A Whittaker
Biographic Data
| ID | 3983 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Whittaker |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Whittaker |
| SIGNATURE | WHITTAKER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Monash University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2616-9651 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 196 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Re-worlding reproduction as a call to action
Inspired by decolonial theorist Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni's notion of 'reworlding' and his use of the concept to reconsider Western epistemes and ways of 'being in the world', we argue for the importance of 're-worlding reproduction' in future work on health systems and reproductive health. Current approaches to reproductive health have failed to bring the thriving and wellbeing they once promised to the 'marginalised majority' in the world. Re-worl…
The Divine in the Clinic
Drawing on studies with 40 informants in Ghana and 74 informants in South Africa, we explore spiritual interventions among staff and patients that accompany their use of assisted reproduction. These practices and expressions of faith reinforce staff and patients as moral subjects who have done everything possible to assist in the vagaries of assisted reproduction—another form of care to enable, complement, and enhance high-tech intervention. We c…
Transnational reproductive brokers in crisis
Tempting Luck
Within the expanding bioeconomy of assisted reproduction, there are limitations to providing quality informed consent for egg donation when the long-term risks remain unknown. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Barcelona with egg donors and in vitro fertilization (IVF) professionals, in this paper, we speak of "temporal choreography" to describe how clinical practices delimit and circumscribe the information that will be offered to egg donors by …
Financial struggles and coping with the aftermath of breast cancer care
Breast cancer, the most common cancer diagnosed among women, disproportionately affects low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Based on an ethnographic study conducted in Central Vietnam in 2019, including observation and interviews with 33 women patients, we investigate how women and their families managed the financial burden of breast cancer care. Our findings suggest that in a context where health-related risk protection is poorly organise…
AMR survivors? Chronic living with antimicrobial resistant infections
Behind the statistics forecasting millions of deaths associated with antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an even greater burden of morbidity leaving many people with long-term chronic illnesses and disability. Despite growing recognition of the importance of inter-sectoral and inter-disciplinary knowledge in forming responses to address this global health threat, there remains a paucity of social science research to understand the social burdens of…
Reconfiguring Breast Reconstruction in the Post-Cancer Life in Vietnam
In the context of breast cancer, women who refuse reconstruction are often portrayed as having limited agency or control over their bodies and treatment. Here we assess these assumptions by paying attention to how the local contexts and inter-relational dynamics influence women's decision-making about their mastectomized body in Central Vietnam. We situate the reconstructive decision within an under-funded public health system, but also show how …
Reproductive travel to, from and within sub-Saharan Africa
Beyond the making of altruism
The ‘new hysteria’
Trajectories to a cancer diagnosis
Women in low- and middle-income countries where the prevalence and mortality of breast cancer are growing rapidly are more likely to be diagnosed at advanced stages, which negatively affects their treatment outcomes and chance of survival. The current literature in those settings tends to focus largely on explaining patient delay in seeking medical attention for breast symptoms. Meanwhile, little is known as to what prompts women to attend screen…
Emerging “repronubs” and “repropreneurs”
In this article, we offer an analysis of the development of “repronubs”: less-known locations offering small-scale, niche cross-border gestational surrogacy or surrogacy services for a regional market. This analytical category of “repronubs” is useful to describe the formation of the industry from small local sites to those offering cross-border services. Based on our work in these locations, we compare the markets, regulatory contexts, and organ…
Shifting surrogacies
Gestational surrogacy is a reproductive arrangement where a woman gestates a child for others—the “intended parents”—in order to be handed over to them after birth. Since the turn of the millennium, demands for surrogacy have continuously increased due to social and demographic changes, rising rates of infertility, and the normalization of new, non-heteronormative, family forms. Many countries prohibit surrogacy, and others that previously permit…
Antibiotic assemblages and their implications for the prevention of antimicrobial resistance
Demodystopias
The notion of 'demodystopias' describes the narratives through which 'ultra-low fertility' is depicted in demographic reports and public media in Asia. In this paper I document how demographic knowledge about population dynamics is being disseminated and mobilized to the lay public within four countries, China, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand. I outline the imaginaries of population evident in the media reports of demographic matters from 201…
Role crisis, risk and trust in Australian general public narratives about antibiotic use and antimicrobial resistance
