M C Inhorn
Biographic Data
| ID | 9471 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M C Inhorn |
| GIVEN NAMES | M C |
| FAMILY NAME | Inhorn |
| SIGNATURE | INHORN M C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7456-7120 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 96 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 790 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 96 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Gender and Waithood
As originally defined by political scientist Diane Singerman, “waithood” refers to the situation of youth, particularly young men, in parts of the global South who are unable to achieve the transition to full adulthood due to economic precarity and subsequent barriers to marriage. As a result, they remain in a liminal space where they are considered neither children nor adults. Increasingly, however, the marital delays associated with waithood ma…
Queering Masculinities in the Middle East (SWANA) and South Asia
One of the most important shifts in gender scholarship is the attention now being paid to discourses and practices of masculinity in the Global South. This issue of Men and Masculinities contributes to this growing field in three important ways. First, we foreground scholarship on masculinities in two interconnected, but understudied regions of the world, specifically the Middle East, which is also known as South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA…
RBMS says farewell
Fertility Decline, Small Families, and Son Selection in the Arab World
The Arab world has experienced one of the most dramatic fertility declines in modern history, the result of both contraceptive technologies and couples’ desires for smaller families. Assisted reproductive and genetic technologies have also become widespread across the region, leading to new practices of in vitro fertilization (IVF) with sex selection. This article examines the desire for small families with sons, and the introduction of the repro…
Egg Freezing at the End of Romance
The newest innovation in assisted reproduction is oocyte cryopreservation, more commonly known as egg freezing, which has been developed as a method of fertility preservation. Studies emerging from around the world show that highly educated professional women are turning to egg freezing in their late thirties to early forties, because they are still searching for a male partner with whom to have children. For these women, egg freezing may be a ne…
Transgender men’s fertility preservation
Transgender people assigned female at birth may undergo fertility preservation by egg or embryo freezing, usually prior to gender affirming treatment. In this binational ethnographic study, four transgender men were included as part of a larger comparative project on fertility preservation. In-depth ethnographic interviews allowed informants to talk freely about their fertility preservation experiences, and the circumstances that had enabled them…
Upholding Success
Asian American women are turning to oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing) at rates higher than would be expected, given that Asian Americans make up less than six percent of the total United States population. Based on ethnographic interviews with 23 women of East, Southeast, and South Asian ancestry, we examine the "fertility paradox" faced by highly educated Asian American professional women. Despite achieving multiple "pillars of success," th…
Cryopreserving Jewish Motherhood
Oocyte cryopreservation (i.e., egg freezing) is one of the newest forms of assisted reproduction and is increasingly being used primarily by two groups of women: (1) young cancer patients at risk of losing their fertility through cytotoxic chemotherapy (i.e., medical egg freezing); and (2) single professionals in their late 30s who are facing age-related fertility decline in the absence of reproductive partners (i.e., elective egg freezing). Base…
Waithood
The concept of “Waithood” was developed by political scientist Diane Singerman to describe the expanding period of time between adolescence and full adulthood as young people wait to secure steady employment and marry. The contributors to this volume employ the waithood concept as a frame for richly detailed ethnographic studies of “youth in waiting” from a variety of world areas, including the Middle East Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and …
America’s Arab Refugees
America's Arab Refugees is a timely examination of the world's worst refugee crisis since World War II. Tracing the history of Middle Eastern wars—especially the U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan—to the current refugee crisis, Marcia C. Inhorn examines how refugees fare once resettled in America. In the U.S., Arabs are challenged by discrimination, poverty, and various forms of vulnerability. Inhorn shines a spotlight on the pli…
The Oocyte Economy
Reviewed by: The Oocyte Economy: The Changing Meaning of Human Eggs by Catherine Waldby Marcia C. Inhorn Catherine Waldby. The Oocyte Economy: The Changing Meaning of Human Eggs. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2019. viii + 240 pp. $24.95 (978-1-4780-0472-1). As explained succinctly in the opening of Catherine Waldby's new book, The Oocyte Economy: The Changing Meaning of Human Eggs, oocytes are women's reproductive cells, which "transmit ge…
Reprint
Where has the quest for conception taken us? Lessons from anthropology and sociology
Reproducing men in the twenty-first century
This special issue of NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies is, indeed, special. Amidst a vast and wide-ranging interdisciplinary literature on gender and women’s reproductive health
Abrahamic traditions and egg freezing
Medical Anthropology in an Era of Authoritarianism
Reports
Publications Korangy, A., Al-Samman, H. and Beard, M. (eds), The Beloved in Middle Eastern Literatures: The Culture of Love and Languishing (London: I.B. Tauris, 2018). Conferences ‘(Un)Settling Middle Eastern Refugees’ (Yale University, September 2019)
Assisted Reproductive Technologies
