Medical anthropology quarterly
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This article analyzes tensions between aesthetics and health in medicine. The blurring of distinctions between reconstructive and cosmetic procedures, and the linking of plastic surgery with other medical treatments, have added to the legitimacy of an emerging "aesthetic medicine." As cosmetic surgeries become linked to other medical procedures with perceived greater medical necessity, health and aesthetics become entangled. ⋯ Drawing on ethnographic work on plastic surgery, as well as other studies of obstetrics and cosmetic surgery, I illustrate this entanglement of health and aesthetics within the field of women's reproductive health care in Brazil. I argue that while it would be difficult to wholly disentangle aesthetics and health, analysis of how risk-benefit calculations are made in clinical practice offers a useful critical strategy for illuminating ethical problems posed by aesthetic medicine.
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This article examines the trope of reproduction in narratives of Tibetan refugees living in Dharamsala, India. As they make sense of their personal histories, Tibetan refugees invoke a collective story that mirrors human rights literature on Tibet. Women come into contact with this literature through its incorporation into a political discourse expressed by the exile government and health institutions. ⋯ Political discourse on reproduction articulates pronatalism as a solution to the refugee community's concern with survival, and the discourse frames modernity as a site of violence through China's reproductive regulations. And yet, Tibetan refugees also employ the notion of modernity when discussing their own free reproductive decision-making, positioning modern reproductive interventions in opposition to Indian society. The article demonstrates that Tibetan refugees navigate competing figurations of modernity by expressing political resistance and affiliation through the idiom of reproduction.