As antibiotics have become increasingly ineffective against bacteria, antibiotic stewardship has been introduced across a variety of settings world-wide. Members of the public have been entreated to use antibiotics strictly as prescribed. We interviewed ninety-nine participants who shared their understandings of antibiotics and reflections on antibiotic resistant bacteria. Some participants were eager consumers of antibiotics whilst others sought…
Dying Overseas
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: an International Journal - Volume 14, Number 1, March 2020
Contamination, suffering and womanhood
Moralities in international medical travel
This paper views international medical travel through the lens of medical migrations and contextualises it within regional historical linkages. Drawing from fieldwork with staff, facilitators, and Indonesian patients in two Malaysian private hospitals, it frames international medical travel as a moral endeavour, and aims to uncover the premises that make this endeavour meaningful and desirable. Understanding moralities as a field of embodied pred…
Willy nilly' doctors, bad patients, and resistant bodies in general public explanations of antimicrobial resistance
Increased public engagement is a feature of policy and communications focussed on the reduction of antimicrobial resistance. Explaining antimicrobial resistance for general publics has proven difficult and they continue to endorse apparently mistaken knowledge, including the conflation of antimicrobial resistance with the notion of the resistant body. We interviewed members of the general public in Melbourne, Australia, to explore explanatory mod…
Understanding media publics and the antimicrobial resistance crisis
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) imperils health for people across the world. This enormous challenge is being met with the rationalisation of prescription, dispensing and consumption of antimicrobials in clinical settings and in the everyday lives of members of the general population. Individuals need to be reached outside clinical settings to prepare them for the necessary changes to the pharmaceutical management of infections; efforts that depen…
Medical travel facilitators, private hospitals and international medical travel in assemblage
International medical travel may be viewed as an ‘assemblage’ of various components such as infrastructure, hospitals, finance, transport, technologies, staff, facilitators and patients. In this paper, we focus on the articulations of medical travel facilitators (MTFs) and private hospitals in producing international medical travel in the context of the neoliberalising processes that had led to the rise of corporate hospital care in Malaysia in t…
International medical travel and the politics of transnational mobility in Asia
Regional circuits of international medical travel
Intra‐regional medical travel by patients from Indonesia to Penang in Malaysia is embedded in and facilitated by regional circuits. Although such movement is fuelled by dissatisfaction with the health‐care services offered in Indonesia, we argue that these contemporary movements for health care are also a continuation of existing exchanges for trade, education and cultural ties that have long existed. In the first part of the paper, we consider t…
Closer to my world’
One of the challenges in doing research with individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the difficulty in communication. This study employed a modified form of photovoice with a group of young people with ASD in Hanoi, Vietnam, to provide a means of meaningful participation in research about their lives, experiences, and needs. We describe the process of conducting photovoice with nine children with ASD from June 2011 to May 2012, many of…
Controlling diabetes, controlling diabetics
Living with HIV
Efforts to destigmatize AIDS by a group of HIV-positive people in an Australian city include a counter discourse that inverts the stigma of AIDS by confronting images of a hopeless disease and appropriating concepts from the alternative health movement and New Age philosophy. These strategies constitute a resistance to mainstream discourses about AIDS and echo the strategies employed by other stigmatized groups. The explanatory model used by the …
Global Technologies and Transnational Reproduction in Thailand
Perceptions of an 'international hospital' in Thailand by medical travel patients
Challenges of medical travel to global regulation
This article explores the challenges medical travel poses for the development and implementation of health regulation in Asia. Cross-border reproductive travel in Asia is used to exemplify some of the ethical, legal and regulatory complexities such travel poses. A number of countries in the region lack regulatory frameworks regarding controversial procedures such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis for sex selection, commercial donor and surroga…
From ‘Mung Ming’ to ‘Baby Gammy’
Medical travel facilitators, private hospitals and international medical travel in assemblage
International medical travel may be viewed as an ‘assemblage’ of various components such as infrastructure, hospitals, finance, transport, technologies, staff, facilitators and patients. In this paper, we focus on the articulations of medical travel facilitators (MTFs) and private hospitals in producing international medical travel in the context of the neoliberalising processes that had led to the rise of corporate hospital care in Malaysia in t…
Talk about cancer
Emerging “repronubs” and “repropreneurs”
