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Paper short abstract:

In grappling with contemporary anthropological discussions of value, this paper explores the varieties of temporal experience and the moral dilemmas characteristic of unplanned pregnancy in Manila, the Philippines.

Paper long abstract:

For young, unmarried Manileñan women, the cessation of menstruation is often the earliest indication of pregnancy. This disruption of regular bodily temporality sparks a moral crisis characterised by shame, ambiguity, joy, and uncertainty. By examining womens' narrative accounts of this continually unfolding temporal drama, this paper engages with Michael Lambek's (2013) sketch of an anthropological theory of value which proposes action (doing) and production (making) as two modes of the human generation of value. Not so much as a provocation but rather as a further probing of this theory, I suggest that the generation of human life, that which is of ultimate value in the Manileñan lifeworld, does not necessarily fall neatly into either category. I demonstrate this by exploring women's descriptions of bodily temporal experience, with reference to various phenomenological accounts of pregnancy, but primarily Iris Marion Young's (1990) treatise on pregnant embodiment. The main thrust of this argument lies in the assertion that pregnancy is in part characterised by a split temporality; women are caught in what Young calls "a dialectic of waiting and doing". Here, pregnancy is an ambiguous affair, something the woman is doing, and which is simultaneously happening to her. I will attempt to show this through ethnographic descriptions of my interlocutors' coming to terms with and embracing their pregnancies, moving out of the crisis of values which defined their early pregnancy.