Sandra Bärnreuther
Biographic Data
| ID | 114815 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sandra Bärnreuther |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sandra |
| FAMILY NAME | Bärnreuther |
| SIGNATURE | BÄRNREUTHER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Lucerne |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4628-8030 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Financializing Maternal and Newborn Care: Temporal Tensions within a Development Impact Bond in India
Since the 1980s, multilateral agencies and governments in many parts of the world have curtailed public spending for the health sector. The same period also witnessed the emergence of 'innovative' health financing approaches which combine social service provision with financial return. This article discusses one such mechanism, the first health-focused development impact bond (DIB) implemented in India in 2018-21. Drawing on interviews with key a…
Health-Related Expertise in the Digital Age: Reconfigurations and Redistributions
Special Issue "Health-Related Expertise in the Digital Age: Reconfigurations and Redistributions", guest edited by Sandra Bärnreuther, Nolwenn Bühler and Giada Danesi
Recast(e)ing Medicine in India: Contested Hierarchies of Expertise in Digital Primary Care
In this article, I examine a public-private partnership project in West Bengal, India, that trains and deploys people from marginalised castes as digital health workers in rural areas. Although digital technologies offer new opportunities for access to the medical sector, caste hierarchies inherent to the field persist, reinforcing and perpetuating caste-based inequities. This is evident in the division of labour, shaped by caste dynamics and jus…
Surveillance medicine 2.0: Digital monitoring of community health workers in India
This paper examines a digital platform used in the primary health sector in a state in Eastern India. Within a 'regime of tactility,' it is supposed to redefine the state's presence in rural areas, not only by attending to patients but also by screening the population and establishing health databases. While the health workers who operate the digital platform represent the state in 'the peripheries,' the state itself exhibits mistrust towards the…
Disrupting healthcare? Entrepreneurship as an "innovative" financing mechanism in India's primary care sector
Innovation" - whether in the form of digital technologies or business models - dominates imaginaries of global health futures and is often promoted as a "solution" through which the goal of universal health coverage can be achieved. Seemingly disrupting the status quo, it offers the promise of novel and simple answers to longstanding and complex social problems. In this article, I analyze a public-private partnership between the Indian state of W…
Racializing infertility: How South/Asian-ness has been constituted as an independent risk factor in infertility research and IVF practice
Since the 1990s, scientific studies have explored possible correlations of "race/ethnicity" with ovarian aging and, by extension, the outcome of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) procedures. Relying on a close reading of English-language scientific publications about "Asian" or "South Asian" women, corroborated by interviews with selected authors in 2018 and 2021 as well as ethnographic research in India conducted between 2010 and 2017, I analyze proc…
Traders of gametes, brokers of values: Mediating commercial gamete donations in Delhi
Scholarly analyses of transactions of biological material are often focused on either the moral economy of exchange or the political economy of production. In this paper, I highlight the ambiguities that characterize commercial gamete donations in daily clinical life in In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) hospitals in Delhi through agents’ practices of valuation. In Delhi’s IVF economy, agents occupy a pivotal role in mediating gamete transactions: not …
Graphy
Based on these assumptions, Rees raises pertinent questions about the present state and future of the discipline: What is anthropology today? Is it a discipline, a set of philosophical questions, a method, a praxis, or an art form? On what (implicit) understandings of anthropos is it based? And what is the current status of ethnography? What role does ethnos play in contemporary research and writing? Or has the discipline entered a new age that c…
Suitable substances: How biobanks (re)store biologicals
Biobanks connected to In Vitro Fertilization hospitals do not merely function as repositories for biologicals. They also contribute to the restoration of reproductive substances to distinct social environments. Cases of commercial gamete donation in India often entail the infringement of social boundaries, as the socioeconomic backgrounds of gamete donors and recipients diverge. In a highly stratified society, biobanks perform “relational work” i…
Innovations 'Out of Place: Controversies Over IVF Beginnings in India Between 1978 and 2005
In 1978, the year the first in vitro fertilization (IVF) baby was born in the United Kingdom, a research team in Kolkata reported that it too had successfully produced an IVF baby in India. However, the claim was dismissed at the time, because the experiment was conducted outside authorized institutions and recognized centers of innovation--in short, because it was an innovation 'out of place.' Tracing controversies over the case between 1978 and…
Pinto, Sarah: Where There Is No Midwife. Birth and Loss in Rural India
Anthropos , Seite 296 - 297
Disrupting healthcare? Entrepreneurship as an "innovative" financing mechanism in India's primary care sector
Innovation" - whether in the form of digital technologies or business models - dominates imaginaries of global health futures and is often promoted as a "solution" through which the goal of universal health coverage can be achieved. Seemingly disrupting the status quo, it offers the promise of novel and simple answers to longstanding and complex social problems. In this article, I analyze a public-private partnership between the Indian state of W…
Traders of gametes, brokers of values: Mediating commercial gamete donations in Delhi
Scholarly analyses of transactions of biological material are often focused on either the moral economy of exchange or the political economy of production. In this paper, I highlight the ambiguities that characterize commercial gamete donations in daily clinical life in In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) hospitals in Delhi through agents’ practices of valuation. In Delhi’s IVF economy, agents occupy a pivotal role in mediating gamete transactions: not …