In 1978 in vitro fertilization (IVF) was introduced in England to overcome the problem of infertility. In the nearly four decades since then, many other assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) have been developed. Some are simple variants of IVF, while others are complex innovations, involving related fields such as human genetics. As ARTs have evolved over time, they have also traveled widely, leading to the birth of 5 million babies around th…
Is Lower Quality Clinical Care Ethically Justifiable for Patients Residing in Areas with Infrastructure Deficits
Reproductive health services, including infertility care, are important in countries with infrastructure deficits, such as Lebanon, which now hosts more than one million Syrian refugees. Islamic prohibitions on child adoption and third-party reproductive assistance (donor eggs, sperm, embryos, and surrogacy) mean that most Muslim couples must turn to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to overcome their childl…
Initiating patient discussions about oocyte cryopreservation
Medical egg freezing
Commentary
Islam, Sex, and Sin
In Islamic jurisprudence, numerous wrongful acts of behavior are regarded as haram—sinful, illicit, prohibited, and unlawful. Such wrongful behavior can take many forms, with illicit sexuality constituting one of the major categories. Because heterosexual marital sex is the only licit form of sexual behavior according to Islamic jurisprudence, the potential for men to engage in zina, or illicit sexuality, is quite high. Although there are many "s…
Searching for Love and Test-Tube Babies
In this article, I explore the reproductive health problems faced by Iraqi refugees, one of America's most rapidly growing immigrant populations. Based on anthropological research in "Arab Detroit," the "capital" of Arab America, I explore the experiences of Iraqi refugee men seeking medical help for their infertility. Most required intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), a variant of in vitro fertilization (IVF). However, in America's privatize…
The Egg Freezing Revolution? Gender, Technology, and Fertility Preservation in the Twenty‐First Century
Egg freezing is the “newest” new reproductive technology, a form of flash‐freezing that allows human eggs to be successfully stored in egg banks. Touted as a “revolution in the way women age,” egg freezing is being heralded as a way for older career women to “rewind the biological clock.” This essay will examine the many factors in American women's lives—education, career, financial stability, relationship status, medical diagnosis and prognosis—…
Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Culture Change
In 1978, the world's first "test-tube" baby was born via in vitro fertilization (IVF). The past 30 years have seen the rapid evolution of many other assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs)-some are simple variants of IVF, whereas others bridge the fields of assisted reproduction and human genomics. As ARTs have evolved over time, so have social, cultural, legal, and ethical responses to them. Indeed, ARTs are a key symbol of our times, represen…
Men's influences on women's reproductive health
Embodying emergent masculinities
We employ Raymond Williams's concept of "emergence" to capture new forms of embodied masculinities in the Middle East and Mexico, two sites marked by powerful local stereotypes of manliness. Men there are enacting "emergent masculinities"-living out new ways of being men in attempts to counter forms of manhood that they see as harmfully hegemonic. They do this partly through engagements with emergent health technologies, including assisted reprod…
Defining Women's Health
Although the women's health research agenda has been largely defined by Western biomedicine and public health, anthropology has much to offer in terms of defining and understanding women's health from the perspective of women themselves. Through the in-depth qualitative tradition of ethnography, anthropologists have documented women's health concerns around the globe, producing a large and constantly expanding literature that is rich and provocat…
Global infertility and the globalization of new reproductive technologies
Middle Eastern Masculinities in the Age of New Reproductive Technologies
Worldwide, male infertility contributes to more than half of all cases of childlessness; yet, it is a reproductive health problem that is poorly studied and understood. This article examines the problem of male infertility in two Middle Eastern locales, Cairo, Egypt, and Beirut, Lebanon, where men may be at increased risk of male infertility because of environmental and behavioral factors. It is argued that male infertility may be particularly pr…
He Won't Be My Son
In the Sunni Muslim world, religious mandates prohibit both adoption and gamete donation as solutions to infertility, including in the aftermath of in vitro fertilization (IVF) failures. However, both of these options are now available in two Middle Eastern countries with significant Shi'ite Muslim populations (Iran and Lebanon). On the basis of fieldwork in multisectarian Lebanon, I examine in this article attitudes toward both adoption and game…
Medical anthropology and epidemiology
Privacy, privatization, and the politics of patronage
The Worms Are Weak
Male infertility is a major global reproductive health problem, contributing to more than half of all cases of infertility worldwide. Yet women typically bear the social burden of childlessness when their husbands are infertile. This article explores the four major patriarchal paradoxes surrounding male infertility in the Muslim Middle Eastern country of Egypt. There, women in childless marriages typically experience procreative blame, even when …
Interpreting infertility
Globalization and gametes
Reproductive tourism' has been defined as the search for assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and human gametes (eggs, sperm, embryos) across national and international borders. This article conceptualizes reproductive tourism within 'global reproscapes,' which involve the circulation of actors, technologies, money, media, ideas, and human gametes, all moving in complicated manners across geographical landscapes. Focusing on the Muslim count…
Feminism meets the "new" epidemiologies
