Interventive Care

Uncertainty, Distributed Agency, and Cesarean Section in a Zika Virus Epidemic

Bibliographic Data

ID2289012
AuthorsK Eliza Williamson (0000-0003-4831-364X, Latin American Studies Program Washington University in St. Louis, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume35
Issue2
Pages266-284
Publication date2021-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Anthropology Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0745-5194 • E-ISSN: 1548-1387
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/maq.12620
PMID33174644
OpenAlexW3105774700
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited45

Beginning in 2015, Brazil witnessed the births of thousands of children with neurological abnormalities linked to the Zika virus. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2018 with parents of children with congenital Zika syndrome in Salvador da Bahia, this article attends to how one of Brazil's most overused obstetric technologies-cesarean section-was mobilized to mitigate the uncertainties of Zika's reproductive consequences. I argue that during the epidemic, C-section constituted a form of what I call interventive care, in which others interceded on behalf of pregnant women to secure surgical delivery. In dialogue with scholarship problematizing autonomy in reproductive decision making, I show how my Bahian interlocutors understood such intercessions, and the C-sections themselves, as forms of appropriate, concerned care. I suggest, furthermore, that interventive care highlights the ways in which reproductive decisions are distributed among people rather than autonomous, particularly in contexts of heightened uncertainty

Agency (philosophy · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Infectious disease (medical specialty · Section (typography · Sociology · Virus · Zika virus · Computer Science · Global Maternal and Child Health · Healthcare Systems and Reforms · Medicine · Mosquito-borne diseases and control · Internal Medicine · Virology

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