The rhetoric of belief and identity making in the experience of infertility

Abstract

Based on the research about infertility experiences of women and demand for in vitro fertilisation treatment in Turkey, this paper discusses how the rhetorical strategies employed by childless women bring meaning to their infertility experience as well as help them attain adult gender identity. It also briefly touches on men's experiences of infertility. The author argues that the prevalent references to the almightiness of God do not indicate religious beliefs alone. Through the instrumental use of religious discourse, these references can be considered the rhetoric of religious belief.

Keywords:

• rhetoric
• God's will
• infertility
• masculinity
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all those who helped me in my research in Turkey. An early version of this paper was presented at the Study Day Belief and Identity in Late Modernity: Transcending Disciplinary Boundaries, held at the University of Sussex, Brighton on 8 November 2008. I am grateful to the organisers of the Study Day, Abby Day and Simon Coleman, for giving me the opportunity to present and to publish this paper. I benefited from the discussions at the Study Day as well as from the comments of Irene Peano and Evren Göknar on an early draft. I am grateful to Morgan Clarke and my supervisor Marilyn Strathern for their invaluable guidance on early versions of the paper. Needless to say, I take full responsibility for all the failings in the paper.

Notes

 1. Kuper (1994) is concerned about the trends in ethnography such as ‘natives should study natives’. Sangren (1988) criticises postmodernist ethnographic writing for reproducing Western individualism in their efforts for reflexivity.

 2. Carrithers (2005), drawing on a similar observation, appeals to anthropologists to adopt a rhetorical perspective on culture.

 3. Naming is used as a way to know the Gods, to make contact with them and to influence them. A similar tradition is found in Islam as well: 99 names of God, which are collectively called Esmaul Husna, help learn the attributes of God. In the villages Dere and Tepe, women believed in the power of reciting these names, a tradition that exists in other parts of the Muslim world as well.

 4. An example of the successful use of religious rhetoric by conservative political parties is currently taking place in Turkey. The governing political party (AKP) appeals to the masses by identifying with their morality and religion.

 5. The research was partly funded by the William Wyse Research Fund, Trinity College as well as a contribution by the Richards Fund. Both funding opportunities were made possible through the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

 6. The names of places and people are pseudonyms.

 7. Alevi is a minority sect of Islam in Turkey. Ali and 12 imams are central to Alevism similar to the Shi'a sect of Islam, but they do not have much else in common with the Shi'a.

 8. See Pfeffer (1987) and Franklin (1988, 1990) for a critique of the ‘desperateness’ image which permeates the Euro-American discourse regarding IVF. A similar debate on desperateness is not found in the Islamic discourses on IVF. With the increasing use of IVF along with public knowledge about it, infertility is seen more as an unfortunate but curable physical problem than a lifetime destiny. However, there is reference to the predicaments of infertility such as threat of divorce and polygamy as well as social stigma. See Inhorn (1994, 1996) on Egypt, for example. Alternately, Inhorn stresses the point that childless couples do not necessarily have such marital problems and they are usually bound by love and respect. These points hold true for most of the couples I interviewed during my research.

 9. This translation was taken from the Koran database on the website of The Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement, USC (Shakir). It was available at http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/quran/042.qmt.html

10. This translation for the Hadith was taken from Bano (2003, 128).

11. See Inhorn (1996, 83) for an account of the prevalent belief of this hadith (heaven lies under the feet of mothers) among the Muslims in Egypt.

12. See also Inhorn (1996, 80) for a similar account of the ways in which Muslim infertile women in Egypt perceive infertility as a test or punishment given by God.

13. Tevekkül is not a state of passive acceptance or fatalistic behaviour (Hamdy 2009). As Hamdy notes in her ethnographic analysis of terminally ill dialysis patients in Egypt, on the contrary, tevekkül entails ‘constant active and persistent work on the self’ ‘by acts of piety, such as ritual prayer, reflection, invocation of God or pilgrimage’ (Hamdy 2009, 176, 190). These aspects of tevekkül account for its perception as a test by Nurten.

14. Another version of this idiom is ‘in every misfortune, there is hayır’ (her şerde bi hayır vardır).

15. This conception of the world does not reflect all the people in my research. It was articulated more in the two villages. Nonetheless, it is not only confined to the people in my research. This is more aptly can be seen as the reflection of a canonical Islamic view which takes the next life more seriously. See also Delaney (1991) for similar views shared in the Turkish village where she did ethnography.

16. For example, ethnographies of IVF by Franklin (England, 1997), Thompson (USA, 2005), Bonaccorso (Italy, 2009) and an articulate monograph on IVF by Sandelowski (USA, 1994) do not touch on the subject. On the other hand, Kahn (2000)'s ethnographic account of IVF in Israel also is an elaborate example of how religion informs the assisted reproduction practices.

17. Cutting networks is a concept I borrow from Strathern (1996). She uses the term in the Euro-American and Melanesian contexts to explain how otherwise limitless networks such as kinship and technology are limited or ‘cut’ by belonging and ownership. I mime her idea of ‘cutting networks’ but reproduce it in a totally different context.

18. A similar tendency by women to shoulder the blame of infertility is presented by Inhorn (1994, 1996, 2002, 2003a, 2003b) for Egypt and by Abbasi-Shavazi et al. (2008) for Iran. Inhorn (2003b) considers shouldering of blame by women despite social stigma as a ‘patriarchal paradox’.

19. Havva and her husband were no longer able to conceive without assistance. They hoped to conceive a son via IVF despite the fact that gender selection is not allowed in Turkey.