The narrative governance of life: Morality, melodrama, and the limits of biopower in western Indian efforts against sex selection.
Selective abortion of female fetuses is a widespread, illegal, and profoundly consequential form of family planning in contemporary India. In Gujarat state, public health campaigns against the practice rely on narratives exhibiting the hallmarks of melodrama: good–evil binaries, stock characters, em...
| Publicado en: | Medical Anthropology Quarterly Vol. 39; no. 2; pp. 1 - 24 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Wiley-Blackwell
Jun2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=185726365&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 185726365 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 07455194 GFS jtl: Medical Anthropology Quarterly issn: 07455194 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Jun2025 vid: 39 iid: 2 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell artinfo: ui: 185726365 10.1111/maq.12901 ppf: 1 ppct: 23 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: C – @attributes: type: P size: 2.7MB tig: atl: The narrative governance of life: Morality, melodrama, and the limits of biopower in western Indian efforts against sex selection. aug: au: Sandesara, Utpal N. affil: Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, International Institute, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles California, , USA su: India Gujarat (India) Sex preselection Family planning Consciousness raising Biopolitics (Philosophy) Melodrama Ethicists sug: subj: Sex preselection Family planning Consciousness raising India Gujarat (India) Biopolitics (Philosophy) Melodrama Ethicists keyword: affect biopower morality narrative reproduction affect biopower morality narrative reproduction ab: Selective abortion of female fetuses is a widespread, illegal, and profoundly consequential form of family planning in contemporary India. In Gujarat state, public health campaigns against the practice rely on narratives exhibiting the hallmarks of melodrama: good–evil binaries, stock characters, emotional provocations, simplistic diagnoses, and inevitable triumphs. As biopolitical truths, such narratives resonate ethically and emotionally for people. By individualizing blame, obscuring structure, circumscribing discourse, and legitimizing authority, such narratives also exert many classic biopolitical effects. But they do not necessarily transform subjectivity or behavior, as biopower is often assumed to. Anti‐sex selection messaging illustrates how moralistic, sentimentalized interventions against potentially harmful practices can provoke strong responses without changing actions. In highlighting resonance as a relevant biopolitical limit, the not‐quite‐paradoxes of Gujarati public health narratives—encapsulation without accuracy, regulation without discipline, authority without efficacy, participation without transformation—suggest one approach for analyzing the governance of life without falling into determinism. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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