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In this article I discuss how anthropological investigations of potentiality can be enriched through a focus on time. The ethnographic basis of my inquiry is research conducted in Hanoi, Vietnam, on the use of sonographic imaging. Drawing on this fieldwork, I pursue two main agendas. The first is ethnographic: I explore how the potentiality of children-to-be was represented by people in Hanoi—by pregnant women, by health-care providers, and by population policy makers—showing how social attention concentrated particularly on the unwanted potential of pregnancies. People's fears that pregnancies might end in disastrous ways were, I show, closely related to Vietnam's history of war. The terror of the Second Indochina War lay not only in past atrocities or in present-day memories and bodily injuries but also in the future that childbearing women lived in relation to. The war was not only behind but also ahead of people. The second agenda I pursue is analytical. On the basis of my ethnographic material from Vietnam, and drawing on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, I discuss the possible analytical gains of placing "potentiality-for-Being" at the center of anthropological studies. With Heidegger, we may understand human existence as structured through an orientation to the future; seen through this lens, possibility is that through which we realize the givenness of our worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the roles played by parents living in Hanoi, Vietnam, in shaping the subjectivities of children who are categorized as physically or intellectually impaired. In an effort to comprehend disability in terms of an active and embodied engagement with the world, I employ a phenomenologically inspired ‘intercorporeal’ perspective as a conceptual alternative to ‘medical’ and ‘social’ models of disability. Through this approach I show how, in northern Vietnam, disability in children brings into question the moral integrity of their parents and how this compels parents to define their children's subjectivities in ways that diminish their personhood. The analysis identifies Buddhist notions of karma, everyday ethics of reciprocity, and party-state discourses of productivity as particularly important forces structuring such social responses to human impairment. Résumé L’article explore le rôle joué par des parents vivants à Hanoï, au Vietnam, dans la formation de la subjectivité d’enfants considérés comme handicapés physiques ou mentaux. En s’efforçant d’appréhender le handicap en termes d’engagement actif et incarné dans le monde, l’auteure adopte un point de vue « intercorporel », d’inspiration phénoménologique, pouvant constituer une alternative conceptuelle aux modèles « médicaux » et « sociaux » du handicap. Par cette approche, elle montre comment, dans le Nord du Vietnam, le handicap des enfants remet en question l’intégrité morale de leurs parents, et comment il oblige ceux-ci à définir la subjectivité de leurs enfants d’une manière qui diminue leur valeur en tant que personne. L’analyse identifie les notions bouddhistes de karma, l’éthique quotidienne de la réciprocité et les discours relatifs à la productivité tenus par l’État-parti comme des forces particulièrement importantes à l’œuvre dans la structuration de ces réponses sociales au handicap humain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the world, routine pregnancy care is expanding to include ultrasound imaging and other prenatal diagnostic technologies. Yet, despite their global proliferation, hardly any anthropological research has examined how such technologies are employed outside Euro-America. In this article, I investigate how pregnant women in Vietnam's capital, Hanoi, handle the hard choices that ultrasonographies confront them with when a fetal anomaly is detected and a decision must be made to either maintain or terminate the pregnancy. Whereas research conducted in North America, in consonance with the emphasis on individualism in advanced liberal societies, frames prenatal diagnosis in terms of individual "moral pioneering," I show how Vietnamese women turn the choices they have to make into issues of collectivity, kinship, social belonging, and shared responsibility. The general argument advanced is that a comprehensive understanding of individual reproductive actions and intentions necessarily involves close consideration of local configurations of power, subjectivity, and citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]