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

Abstract

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.

A comparative analysis of experienced uncertainties in relation to risk communication during COVID19: a four-country study

“…In addition, research focusing on information seeking behaviors during the Zika pandemic found that attempts to resolve uncertainties included turning to authoritative sources of medical information (such as family doctors, national ministries of health and national public health institutions, and international organizations), but also to information from friends and family [ 54 , 55 ]. Focus group participants from all four countries showed similar information-seeking behaviors, yet our analysis suggests that such efforts to resolve uncertainties are hampered by two interrelated types of uncertainties: First, information-seeking was complicated by what we call information uncertainty, notably by the high amount of available information – or what the WHO calls an “infodemic” [ 56 ]– and the dynamic changes of regulations and recommendations.…”

A comparative analysis of experienced uncertainties in relation to Risk Communication during COVID19. A four-country study

“…In addition, research focusing on information seeking behaviors during the Zika pandemic found that attempts to resolve uncertainties included turning to authoritative sources of medical information (such as family doctors, national ministries of health and national public health institutions, and international organizations), but also to information from friends and family [24,25]. Focus group participants from all four countries showed similar information-seeking behaviors, yet our analysis suggests that such efforts to resolve uncertainties are hampered by two interrelated types of uncertainties: First, information-seeking was complicated by what we call information uncertainty, notably by the high amount of available information -or what the WHO calls an "infodemic" [26]-and the dynamic changes of regulations and recommendations.…”

Habilitating Bodyminds, Caring for Potential

“…Anthropologists have attended to the ways in which notions of plasticity shape bodily practices in Brazil, from popular and religious healing to biomedicine, Indigenous and Afro‐Brazilian ceremonies to cosmetic plastic surgery (Béhague 2016; Edmonds 2010; Jarrín 2017; Rabelo 2014; Sanabria 2016; Vilaça 2005; Williamson 2021). While some have emphasized how biomedical therapeutic technologies like disaggregated, synthetic birth‐control hormones, become modalities of self‐care, bodymind enhancement, and even social mobility, scant attention has been paid to technologies of (re)habilitation for children, much less for disabled children (cf.…”