Abstract
This paper explores how criticism surrounding the ethics and safety of biomedical technologies circulates and ‘converts’ through global–local religious encounters, producing new claims of moral opposition and rights to religious freedom. The paper is concerned with the question of what rhetorical devices make vaccine safety doubt relevant to religiously Orthodox settings and what implications arise? Based on an ethnographic study of vaccine decision-making and non-vaccination advocacy in Jerusalem, the paper examines how opposition is forged amidst evolving global–local encounters and relations. The data reveal how Christian activists attempt to engender ethical and moral opposition to vaccination among American Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem by ‘converting’ public criticism around safety into a religious discourse of bodily governance. Pinpointing how critiques of biomedical technologies discursively ‘convert’ offers a conceptual template in anthropology to chart how counter-positions are formed and transformed amidst evolving tensions between biomedical and religious cosmologies.
Highlights
This paper explores how criticism surrounding the ethics and safety of biomedical technologies circulates and ‘converts’ through global–local religious encounters, producing new claims of moral opposition and rights to religious freedom
The paper is concerned with the question of what rhetorical devices make vaccine safety doubt relevant to religiously Orthodox settings and what implications arise? Based on an ethnographic study of vaccine decision-making and non-vaccination advocacy in Jerusalem, the paper examines how opposition is forged amidst evolving global–local encounters and relations
My ethnography demonstrates how the non-vaccination stance of Jewish parents in Jerusalem reflected a concern with safe decision-making, but at the same time, an active engagement with globalized non-vaccination advocacy
Summary
This paper explores how criticism surrounding the ethics and safety of biomedical technologies circulates and ‘converts’ through global–local religious encounters, producing new claims of moral opposition and rights to religious freedom. Common to the parents I met is that they ‘‘returned’’ to Orthodox Judaism and made conscious decisions to live according to varying and heightened standards of Jewish law (ba’alei tshuvah) They are situated in a ‘cultural borderland’ (Benor 2012) that enables an integration of navigation skills— especially regarding the non-Orthodox world and their practice of Judaism. This means that ba’alei tshuvah are well placed to situate common vaccination concerns in the ‘local moral world’ of religious Orthodoxy, and their positionality sheds a unique light on circulation and conversion of non-vaccination advocacy. Their position was that ‘A significant factor contributing to the outbreaks this year has been misinformation [...] Some organizations are deliberately targeting these communities with inaccurate and misleading information about vaccines.’ In what follows I explore how non-vaccination advocacy becomes assimilated in Orthodox and Haredi Jews through processes of discursive transformation or religious ‘conversion.’
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.