Medical Anthropology at the Intersections
Infertility, infection, and latrogenesis in Egypt
In this article, we integrate medical anthropological and analytical epidemiological methods, forms of data analysis, and interpretive insights to examine the culture-specific behavioral factors that place poor, urban Egyptian women at risk of tubal-factor infertility (TFI). Such risk factors include biomedically and ethnomedically produced iatrogenesis, including the consequences of the practice of female circumcision, and male sexual behavior l…
Ethnography, epidemiology and infertility in Egypt
Reproduction gone awry
Genital Herpes
Where has the quest for conception taken us? Lessons from anthropology and sociology
Sexuality, Masculinity, and Infertility in Egypt
In Africa, high rates of infertility are due to infection and many other factors. This article explores male sexual dysfunction as both a cause and consequence of infertility in Egypt. Because sexual dysfunction is profoundly emasculating in a country where hegemonic masculinities are competitive, sexually troubled men in childless marriages do not routinely seek treatment from male physicians, leaving their wives to seek treatment for purported …
Assisted reproduction and Middle East kinship
"Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Fertility "Tourism
What motivates the global movements of infertile people searching for assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs)? In this article, we attempt to answer this question by exploring infertile patients' practices of so-called "fertility tourism." Based on ethnographic research carried out with nearly 300 infertile travelers in two major ART centers--one in the global hub of the United Arab Emirates and the other at a major East Coast Ivy League univer…
Medical egg freezing and cancer patients' hopes
Reproductive Exile in Global Dubai
As India becomes the center for global commercial surrogacy, infertile Indians themselves may be forced to seek assisted reproductive technology (ART) services elsewhere. The inability of Indian couples to access affordable, high-quality services in their home country may force them to become reproductive tourists—a phenomenon defined in this article as “reproductive exile.” Reproductive exile bespeaks the “forced” nature of fertility travel, whe…
Masturbation, Semen Collection and Men's IVF Experiences
And a Response
Genital Herpes
More Information on Herpes
Genital Herpes
The Anthropology of Infectious Disease
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
Infertility, infection, and latrogenesis in Egypt
In this article, we integrate medical anthropological and analytical epidemiological methods, forms of data analysis, and interpretive insights to examine the culture-specific behavioral factors that place poor, urban Egyptian women at risk of tubal-factor infertility (TFI). Such risk factors include biomedically and ethnomedically produced iatrogenesis, including the consequences of the practice of female circumcision, and male sexual behavior l…
Kabsa (a.k.a. mushāhara) and threatened fertility in Egypt
Ethnography, epidemiology and infertility in Egypt
Interpreting infertility
Medical anthropology and epidemiology
Quest for Conception
Quest for Conception
Commentary on “Blood and Nerves Revisited
Infertility and Patriarchy
Infertility and Patriarchy explores the lives of infertile women whose personal stories depict their daily struggles to resist disempowerment and stigmatization. Marcia C. Inhorn has produced a unique study of gender, politics, and family life in contemporary Egypt
The contested public lives of middle eastern women
Kapchan, Deborah. Gender on the Market: Moroccan Women and the Revoking of Tradition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. xvii + 325 pp. including appendices, glossary, chapter references, and indexes. $42.50 cloth, $19.95 paperback. Hale, Sondra. Gender Politics in Sudan: Islamism, Socialism, and the State. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. xv + 295 pp. including glossary, chapter references, index, and book/author information…
Feminism meets the "new" epidemiologies
Sexuality, Masculinity, and Infertility in Egypt
In Africa, high rates of infertility are due to infection and many other factors. This article explores male sexual dysfunction as both a cause and consequence of infertility in Egypt. Because sexual dysfunction is profoundly emasculating in a country where hegemonic masculinities are competitive, sexually troubled men in childless marriages do not routinely seek treatment from male physicians, leaving their wives to seek treatment for purported …
Infertility in the Modern World
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a medically unexplained illness that is diagnosed on the basis of a clinical case definition; so it probably is an illness with multiple causes producing the same clinical picture. One way of dealing with this heterogeneity is to stratify patients based on illness onset. We hypothesized that either the whole group of CFS patients or that group which developed CFS gradually would show a relation with birth order, …
Technologies of Pregnancy and Birth
Global infertility and the globalization of new reproductive technologies
Reproduction gone awry
Planning the Family in Egypt
Planning the Family in Egypt: New Bodies, New Selves. Kamran Asdar Ali. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. xii. 233 pp
The Worms Are Weak
Male infertility is a major global reproductive health problem, contributing to more than half of all cases of infertility worldwide. Yet women typically bear the social burden of childlessness when their husbands are infertile. This article explores the four major patriarchal paradoxes surrounding male infertility in the Muslim Middle Eastern country of Egypt. There, women in childless marriages typically experience procreative blame, even when …
F Oreword
Men's influences on women's reproductive health
Sociology (77 works) · Reproductive Health and Technologies (51 works) · Political science (50 works) · Gender Studies (46 works) · Medicine (46 works) · Law (37 works) · Biology (36 works) · Gender Studies (33 works) · Population (31 works) · Pregnancy (31 works)