Emily Martin (anthropologist)
Emily Martin is a sinologist, anthropologist, and feminist. Currently, she is a professor of socio-cultural anthropology at New York University. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and her PhD degree from Cornell University in 1971. Before 1984, she published works under the name of Emily Martin Ahern.
Career
After earning a Ph.D. in anthropology, Martin was on the faculty of the University of California, Irvine and Yale University. In 1974, she joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University and held the position of Mary Elizabeth Garrett Professor of Arts and Sciences between 1981 and 1994. She was a professor at Princeton University from 1994 to 2001 before accepting a position as professor at New York University. In 2019, she was awarded the prestigious Vega Medal by the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography in recognition of her signal contributions to anthropology. In the same year she was also awarded the J.D. Bernal Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science.Sinology
Martin's work on sinology focused on topics both in Mainland China and Taiwan. These topics included Chinese religion and rituals, architecture, politics, traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese women's culture, Chinese rural culture, and Chinese lineages and genealogies.Anthropology of science and feminism
Martin focuses the anthropology of science and analyzes science and reproduction from a feminist perspective. From this perspective, Martin argues that current scientific literature is gender-biased, and that such bias has become entrenched in our language. According to Martin, scientific explanations such as “the sperm forcefully penetrates the egg” are presented in a sexist way, to the disadvantage of women.Martin began researching the analogies used in science education starting in 1982. Pregnant with her second child, Martin noticed a pattern in her expecting parents' class how the woman's body and its parts were described and referred to "as if these things weren't a part of us." Martin began with interviews with women regarding their perspective on female reproductive issues and compiled her research of interviews into a book called The Woman in the Body. Martin began to expand on her research by interviewing scientists and including the topic of male reproductive processes. All of these topics were encompassed under fertilization and elaborated on in Martin's article The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles.
Martin notes that the perception of menstruation is usually negative and misogynistic, and women often tend to think of menstruation as a failure, due to the release of an unfertilized egg and the woman's uterine tissues begin to “break down” or “slough off". Martin ascribes this perception to linguistic and cultural gender bias; words used to describe menstruation imply failure, dirtiness, structural breakdown and destruction, and wound. This perception of menstruation as a wound is reinforced by the fact that, during menstruation, the woman bleeds and may suffer from pain and discomfort. Martin contends that menstruation is a normal physiological function and process, which should be viewed as a success, for example, the success of the female body in avoiding pregnancy, and the success of the female body in ridding itself of potentially harmful material from the uterus. Such gender bias is also responsible for Western culture's tendency to “praise” males for the “amazing” ability to produce a huge amount of sperm, all the while sperm more is biologically inexpensive to produce compared to the egg, and sperm suffer an extremely high mortality in the female reproductive tract.
Another example of Martin's feminist analysis of reproduction involves the egg and sperm. The egg, in Martin's view, reinforces our culture's view of passive “damsel in distress” image, while the active sperm races to the egg to penetrate her. The truth is, the egg is not so easy to penetrate as commonly believed. One sperm is not powerful enough to penetrate an egg - the egg's barrier can only be weakened by the collective efforts of a number of sperm.
Martin suggests alternative descriptions of fertilization that give the egg a less passive role. She notes that research at the Johns Hopkins University has shown that the sperm does not have a powerful thrust, and fertilization occurs because the egg traps the sperm.
Furthermore, she notes that work by Paul Wassarman singled out a particular molecule on the egg coat which binds the sperm. This molecule was called a 'sperm receptor' which has passive connations, whereas the corresponding molecule on the sperm is the 'egg binding protein'.
"Usually in biological research, the protein member of the pair of binding molecules is called the receptor, and physically it has a pocket in it rather like a lock. As the diagrams that illustrate Wassarman's article show, the molecules on the sperm are proteins and have "pockets." The small, mobile molecules that fit into these pockets are called ligands. As shown in the diagrams, ZP3 on the egg is a polymer of "keys"; many small knobs stick out. Typically, molecules on the sperm would be called receptors and molecules on the egg would be called ligands. But Wassarman chose to name ZP3 on the egg the receptor and to create a new term, "the egg-binding protein," for the molecule on the sperm that otherwise would have been called the receptor."
Martin sees this as one of many example of sexist language entrenched in the imagery of reproduction, and resents the constant role of sperm as aggressor despite research which points otherwises.
Martin's analysis yields four main lessons: 1. We think we know a lot because of science in this age, but the truth is, the way we interpret science is sexist and it actually makes us ignorant. 2. Such gender bias reinforces gender inequality and continues to keep our traditional misogyny alive. 3. We have to realize our mistakes and strive to achieve a new understanding with total fairness. 4. We must ensure we will not pass the mistakes to the future generations, since they are really harmful for human understanding as well as gender relations.
Bipolar disorder
Martin drew on her own experience with bipolar disorder to write Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture. In it, she argues that mania and depression have a cultural life outside the confines of psychiatry and that the extravagances of mood which might be dubbed 'irrational' are also present in the most 'rational' side of American lifePublications
The Woman in the Body
Martin wrote the book The Woman in the Body, which won the first Eileen Basker Memorial Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology. The book was first published in 1987, and then re-published with a new introduction in 2001 by Beacon Press. In this book Martin examines how American culture sees the process of reproduction. Emily Martin uses fieldwork to structure her arguments throughout this book. One key focus is the metaphor of economy that she analyzes in depth. She does this in order to show her readers that the social structure of the world she is examining is dependent on this metaphor in order to function efficiently.Reviewing the book in American Anthropologist, Linda C. Garrow wrote "Overall, the book is strongest when it remains close to women's statements... Martin draws strong conclusions about the amount of resistance expressed by women that are not supported by the data... However, the insights, hypotheses, and challenges... will undoubtedly stimulate much research and make the book essential reading across a number of areas in medical anthropology." In Isis, Anja Hiddinga called it "daring, well argued, and thoroughly supported by a wide range of references."
Labor
The most notable element that she produced in this book is the idea of seeing the woman as a machine that is there to create a product. Martin explains how the women's body is used over and over again in order to produce a child. Martin explains that this metaphor of labor dehumanizes the experience. The women is not taken into account for as a human being but her uterus is only seen as a tool that allows doctors to get closer to producing a new product.“Uteruses produce ‘efficient or inefficient contractions’, good or poor labor by the amount of ‘progress made in certain periods of time.’”
The women being there only for mechanical reasons creates a dichotomy that connects women to their bodies, while men are more connected with their head. Men are delivering these babies and are thus in control of the situation.
This metaphor of labor is also reproduced in hospitals by making it an economical situation. The idea of scheduling appointments to have a baby is an attempt to have this experience done in the fastest manner so that it is convenient for the doctor, as well as the company as a whole. In attempt to be as efficient as possible, hospitals’ focus is not on the experience of the woman in labor but creating a predictable experience that gets a woman out in ample amount of time and to continue to work as a machine and produce the product.