Description
In Conceiving Masculinity, Liberty Walther Barnes puts the world of male infertility under the microscope to examine how culturally pervasive notions of gender shape our understanding of disease, and how disease impacts our personal ideas about gender.
Taking readers inside male infertility clinics, and interviewing doctors and couples dealing with male infertility, Barnes provides a rich account of the social aspects of the confusing and frustrating diagnosis of infertility. She explains why men resist a stigmatizing label like "infertile," and how men with poor fertility redefine for themselves what it means to be manly and masculine in a society that prizes male virility. Conceiving Masculinity also details how and why men embrace medical technologies and treatment for infertility.
Broaching a socially taboo topic, Barnes emphasizes that infertility is not just a women's issue. She shows how gender and disease are socially constructed within social institutions and by individuals.
Shining a light on the world of male infertility, and how clinics bolster and protect men's notions of masculinity
About the Author
Liberty Walther Barnes is a Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge.
Reviews
"[A] compassionate and substantive analysis of male infertility. Her ethnographic work is two-pronged: first, it reveals the history of male infertility and the responses of modern medicine; second, it studies the ways in which this oft-hidden precinct of medicine works overtime to bolster the masculinity of its patients [...] Barnes weaves a bounty of analytic threads into a compelling ethnography whose interviews with infertile men and their (mostly male) doctors make the story come richly alive in this overdue study." - Publishers Weekly
Book Information
ISBN 9781439910429
Author Liberty Walther Barnes
Format Paperback
Page Count 228
Imprint Temple University Press,U.S.
Publisher Temple University Press,U.S.
Dimensions(mm) 210mm * 140mm * 15mm