Download or read book Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge written by Robbie E. Davis-Floyd and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This benchmark collection of cross-cultural essays on reproduction and childbirth extends and enriches the work of Brigitte Jordan, who helped generate and define the field of the anthropology of birth. The authors' focus on authoritative knowledge—the knowledge that counts, on the basis of which decisions are made and actions taken—highlights the vast differences between birthing systems that give authority of knowing to women and their communities and those that invest it in experts and machines. Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge offers first-hand ethnographic research conducted by anthropologists in sixteen different societies and cultures and includes the interdisciplinary perspectives of a social psychologist, a sociologist, an epidemiologist, a staff member of the World Health Organization, and a community midwife. Exciting directions for further research as well as pressing needs for policy guidance emerge from these illuminating explorations of authoritative knowledge about birth. This book is certain to follow Jordan's Birth in Four Cultures as the definitive volume in a rapidly expanding field. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1999. This benchmark collection of cross-cultural essays on reproduction and childbirth extends and enriches the work of Brigitte Jordan, who helped generate and define the field of the anthropology of birth. The authors' focus on authoritative knowledge—the kn
Download or read book Birth in Eight Cultures written by Robbie Davis-Floyd and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2019-01-10 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This stunning sequel to Brigitte Jordan’s landmark Birth in Four Cultures brings together the work of fifteen reproductive anthropologists to address core cultural values and knowledge systems as revealed in contemporary birth practices in Brazil, Greece, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Tanzania, and the United States. Six ethnographic chapters form the heart of the book, three of which are set up as dyads that compare two countries; each demonstrates the power of anthropology’s cross-cultural comparative method. An additional chapter with ethnographic vignettes gives readers a feel for what fieldwork is really like on the ground. The eminently readable, theoretically rich chapters are enhanced by absorbing stories, photos, quotes, thought questions, and film suggestions that nudge the reader toward eureka flashes of understanding and render the book suitable for undergraduate and graduate audiences alike.
Download or read book Birth as an American Rite of Passage written by Robbie E. Davis-Floyd and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-03-15 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do so many American women allow themselves to become enmeshed in the standardized routines of technocratic childbirth--routines that can be insensitive, unnecessary, and even unhealthy? Anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd first addressed these questions in the 1992 edition. Her new preface to this 2003 edition of a book that has been read, applauded, and loved by women all over the world, makes it clear that the issues surrounding childbirth remain as controversial as ever.
Download or read book Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France written by Lianne McTavish and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the early modern period in France, surgeon men-midwives were predominantly associated with sexual impropriety and physical danger; yet over time they managed to change their image, and by the eighteenth century were summoned to attend even the uncomplicated deliveries of wealthy, urban clients. In this study, Lianne McTavish explores how surgeons strove to transform the perception of their midwifery practices, claiming to be experts who embodied obstetrical authority instead of intruders in a traditionally feminine domain. McTavish argues that early modern French obstetrical treatises were sites of display participating in both the production and contestation of authoritative knowledge of childbirth. Though primarily written by surgeon men-midwives, the texts were also produced by female midwives and male physicians. McTavish's careful examination of these and other sources reveals representations of male and female midwives as unstable and divergent, undermining characterizations of the practice of childbirth in early modern Europe as a gender war which men ultimately won. She discovers that male practitioners did not always disdain maternal values. In fact, the men regularly identified themselves with qualities traditionally respected in female midwives, including a bodily experience of childbirth. Her findings suggest that men's entry into the lying-in chamber was a complex negotiation involving their adaptation to the demands of women. One of the great strengths of this study is its investigation of the visual culture of childbirth. McTavish emphasizes how authority in the birthing room was made visible to others in facial expressions, gestures, and bodily display. For the first time here, the vivid images in the treatises are analysed, including author portraits and engravings of unborn figures. McTavish reveals how these images contributed to arguments about obstetrical authority instead of merely illustrating the written content of the books. At the same time, her arguments move far beyond the lying-in chamber, shedding light on the exchange of visual information in early modern France, a period when identity was largely determined by the precarious act of putting oneself on display.
Download or read book Ways of Knowing about Birth written by Robbie Davis-Floyd and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2017-10-11 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is no other living scholar with Davis-Floyd’s solid roots, activism, and scholarly achievements on the combined subjects of childbirth, midwifery, obstetrics, and medicine. Ways of Knowing about Birth brings together an astounding array of her most popular and essential works, all updated for this volume, spanning over three decades of research and writing from the perspectives of cultural, medical, and symbolic anthropology. The 16 essays capture Robbie Davis-Floyd’s unique voice, which brims with wisdom, compassion, and deep understanding. Intentionally cast as stand-alone pieces, the chapters offer the ultimate in classroom flexibility and include discussion questions and recommended films.
