: Ethnographics in Three Communities

“自然母亲”一词基于文化和历史上对母性和自然的特定概念。随着我们进入20世纪末，科学和技术的发展正在影响这两者的含义。这项人种学研究的重点是暴露于环境毒素的社区的妊娠损失问题，以了解这些变化。产科教科书、通俗文学和怀孕支持团体通常将流产和死产描述为“自然现象”。“这种观点往往掩盖了人类对影响这些事件的社区和环境的相关影响。这项研究的重点是纽约州、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流产率，而这些流产被归因于环境危害。调查人员将收集和审查这些损失的第一人称口头叙述。她还将研究法律、科学、社会科学和新闻报道。然后，将这些故事与那些不将流产归因于环境危害的故事进行比较，以探索如果将流产视为人类腐败本性的结果，生育丧失的经历将如何改变。流产和死产是重要的人类经验，人类学和科学技术研究的特殊工具和观点可以提供更好的理解。流产和有毒污染的经历都挑战了人们对自己、社区和环境的看法；这个交叉点提供了一个理想的场所，可以用来研究关于母性、自然和科学技术的通常默认的、理所当然的假设，以及不同社会经济、民族和种族群体的潜在不同看法。该主题为研究环境危机的生活经验提供了一个有价值的视角，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提出，并发展成一本针对学者和受过教育的非专业观众的书。

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.