Resisting Mandatory Vaccination: the Formation of the "Informed Parent" in the Czech Republic

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11240%2F17%3A10360549" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11240/17:10360549 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Resisting Mandatory Vaccination: the Formation of the "Informed Parent" in the Czech Republic

Original language description

Czech Republic belongs among countries with rigid mandatory vaccination system regulated by the state. To let children vaccinate is considered as an unquestionable norm supported by formal sanctions for those who would not take part in such practice. This paper focuses on parents who challenge such norm with their decision to refuse their child&apos;s immunization. Twenty-two parents whose children were not vaccinated were interviewed and several participant observations were conducted at public lectures concerning immunization and on meetings of parent who actively take part in the debates against compulsory vaccination. Firstly, the paper examines how the parents&apos; attitudes to health, body and biomedicine become integrated into their attitudes toward vaccination. It uses the concept of biological citizenship to analyze how the attitudes toward biomedicine and vaccination serve as a foundation for the formation of new biosocialities. It shows how the debates concerning vaccination give rise to subjectivities of parents who claim specific rights based on shared definitions of risk, stances towards biomedicine and notions of individual responsibility towards one&apos;s own health. Those parents consciously and systematically construct their own credibility as &quot;informed parents&quot; that is used as key resource while legitimizing their decision. Secondly, the paper focuses on the conditions of emergence and existence of anti-vaccination movement in the Czech society. It maps how the collective identity of parents becomes articulated through the attitudes toward biomedicine and vaccination. The paper explores the ways in which parental attitudes towards vaccination facilitates emergence of novel forms of collectivities that allow for generating new and alternative forms of knowledge and resistance against the dominant biomedical knowledge.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

C - Chapter in a specialist book

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50401 - Sociology

Project

<a href="/en/project/GA13-18411S" target="_blank" >GA13-18411S: Biological citizenship: forms of governance and resistance to biomedical knowledge in the Czech Republic</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2017

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Book/collection name

Rebellious Parents. Parental Movements in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia

ISBN

978-0-253-02626-2

Number of pages of the result

25

Pages from-to

223-247

Number of pages of the book

364

Publisher name

Indiana University Press

Place of publication

Bloomington

UT code for WoS chapter

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