Download or read book Gentle Birth Gentle Mothering written by Sarah Buckley and published by Celestial Arts. This book was released on 2013-02-20 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative guide to natural childbirth and postpartum parenting options from an MD who home-birthed her own four children. Sarah Buckley might be called a third-wave natural birth advocate. A doctor and a mother, she approaches the question of how a woman and baby might have the most fulfilling birth experience with respect for the wisdom of both medical science and the human body. Using current medical and epidemiological research plus women's experiences (including her own), she demonstrates that what she calls "undisturbed birth" is almost always healthier and safer than high-technology approaches to birth. Her wise counsel on issues like breastfeeding and sleeping during postpartum helps extend the gentle birth experience into a gentle parenting relationship.
Download or read book Birth in Four Cultures written by Brigitte Jordan and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Midwives and Mothers written by Sheila Cosminsky and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The World Health Organization is currently promoting a policy of replacing traditional or lay midwives in countries around the world. As part of an effort to record the knowledge of local midwives before it is lost, Midwives and Mothers explores birth, illness, death, and survival on a Guatemalan sugar and coffee plantation, or finca, through the lives of two local midwives, Do�a Maria and her daughter Do�a Siriaca, and the women they have served over a forty-year period. By comparing the practices and beliefs of the mother and daughter, Sheila Cosminsky shows the dynamics of the medicalization process and the contestation between the midwives and biomedical personnel, as the latter try to impose their system as the authoritative one. She discusses how the midwives syncretize, integrate, or reject elements from Mayan, Spanish, and biomedical systems. The midwives' story becomes a lens for understanding the impact of medicalization on people's lives and the ways in which women's bodies have become contested terrain between traditional and contemporary medical practices. Cosminsky also makes recommendations for how ethno-obstetric and biomedical systems may be accommodated, articulated, or integrated. Finally, she places the changes in the birthing system in the larger context of changes in the plantation system, including the elimination of coffee growing, which has made women, traditionally the primary harvesters of coffee beans, more economically dependent on men.
Download or read book Childbirth Midwifery and Concepts of Time written by Christine McCourt and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All cultures are concerned with the business of childbirth, so much so that it can never be described as a purely physiological or even psychological event. This volume draws together work from a range of anthropologists and midwives who have found anthropological approaches useful in their work. Using case studies from a variety of cultural settings, the writers explore the centrality of the way time is conceptualized, marked and measured to the ways of perceiving and managing childbirth: how women, midwives and other birth attendants are affected by issues of power and control, but also actively attempt to change established forms of thinking and practice. The stories are engaging as well as critical and invite the reader to think afresh about time, and about reproduction.
Download or read book Birth Models That Work written by Robbie Davis-Floyd and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009-03-07 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is a major contribution to the global struggle for control of women's bodies and their giving birth and should be read by all obstetricians, midwives, obstetric nurses, pregnant women and anyone else with interest in maternity care. It documents the worldwide success of programs for pregnancy and birth which honor the women and put them in control of their own reproductive lives."—Marsden Wagner, MD, author of Born In The USA: How a Broken Maternity System Must Be Fixed to Put Women and Children First
Download or read book Natural Birth written by Kristina Turner and published by Floris Books. This book was released on 2014-05-09 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our society childbirth is often viewed as something to be feared and even to be avoided, through elective caesarian or extreme pain suppression. In this uplifting book Kristina Turner applies esoteric knowledge to show practical ways of transforming a difficult experience into a positive and deeply spiritual one. Kristina looks closely at the physical processes that take place in the body during pregnancy and childbirth, as well at explaining the facts behind hospital procedures and options for home birth -- providing readers with the necessary knowledge to make their own choices. She feels that birthing should be viewed as a unified process, from the nine months of pregnancy through labour to the many months of breastfeeding; all three stages contribute to developing the bond between mother and child and the child's emotional function. Kristina writes beautifully about the sacred mystery inherent in conception and pregnancy, and guides the new mother towards being a conscious participant in the spiritual process of bringing life into this world. This book is both very practical and hugely inspiring.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology written by Carol R. Ember and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2003-12-31 with total page 1103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medical practitioners and the ordinary citizen are becoming more aware that we need to understand cultural variation in medical belief and practice. The more we know how health and disease are managed in different cultures, the more we can recognize what is "culture bound" in our own medical belief and practice. The Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology is unique because it is the first reference work to describe the cultural practices relevant to health in the world's cultures and to provide an overview of important topics in medical anthropology. No other single reference work comes close to marching the depth and breadth of information on the varying cultural background of health and illness around the world. More than 100 experts - anthropologists and other social scientists - have contributed their firsthand experience of medical cultures from around the world.
