The reproductive geography of miscarriages. Social identities, places, and reproductive inequalities

Chiara Chiavaroli

Social Science & Medicine, 2024, vol. 360, issue C

Abstract: Increasing epidemiological evidence demonstrates the correlation between toxic contamination and miscarriages, and the disproportionate exposure of marginalised and racialised groups to environmental burdens. Yet, the debate on environmental reproductive health is still largely underpinned by a reductionist biomedical understanding of the health-place relationship that overlooks the interplay between social identities and places. In this article, I argue that understanding the role that places play in shaping reproductive inequalities, beyond the simplistic recognition of the environment as a factor of risk, is important to design a more inclusive reproductive health agenda that addresses the multiple scales across which reproductive inequalities unfold. These scales span from everyday experiences of reproduction to state-level models of reproductive governance. Drawing on 13 months of fieldwork in coca-farming territories in the Bajo Cauca region (Colombia), the aim of this paper is to conceptualise the reproductive geographies of miscarriages related to toxic contamination. This article contributes to debates on reproductive inequalities by discussing the complex and dynamic relationship between social identities and places, and theorising the spatiality of miscarriages.

Keywords: Miscarriages; Reproductive geographies; Health inequalities; Toxic contamination; Place (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117351

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