Innovations 'Out of Place: Controversies Over IVF Beginnings in India Between 1978 and 2005
In 1978, the year the first in vitro fertilization (IVF) baby was born in the United Kingdom, a research team in Kolkata reported that it too had successfully produced an IVF baby in India. However, the claim was dismissed at the time, because the experiment was conducted outside authorized institutions and recognized centers of innovation--in short, because it was an innovation 'out of place.' Tracing controversies over the case between 1978 and…
Racializing infertility: How South/Asian-ness has been constituted as an independent risk factor in infertility research and IVF practice
Since the 1990s, scientific studies have explored possible correlations of "race/ethnicity" with ovarian aging and, by extension, the outcome of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) procedures. Relying on a close reading of English-language scientific publications about "Asian" or "South Asian" women, corroborated by interviews with selected authors in 2018 and 2021 as well as ethnographic research in India conducted between 2010 and 2017, I analyze proc…
Pinto, Sarah: Where There Is No Midwife. Birth and Loss in Rural India
Anthropos , Seite 296 - 297
Innovations 'Out of Place: Controversies Over IVF Beginnings in India Between 1978 and 2005
In 1978, the year the first in vitro fertilization (IVF) baby was born in the United Kingdom, a research team in Kolkata reported that it too had successfully produced an IVF baby in India. However, the claim was dismissed at the time, because the experiment was conducted outside authorized institutions and recognized centers of innovation--in short, because it was an innovation 'out of place.' Tracing controversies over the case between 1978 and…
Suitable substances: How biobanks (re)store biologicals
Biobanks connected to In Vitro Fertilization hospitals do not merely function as repositories for biologicals. They also contribute to the restoration of reproductive substances to distinct social environments. Cases of commercial gamete donation in India often entail the infringement of social boundaries, as the socioeconomic backgrounds of gamete donors and recipients diverge. In a highly stratified society, biobanks perform “relational work” i…
Graphy
Based on these assumptions, Rees raises pertinent questions about the present state and future of the discipline: What is anthropology today? Is it a discipline, a set of philosophical questions, a method, a praxis, or an art form? On what (implicit) understandings of anthropos is it based? And what is the current status of ethnography? What role does ethnos play in contemporary research and writing? Or has the discipline entered a new age that c…
Traders of gametes, brokers of values: Mediating commercial gamete donations in Delhi
Scholarly analyses of transactions of biological material are often focused on either the moral economy of exchange or the political economy of production. In this paper, I highlight the ambiguities that characterize commercial gamete donations in daily clinical life in In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) hospitals in Delhi through agents’ practices of valuation. In Delhi’s IVF economy, agents occupy a pivotal role in mediating gamete transactions: not …
Racializing infertility: How South/Asian-ness has been constituted as an independent risk factor in infertility research and IVF practice
Since the 1990s, scientific studies have explored possible correlations of "race/ethnicity" with ovarian aging and, by extension, the outcome of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) procedures. Relying on a close reading of English-language scientific publications about "Asian" or "South Asian" women, corroborated by interviews with selected authors in 2018 and 2021 as well as ethnographic research in India conducted between 2010 and 2017, I analyze proc…
Disrupting healthcare? Entrepreneurship as an "innovative" financing mechanism in India's primary care sector
Innovation" - whether in the form of digital technologies or business models - dominates imaginaries of global health futures and is often promoted as a "solution" through which the goal of universal health coverage can be achieved. Seemingly disrupting the status quo, it offers the promise of novel and simple answers to longstanding and complex social problems. In this article, I analyze a public-private partnership between the Indian state of W…
Surveillance medicine 2.0: Digital monitoring of community health workers in India
This paper examines a digital platform used in the primary health sector in a state in Eastern India. Within a 'regime of tactility,' it is supposed to redefine the state's presence in rural areas, not only by attending to patients but also by screening the population and establishing health databases. While the health workers who operate the digital platform represent the state in 'the peripheries,' the state itself exhibits mistrust towards the…
Financializing Maternal and Newborn Care: Temporal Tensions within a Development Impact Bond in India
Since the 1980s, multilateral agencies and governments in many parts of the world have curtailed public spending for the health sector. The same period also witnessed the emergence of 'innovative' health financing approaches which combine social service provision with financial return. This article discusses one such mechanism, the first health-focused development impact bond (DIB) implemented in India in 2018-21. Drawing on interviews with key a…
Health-Related Expertise in the Digital Age: Reconfigurations and Redistributions
Special Issue "Health-Related Expertise in the Digital Age: Reconfigurations and Redistributions", guest edited by Sandra Bärnreuther, Nolwenn Bühler and Giada Danesi
Recast(e)ing Medicine in India: Contested Hierarchies of Expertise in Digital Primary Care
In this article, I examine a public-private partnership project in West Bengal, India, that trains and deploys people from marginalised castes as digital health workers in rural areas. Although digital technologies offer new opportunities for access to the medical sector, caste hierarchies inherent to the field persist, reinforcing and perpetuating caste-based inequities. This is evident in the division of labour, shaped by caste dynamics and jus…
Political science (6 works) · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences (5 works) · Economics (5 works) · Medicine (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Biology (4 works) · Economic growth (4 works) · Reproductive Health and Technologies (4 works) · Business (3 works) · Computer Science (3 works)