Download or read book Birthing Techno Sapiens written by Robbie Davis-Floyd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-31 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ground-breaking book challenges us to re-think ourselves as techno-sapiens—a new species we are creating as we continually co-evolve ourselves with our technologies. While some of its chapters are imaginary, they are all empirically grounded in ethnography and richly theorized from diverse disciplines. The authors go far beyond a techno-optimism vs. techno-pessimism stance, stretching our thinking about birthing techno-sapiens to consider not only how our cyborgian reproductive lives are constrained and/or enabled by technology but are also about emotions and spirit. The world of reproductive health care and particularly that of genetic engineering is developing exponentially, and current challenges are vastly different from those of a decade ago. The book is provocative, intended to generate debate, ideas, and future research and to influence ethical policy and practice in human techno-reproduction. It will be of interest across the social sciences and humanities, for reproductive scholars, bioethicists, techno-scientists, and those involved in the development and delivery of maternity services.
Download or read book Birthing Outside the System written by Hannah Dahlen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-17 with total page 621 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates why women choose ‘birth outside the system’ and makes connections between women’s right to choose where they birth and violations of human rights within maternity care systems. Choosing to birth at home can force women out of mainstream maternity care, despite research supporting the safety of this option for low-risk women attended by midwives. When homebirth is not supported as a birthplace option, women will defy mainstream medical advice, and if a midwife is not available, choose either an unregulated careprovider or birth without assistance. This book examines the circumstances and drivers behind why women nevertheless choose homebirth by bringing legal and ethical perspectives together with the latest research on high-risk homebirth (breech and twin births), freebirth, birth with unregulated careproviders and the oppression of midwives who support unorthodox choices. Stories from women who have pursued alternatives in Australia, Europe, Russia, the UK, the US, Canada, the Middle East and India are woven through the research. Insight and practical strategies are shared by doctors, midwives, lawyers, anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists on how to manage the tension between professional obligations and women’s right to bodily autonomy. This book, the first of its kind, is an important contribution to considerations of place of birth and human rights in childbirth.
Download or read book Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge written by Robbie Davis-Floyd and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Childbirth Across Cultures written by Helaine Selin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will explore the childbirth process through globally diverse perspectives in order to offer a broader context with which to think about birth. We will address multiple rituals and management models surrounding the labor and birth process from communities across the globe. Labor and birth are biocultural events that are managed in countless ways. We are particularly interested in the notion of power. Who controls the pregnancy and the birth? Is it the hospital, the doctor, or the in-laws, and in which cultures does the mother have the control? These decisions, regarding place of birth, position, who receives the baby and even how the mother may or may not behave during the actual delivery, are all part of the different ways that birth is conducted. One chapter of the book will be devoted to midwives and other birth attendants. There will also be chapters on the Evolution of Birth, on Women’s Birth Narratives, and on Child Spacing and Breastfeeding. This book will bring together global research conducted by professional anthropologists, midwives and doctors who work closely with the individuals from the cultures they are writing about, offering a unique perspective direct from the cultural group.
Download or read book The Business of Birth written by Louise Marie Roth and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the fear of malpractice affects mothers and reproductive choices Giving birth is a monumental event, not only in the personal life of the woman giving birth, but as a medical process and procedure. In The Business of Birth, Louise Marie Roth explores the process of giving birth, and the ways in which medicine and law interact to shape maternity care. Focusing on the United States, Roth explores how the law creates an environment where medical providers, malpractice attorneys, and others limit women’s rights and choices during birth. She shows how a fear of liability risk often drives the decision-making process of medical providers, who prioritize hospital efficiency over patient safety, to the detriment of mothers themselves. Ultimately, Roth advocates for an approach that protects the reproductive rights of mothers. A comprehensive overview, The Business of Birth provides valuable insight into the impact of the law on mothers, medical providers, maternity care practices, and others in the United States.
