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, 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.
['Pop|Cristina A|CA|']
D000293:Adolescent D000328:Adult D060432:Anthropology, Medical D001942:Breast Feeding D002648:Child D005260:Female D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice D006801:Humans D008875:Middle Aged D053918:Papillomavirus Vaccines D010290:Parents D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care D012383:Romania D035502:Trust D000072758:Vaccination Refusal D055815:Young Adult
purity corruption HPV vaccination Romania post-socialism