This text is centered around globalization, capitalism, and the privatization and entrepreneurial enterprise surrounding certain medical procedures which it highlights through analyzing the phenomena of cross-national online communication and the pursuit of fetal cell transplant treatment in Beijing.
The text is designed around the comparison of dualities such as East vs West, patient vs care-giver, and online archived post vs. real experiences.
The cover of this text has a digital image of an orange spherical “web” made up of points and lines with varying degrees of shading in between coupled with bold blue font. As the text has to do with cyberspace I assume it is meant to represent this aspect of the text however, it does not give any further insight into what the text will be about nor does it draw me in.
Although the topic of the text is in itself interesting to me, I think the most notable portion of the sketch was the answer about the authors reflexivity. In response to this it is stated that, “The author reflects on ethnographer's role doing research in digital platform: how to credit the authors of online discussion stream?
This sketch proposes for the text to be reproduced within medical research institutions by highlighting empirical evidence collected from online forums and correspondence streams in order to exhibit the patient’s care seeking journey. I think that this proposal could be helpful in that it would allow the individuals providing/facilitating care to understand more about the other side of the process through a lens that is still accepted within the medical field in that it is a data driven (evidence-based) format.
As this ethnography is centered largely around dichotomies I think it would be interesting to translate the work into a debate activity for high-school or college aged students.
The text is about examining the compexities and paradoxes urban, Eyptian women face when deemed infertile, particularly in light of the Egyptian patriarchy during the 1980s-1990s. The author seeks to dismantle binaries of infertile versus fertile and mother versus non-mother, engaging in a feminist analysis of identity, community, family, and the political forces involved with the introduction of Western biomedicine and psychology.
The text is designed such that the stories of the Egyptian women the author interviewed are central and portrayed as being outside the scope of essentialist conceptions. The author begins most chapters with photos of the women and their stories, then proceeds to make broader points that are grounded in the stories. Psychosocial and feminist theory is outlined in the beginning of the text, serving as the base for the stories to rest on.
The cover on the book is of three women smiling at the photographer, with a relatively barren wall behind them, save for what appears to be a corkboard, outlet, and long wire. The photo is in a sepia tone, rendering it with the appearance of an old photograph. The women are wearing head covers. Based on the description of the text, I would guess that one of the author's interviewees is present in the photo, and that this is a display of several generations of women from an Egyptian family.
The brief metion of the manners in which religion both aids and hurts infertile women drew my attention, and left me wanting more, particularly the manner in which patriarchy informs the place of women within their religious institution. In addition, I was drawn to the sketch's discussion of the new knowledge the text brings into circulation. I appreciated that there is an escape from essentialist conceptions of what it means to be a Middle Eastern woman and the manner in which infertile women resist social pressures.
