Download or read book Childbirth in a Technocratic Age written by Elizabeth Soliday and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across time and place, pregnancy and childbirth rank among the most transformative physical and psychological events in women's lives. Women's childbearing experiences depend not only on their own biology and psyche but also on the nature and quality of care they receive. The nature of the prevailing obstetric care model in the early 21st-century United States has been described as "high-tech, low touch," highlighting its emphasis on using medical technology, as opposed to non-technological care and support, to control unproblematic physical processes on the argument that this approach improves maternal safety and comfort. However, it should be noted that reasonably reliable national data fail to show significant maternal or newborn health gains corresponding to recent, dramatic rises in hospital obstetric procedures such as labor induction, labor acceleration, and cesarean delivery. In this context where medical intervention, necessary or not, assumes an increasingly central role in the childbearing equation, questions of what mothers expect to happen in labor and delivery and how their subsequent birth experiences meet those expectations become paramount. Global numeric indicators cannot capture the quality of women's reactions to childbirth itself, particularly as maternal care shifts in response to consumer interests it presupposes, offering options for comfort, care, and even the possibility of foregoing the labor process altogether. This work reflects the critical need to document early 21st-century U.S. mothers' own words on what they expected to happen in childbirth and later, how labor and delivery went and how it met their expectations. Among this book's most important contributions is its inclusion of extensive interview material drawn from 75 diverse women who spoke freely on their childbirth expectations and subsequent experiences. By itself, the interview material lends an important, though at times unsettling, insider perspective on how labor and delivery can unfold. The narratives also provide a maternal view on how those charged with their care respond during this physically and emotionally demanding transition. In addition, the book provides a timely analysis of scientific data on contemporary maternal care procedures, making plain why so many refer to 21st-century mainstream obstetric care as "technocratic." The scientific data serve as an excellent backdrop for more extensive coverage of the maternal interviews, organized around the distinctions mothers made related to the childbirth pathway on which they anticipated traveling such as natural childbirth in a hospital, planned cesarean delivery, or planned vaginal birth after cesarean. The pathways are in turn discussed in terms of their relationship to an underlying technocratic, humanistic, or holistic maternal care philosophy. The book is targeted towards an academic readership, including scholars and medical professionals with interest in women's health, women's and maternal mental health, women's reproductive health, reproductive technology, medical humanities, medical anthropology, narrative studies, pregnancy, and childbirth.
Download or read book Childbirth in a Technocratic Age written by and published by Cambria Press. This book was released on with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 Birth as an American Rite of Passage written by Robbie Davis-Floyd and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-05-05 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic book, first published in 1992 and again in 2003, has inspired three generations of childbearing people, birth activists and researchers, and birth practitioners—midwives, doulas, nurses, and obstetricians—to take a fresh look at the "standard procedures" that are routinely used to "manage" American childbirth. It was the first book to identify these non-evidence-based obstetric interventions as rituals that enact and transmit the core values of the American technocracy, thereby answering the pressing question of why these interventions continue to be performed despite all evidence to the contrary. This third edition brings together Davis-Floyd's insights into the intense ritualization of labor and birth and the technocratic, humanistic, and holistic models of birth with new data collected in recent years.
Download or read book Chinese Village Life Today written by Gonçalo Santos and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2021-08-22 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China has undergone a remarkable process of urbanization, but a significant portion of its citizens still live in rural villages. To gain better access to jobs, health care, and consumer goods, villagers often travel or migrate to cities, and that cyclical transit and engagement with new technoscientific and medical practices is transforming village life. In this thoughtful ethnography, Gonçalo Santos paints a richly detailed portrait of one rural township in Guangdong Province, north of the industrialized Pearl River Delta region. Unlike previous studies of rural-urban relations and migration in China, Chinese Village Life Today—based on Santos’s more than twenty years of field research—starts from a rural community’s point of view rather than the perspective of major urban centers. Santos considers the intimate choices of village families in the face of larger forces of modernization, showing how these negotiations shape the configuration of daily village life, from marriage, childbirth, and childcare to personal hygiene and public sanitation. Santos also outlines the advantages of a rural existence, including a degree of autonomy over family planning and community life that is rare in urban China. Filled with vivid anecdotes and keen observations, this book presents a fresh perspective on China’s urban-rural divide and a grounded theoretical approach to rural transformation.
