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In Greece repetitive and intensive fetal scanning is now a universal feature of prenatal care. This article examines some of the ways in which pregnant women and obstetricians experience the intensive use of fetal ultrasound in a small city in eastern Greece. Based on observations and interviews conducted in a public hospital, it is argued that fetal imaging plays a privileged role in the production of authoritative knowledge around pregnancy for both doctors and women. The authority of the technology rests primarily on its ability to create a straightforward sense of reality and visual pleasure. These qualities lead women to actively demand fetal scanning, which helps them to feel the reality of their pregnancies, reassures them of fetal health, and provides a pleasurable sense of contact with, and knowledge about, the fetus. Doctors freely offer multiple scans to attract women to the public hospital, to practice "modern" obstetrics, and to negotiate among themselves for control over the management of pregnant women.

A positive relationship between psychosocial stress and central body fat distribution has been hypothesized. To test this hypothesis, two indices derived from principal components analysis of four skinfold measurements were studied in relation to imputed job stress characteristics (decision latitude, skill discretion, decision authority, and psychological demands) in Mexican-American men of the U.S. Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (HHANES). The two indices were fatness and central body fat distribution. Fatness was not significantly associated with any of the job stress characteristics before controlling for education. Once education was included in the equations, however, the relationship between fatness and two of the four job stress variables (decision authority and psychological demands) became statistically significant. Thus, for a given level of education, increasing job stress was associated with increasing fatness. Three of the four job stress characteristics were significantly associated with central body fat distribution before controlling for education. However, after education was entered into the regression equations as a proxy for social class, the relationships between central body fat distribution and the job stress variables were no longer significant. It thus appears that aspects of social class other than job stress are of equal or greater importance in predicting body fat distribution. © 1992 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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he disclosure of deeply personal topics as a therapeutic technique is T an entrenched and long-standing feature of Western culture. Crossculturally, as well, confession-as-therapy is found in a widely diverse array of societies. However, in other cultures, confession is absent-and even actively discouraged-on the premise that the disclosure of intimate thoughts and feelings would compromise health and well-being.In a number of essays, Pennebaker and his colleagues have demonstrated the health benefits of confession for middle class Americans (see, e.g., Pennebaker, 1993). Beyond the objective manifestation of these benefits, such as reduced number of doctors visits and enhanced immune function, Pennebaker's subjects themselves consistently described the practice of disclosure, even when it occurs under experimental conditions, as highly meaningful and valuable to them. In this chapter, I examine the meanings attached to confession in cultures that rely on the practice to effect healing, as well as in those that explicitly proscribe it in order to maintain health. In addition, I briefly sketch the long pedigree of confessionas-therapy in the Western tradition. My objectives are, first, to add (albeit in a brief and programmatic way) an ethnographic dimension to the study