CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIAL SYSTEMS
SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY
cordially invites you to the
THURSDAY COLLOQUIUM
on
19th October 2023 at SSS II,
ROOM NO. 013; 3:00 pm - 5: 00 pm
Placental Afterlives: Shifting Notions of Waste and Value in Midwifery
Practice in Early Modern Europe
by
Dr Sinjini Mukherjee
Abstract: It is commonly believed that the placenta and umbilical cord gained significance for the first time within medical discourse in the 1980s, since they contain blood-forming stem cells. In this talk, I will discuss how birthing “by-products”, namely, the placenta and cord blood, have long histories of shifting relations between bodily “waste” and value.” Based on a critical reading of germinal medical manuals on midwifery circulating in early modern Europe between sixteenth and eighteenth century, it demonstrates that the placenta and umbilical cord transitioned from “value” to “waste”, much like they turned from “waste” to “gold” in late twentieth century biomedical discourse of the Global North. This talk will map these epistemological and practical shifts, to propose that the relationship between waste and value at the site of birthing, can only be understood by attending to the common scholarly distinction between ritual and therapy.
Dr Sinjini Mukherjee is an anthropologist with over 10 years of experience in ethnographic research, predominantly on themes of new medical technologies, health and disease, in diverse sites spread across India (Delhi, Bihar, Assam, West Bengal), and overseas (Germany, US). She is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at FLAME University, Pune, India. Prior to joining FLAME University, she held a postdoctoral fellowship (2019 – 2020) at the Rutgers Centre for Historical Analysis (RCHA), Rutgers University, USA. She received her doctoral degree in Sociocultural Anthropology from the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany, and her research was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). She completed her MA and MPhil degrees from CSSS, JNU.
While Dr Mukherjee’s thesis for the PhD was on living donor kidney transplants in India, she is presently working on the long history of practices around umbilical cord blood and the management of the third stage of labour, which reaches its fruition in the phenomenon of cord blood banking. Her research interests largely pertain to the relationship between local moral cosmologies, gendered perceptions of the human body, medical technologies and practice, and questions of access and equity of healthcare delivery systems.
