Reproducing Race

by Bridges, Khiara M.

• ISBN13: 9780520268951
• ISBN10: 0520268954
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-03-18
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Reproducing Race, an ethnography of pregnancy and birth at a large New York City public hospital, explores the role of race in the medical setting. Khiara M. Bridges investigates how race--commonly seen as biological in the medical world--is socially constructed among women dependent on the public healthcare system for prenatal care and childbirth. Bridges argues that race carries powerful material consequences for these women even when it is not explicitly named, showing how they are marginalized by the practices and assumptions of the clinic staff. Deftly weaving ethnographic evidence into broader discussions of Medicaid and racial disparities in infant and maternal mortality, Bridges shines new light on the politics of healthcare for the poor, demonstrating how the "medicalization" of social problems reproduces racial stereotypes and governs the bodies of poor women of color.

Author Biography

Khiara M. Bridges is Associate Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Boston University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. IX
Introduction	p. I
Class
Alpha Hospital: Unique, But Not Singular	p. 21
Pregnancy, Medicaid, State Regulation, and Legal Subjection	p. 41
The Production of Unruly Bodies	p. 74
Race
The ôPrimitive Pelvis,ö Racial Folklore, and Atavism in Contemporary Forms of Medical Disenfranchisement	p. 103
The Curious Case of the ôAlpha Patient Populationö	p. 144
Wily Patients, Welfare Queens, and the Reiteration of Race	p. 201
Epilogue	p. 251
Notes	p. 259
Bibliography	p. 273
Index	p. 287
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