In this article, we offer an analysis of the development of “repronubs”: less-known locations offering small-scale, niche cross-border gestational surrogacy or surrogacy services for a regional market. This analytical category of “repronubs” is useful to describe the formation of the industry from small local sites to those offering cross-border services. Based on our work in these locations, we compare the markets, regulatory contexts, and organ…
Living together in Australia
This paper mines data from in-depth interviews on family formation with 115 women, men and couples of family-forming age in eastern Australia to examine aspects of the complex phenomenon of living together unmarried. Sixty-five percent of interviews yielded evidence of one or more such relationships entered over approximately a 20-year period. Informants had rarely made considered 'decisions' to cohabit. Moving in had rather just happened', often…
Moralities in international medical travel
This paper views international medical travel through the lens of medical migrations and contextualises it within regional historical linkages. Drawing from fieldwork with staff, facilitators, and Indonesian patients in two Malaysian private hospitals, it frames international medical travel as a moral endeavour, and aims to uncover the premises that make this endeavour meaningful and desirable. Understanding moralities as a field of embodied pred…
Regional circuits of international medical travel
Intra‐regional medical travel by patients from Indonesia to Penang in Malaysia is embedded in and facilitated by regional circuits. Although such movement is fuelled by dissatisfaction with the health‐care services offered in Indonesia, we argue that these contemporary movements for health care are also a continuation of existing exchanges for trade, education and cultural ties that have long existed. In the first part of the paper, we consider t…
Tempting Luck
Within the expanding bioeconomy of assisted reproduction, there are limitations to providing quality informed consent for egg donation when the long-term risks remain unknown. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Barcelona with egg donors and in vitro fertilization (IVF) professionals, in this paper, we speak of "temporal choreography" to describe how clinical practices delimit and circumscribe the information that will be offered to egg donors by …
Shifting surrogacies
Gestational surrogacy is a reproductive arrangement where a woman gestates a child for others—the “intended parents”—in order to be handed over to them after birth. Since the turn of the millennium, demands for surrogacy have continuously increased due to social and demographic changes, rising rates of infertility, and the normalization of new, non-heteronormative, family forms. Many countries prohibit surrogacy, and others that previously permit…
Contamination, suffering and womanhood
International medical travel and the politics of transnational mobility in Asia
Forming relationships in Australia
Indigenous round houses versus ‘healthy houses’
Conceiving the nation
(2001). Conceiving the nation: representations of abortion in Thailand. Asian Studies Review: Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 423-451
Antibiotic assemblages and their implications for the prevention of antimicrobial resistance
Demodystopias
The notion of 'demodystopias' describes the narratives through which 'ultra-low fertility' is depicted in demographic reports and public media in Asia. In this paper I document how demographic knowledge about population dynamics is being disseminated and mobilized to the lay public within four countries, China, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand. I outline the imaginaries of population evident in the media reports of demographic matters from 201…
Women's desires and burden
Primary health services in rural Thailand
Financial struggles and coping with the aftermath of breast cancer care
Breast cancer, the most common cancer diagnosed among women, disproportionately affects low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Based on an ethnographic study conducted in Central Vietnam in 2019, including observation and interviews with 33 women patients, we investigate how women and their families managed the financial burden of breast cancer care. Our findings suggest that in a context where health-related risk protection is poorly organise…
Trajectories to a cancer diagnosis
Women in low- and middle-income countries where the prevalence and mortality of breast cancer are growing rapidly are more likely to be diagnosed at advanced stages, which negatively affects their treatment outcomes and chance of survival. The current literature in those settings tends to focus largely on explaining patient delay in seeking medical attention for breast symptoms. Meanwhile, little is known as to what prompts women to attend screen…
The Somerset Saltfield
Living with HIV
Efforts to destigmatize AIDS by a group of HIV-positive people in an Australian city include a counter discourse that inverts the stigma of AIDS by confronting images of a hopeless disease and appropriating concepts from the alternative health movement and New Age philosophy. These strategies constitute a resistance to mainstream discourses about AIDS and echo the strategies employed by other stigmatized groups. The explanatory model used by the …
Primary health services in rural Thailand
Talk about cancer
Women's desires and burden
Women's desires and burden
Women's Desires and Burden
Conceiving the nation
(2001). Conceiving the nation: representations of abortion in Thailand. Asian Studies Review: Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 423-451
Eliciting Qualitative Information About Induced Abortion
