Locating Purity within Corruption Rumors: Narratives of HPV Vaccination Refusal in a Peri-urban Community of Southern Romania

This article locates the symbolic construction of “corrupted purity”—as a key assertion in Romanian parents’ HPV vaccination refusal narratives—within a multiplicity of entangled rumors concerning reproduction and the state. Romania's unsuccessful HPV vaccination campaign is not unique. However...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Medical anthropology quarterly 2016-12, Vol.30 (4), p.563-581
Main Author: Pop, Cristina A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Anthropology, Medical
Breast Feeding - ethnology
Child
Consumption
Corruption
Female
Gossip
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice - ethnology
Health services
HPV vaccination
Human papillomavirus
Humans
Immunization
Medical anthropology
Medicine
Middle Aged
Narratives
Papillomavirus Vaccines
Parents
Parents & parenting
Patient Acceptance of Health Care - ethnology
post-socialism
Postcommunist societies
purity
Romania
Romania - ethnology
Rumors
Rumours
Sexual behavior
Sexual behaviour
Sexual reproduction
Socialism
Trust
Urban areas
Vaccination
Vaccination Refusal - ethnology
Young Adult
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Summary:This article locates the symbolic construction of “corrupted purity”—as a key assertion in Romanian parents’ HPV vaccination refusal narratives—within a multiplicity of entangled rumors concerning reproduction and the state. Romania's unsuccessful HPV vaccination campaign is not unique. However, the shifting discourses around purity and corruption—through which some parents conveyed anxieties about their daughters being targeted for the vaccine—place a particular twist on the Romanian case of resisting the HPV vaccination. Parental discourses took the form of clusters of rumors about state medicine's failure to provide adequate reproductive health care, additive‐laden foods, and exposure to radioactive contamination. In these rumors, corruption becomes literally embodied, through ingestion, consumption, contact, or inoculation. Parental discourses about what is being injected into their daughters’ pristine bodies express their uncertainty around navigating the unsettled post‐socialist medical landscape.
ISSN:0745-5194
1548-1387
DOI:10.1111/maq.12290