Choosing the best apple
Counselling leaflets and technologies of communication in the history of reproduction
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12691929 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Birgit Nemec (0000-0003-2359-5556, History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 260-271 |
| Publication date | 2023-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Medical Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-215X • E-ISSN: 1473-4265 |
| Publisher | BMJ (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1136/medhum-2023-012664 |
| OpenAlex | W4383070395 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 28 |
Historians have shown how the establishment of human genetic counselling in West Germany was characterised by several sociohistorical factors, in particular the impact of the legacies of Nazi biopolitics. These accounts have reconstructed continuities on an intellectual level which delayed a turn towards non-directive approaches, emphasising individual (emotional) well-being and voluntariness, and instead have prolonged a discourse that defined disability as an economic and social burden. However, while the distinct legacies of eugenics and racial hygienics are well researched, other factors that constituted counselling encounters, such as the ways of communicating reproduction and material objects’ roles in transformations of concepts, actors and their relations, have not been examined in detail. Drawing on the archives of a Marburg-based charity, this paper aimed to reconstruct these factors at the example of the production and circulation of a major family planning leaflet, Our Child Shall Be Healthy , developed ca 1977. In doing so, I want to suggest that connections between science, politics and economy were a key element in technologies of communicating reproduction. This essay approaches counselling as a communicative practice that was in continual productive engagement with different concepts of reproductive health. First, it argues that the communicative and paper technologies used in counselling interactions in West Germany changed in the aftermath of the worldwide thalidomide tragedy. Second, it argues that a novel approach to reproductive health emerged that focused on individual decision making as the basis of prosperity and emotional well-being. Taking a family planning leaflet as a site for reconstructing how people of different organisations, with different stakes and expertise converged in the design of a counselling encounter, this paper targets the crossroads of economic, political and scientific activities in the history of communicating reproductive health and reproductive risks
Environmental ethics · Eugenics · Political science · Politics · Prosperity · Reproduction · Sociology · European history and politics · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Medical History and Research · Ecology
History of Human Genetics
Deutschland in Grün
Reproduktive Gesundheit und humangenetische Beratung im Dialog mit der Öffentlichkeit 1969–1996
The Maternal Imprint
Das beratene Selbst
Introduction
Food, growth and time
A Tale of Two Experts
Diotima and Demeter as Mystagogues in Plato's Symposium
Bodies of Knowledge
Dissecting German Social Darwinism
| Highly cited | No |
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