Obtaining reliable information about induced abortion is notoriously difficult, especially where abortion is illegal. This article describes methods used in a study of illegal induced abortion among village women in Northeast Thailand. A variety of methods were used to gather in-depth qualitative data on abortion experiences including a randomized interview survey on reproductive health, in-depth interviews with women who had experienced an induc…
Controlling diabetes, controlling diabetics
Forming relationships in Australia
Living together in Australia
This paper mines data from in-depth interviews on family formation with 115 women, men and couples of family-forming age in eastern Australia to examine aspects of the complex phenomenon of living together unmarried. Sixty-five percent of interviews yielded evidence of one or more such relationships entered over approximately a 20-year period. Informants had rarely made considered 'decisions' to cohabit. Moving in had rather just happened', often…
Pleasure and pain
The trade in health services for foreign patients, often termed ‘medical tourism’ or medical travel, is a growing industry being aggressively marketed across Asia. This paper explores the industry development in four countries: Thailand, India, Malaysia, and Singapore, providing a preliminary review of the political economy of the industry, marketing strategies, and linkages. As yet, there has been neither academic work considering the implicatio…
Global Technologies and Transnational Reproduction in Thailand
Challenges of medical travel to global regulation
This article explores the challenges medical travel poses for the development and implementation of health regulation in Asia. Cross-border reproductive travel in Asia is used to exemplify some of the ethical, legal and regulatory complexities such travel poses. A number of countries in the region lack regulatory frameworks regarding controversial procedures such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis for sex selection, commercial donor and surroga…
Indigenous round houses versus ‘healthy houses’
Merit and money
Specific studies of the “situated ethics” of international surrogacy that address the structural conditions and local moral economies that sustain the trade are needed. In this essay, I describe the intimate industry of surrogacy in Thailand, exploring the local moral economy in which surrogacy is described as a form of Buddhist merit making and an opportunity to provide for one’s own children. This offers a further example of how other ethical v…
Patriarchal Bargains and Assisted Reproductive Treatment in Thailand
The utilization of assisted reproduction technologies in Thailand both redefines and reproduces patriarchal inequalities. The concept of a “patriarchal bargain” is utilized as a means of analyzing the ways in which women use assisted reproductive technologies to maximize their life security and options within the specific system of gendered power relations within Thailand. The article is based upon ethnographic research in two public and three pr…
Factors impacting HIV testing
With the current global focus on strengthening HIV prevention through greater testing and treatment uptake, it is increasingly salient to identify and address barriers to testing. A review of the published, peer-reviewed literature and national reports from Australia, Canada, and the UK (2003-2013) on barriers to HIV testing was conducted to provide new information relevant to Australia and to complement earlier reviews from Canada and the UK. A …
Factors associated with antiretroviral treatment uptake and adherence
International focus on reducing onward HIV transmission emphasizes the need for routine HIV testing and early uptake of antiretroviral treatment (ART). Strategic targets have been set for 2020 to achieve the goal of 90% of people infected with HIV diagnosed, 90% of identified cases on treatment, and 90% of persons on treatment virally suppressed (90-90-90). It is vital to understand the complexity of factors influencing a person's treatment decis…
Outsourced’ patients and their companions
In this paper, I describe the experience of 'outsourced' patients who are sent by their governments or insurers through contractual arrangements to a hospital in another country for treatment. I present case studies of nine patients and their accompanying families from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) who were interviewed in a Thai hospital as part of a broader study of medical travel from patients' perspectives. The health systems of the GCC s…
Perceptions of an 'international hospital' in Thailand by medical travel patients
Closer to my world’
One of the challenges in doing research with individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the difficulty in communication. This study employed a modified form of photovoice with a group of young people with ASD in Hanoi, Vietnam, to provide a means of meaningful participation in research about their lives, experiences, and needs. We describe the process of conducting photovoice with nine children with ASD from June 2011 to May 2012, many of…
From ‘Mung Ming’ to ‘Baby Gammy’
Understanding media publics and the antimicrobial resistance crisis
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) imperils health for people across the world. This enormous challenge is being met with the rationalisation of prescription, dispensing and consumption of antimicrobials in clinical settings and in the everyday lives of members of the general population. Individuals need to be reached outside clinical settings to prepare them for the necessary changes to the pharmaceutical management of infections; efforts that depen…
Political science (34 works) · Sociology (29 works) · Medicine (23 works) · Law (18 works) · Geography (15 works) · Economic growth (14 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Reproductive Health and Technologies (13 works)