Reproductive Boundaries

Edmee Ballif is a medical anthropologist and sociologist with a focus on public health domains. She is currently serving as a Swiss National Science Foundation senior postdoctoral researcher at the Department for Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies (ISEK), University of Zurich, as an honorary research fellow in the Social Research Institute, University College London, and in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University.

Foreword by Lenore Manderson ix Preface xiii Introduction 1 1 The Landscape of Swiss Prenatal Care 16 2 The Boundaries of Psychosocial Care 38 3 The Pregnant Mind 61 4 A Good Future: Normalizing Lives 76 5 The Pregnancy Network: Weaving a Thread Before and After Birth 95 6 Contested Borderlands: The Problem of Intimate Partner Violence 110 Conclusion: Reproductive Boundaries 124 Notes 129 Bibliography 133 Index 000

"Beautifully written and provocative, Reproductive Boundaries offers a powerful new understanding of reproductive governance. It presents the first authoritative social critique of psychosocial prenatal care, showing how its promise of holistic support can also deepen surveillance over women's lives. Through rich ethnographic detail, Ballif illuminates a striking paradox of care, challenging the boundaries of empathy, authority, and control in reproductive health." - Lucy van de Wiel, author of Freezing Fertility: Oocyte Cryopreservation and the Gender Politics of Aging "This book brings careful attention to the frequently overlooked topic of talk in reproduction. The focus is on how pregnant people's experiences are shaped by talk about pregnancy-not only as it is, but also expectations about what it ought to be, at least according to the professionals charged with offering psychosocial pregnancy care and support. The practices and ideas presented here are both congruent with what has been observed and documented elsewhere and distinctive to the contemporary Swiss context, making this book another important contribution to the anthropology of pregnancy." - Sallie Han, coauthor of Anthropology of Reproduction: The Basics