de Bessa Gina Hunter
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Campus Box 4660, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-4660, USA.
Med Anthropol. 2006 Jul-Sep;25(3):221-63. doi: 10.1080/01459740600840263.
This article draws on data from ethnographic fieldwork in an urban housing project to examine the social context and meanings of surgical sterilization for low-income women in Brazil. Low-income women resort to sterilization because they distrust or are unsatisfied with alternative methods and because it helps them to fulfill the requirements of modern, responsible motherhood. Although sterilization is an option among few alternatives, and one that has subjected women to greater medical management and intervention, I argue that sterilization also represents poor women's active struggle to improve their lives and to resist the burdens placed on them by unequal gender relations. This article contributes to a growing anthropological literature that demonstrates how reproduction has become a central site where social values are constituted and contested, and it details women's diverse responses to the process of medicalization.
本文借鉴了在一个城市住房项目中进行的人种志田野调查数据，以研究巴西低收入女性进行绝育手术的社会背景及意义。低收入女性选择绝育是因为她们不信任或不满意其他避孕方法，还因为绝育有助于她们满足现代、负责任母亲的要求。尽管绝育是少数几种选择之一，且这一选择使女性受到了更多的医疗管控和干预，但我认为绝育也体现了贫困女性为改善生活、抵制不平等性别关系加诸其身的负担而进行的积极抗争。本文丰富了日益增多的人类学文献，这些文献表明生殖已成为社会价值观得以构建和争论的核心领域，并且详细阐述了女性对医疗化过程的多样反应。