Download or read book Birthing in the Pacific written by Vicki Lukere and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2001-11-30 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection explores birthing in the Pacific against the background of debates about tradition and modernity. A wide-ranging introduction and conclusion, together with case studies from Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, and Tonga, show how simple contrasts between traditional and modern practices, technocratic and organic models of childbirth, indigenous and foreign approaches, and notions of "before" and "after" can be potent but problematic. The difficulties entailed confront public health programs concerned with practical issues of infant and maternal survival in developing countries as well as scholarly analyses of birthing in cross-cultural contexts. The introduction analyzes central concepts and themes: questions of survival, safety, and well-being; the significance of postures, practices, and sites; the role of midwives, traditional birth attendants, and nurses; and the role of men in birthing and reproduction. Contributors--four anthropologists, a historian, and a community health worker--offer insights into the ways mothers, midwives, and nurses relate the traditional and the modern, and how ideas of tradition and modernity have shaped representations of Pacific childbirth. The conclusion provides researchers with a guide to relevant literature from several disciplines. As a whole the collection warns against either a celebration of emancipation through biomedicine or a recuperative romance about women's past powers in reproduction. Contributors: Ruta Fiti-Sinclair, Margaret Jolly, Vicki Lukere, Shelley Mallett, Helen Morton, Christine Salomon.
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 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 Pregnancy and Birth in Russia written by Anna Temkina and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-11-11 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a theoretically and empirically grounded examination of the struggle for maternity care in contemporary Russia, framed by changes to the healthcare system and the roles of its participants after socialism. The chapters consider multiple perspectives and interactions between women and professionals and the structural and institutional pressures they face when striving for better conditions and treatment. Russian maternity care is characterized by the vivid mix of legacy of Soviet paternalism and medicalization, bureaucratic principles of state regulation (with high level of centralization and lack of professional autonomy) and global neoliberal tendencies. Maternity care professionals have to satisfy not only the growing needs and demands of women, but also deal with increasing state regulative control, market demands and new professional standards of care. Navigating these multiple and various challenges, maternity providers have to perform in multiple roles, bridge the organizational gaps and inconsistencies. Thus, the field of struggle for good care becomes not only professional, but political one. Highlighting the opportunities and barriers for good care in the context of post-socialist Russia, this book will be of particular interest to medical anthropologists and sociologists as well as midwives and other health professionals.
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 Understanding Anxiety Worry and Fear in Childbearing written by Kathryn Gutteridge and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-11-04 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book informs and enlighten health professionals on how the recognition of fearing women can change their episode of care during childbearing. It gives practical advice on the way women present to services and the challenges that this invokes. This work is the first of its kind aimed at clinicians to deconstruct ideology around childbearing myths and its challenges. The authors review the evidence that exists and how modern maternity systems are responding to fear and shaping healthcare. Whilst some worry and anxiety is expected and indeed considered normal during childbearing, it has been suggested that this has now proliferated to a degree of abnormal for many women. Why is that and how is this panic spread? Media portrayal of birth is suggested as unrealistic material and to show only that which is dramatic and horrific. This has been considered as one factor influencing modern women. Medicalisation, technology and demand upon services is another consequence of providing almost all maternity care in hospitals. Given that the majority of childbearing women are fit and healthy is this another causative factor? By removing women from their homes and families at such a vulnerable time has a serious consequence for how she will experience her greatest leap of faith into motherhood. All of these issues are explored and examined in the book with ideas and practical suggestions of what may be done to change this increasingly common problem. This book is intended at midwives and clinicians working in maternity settings.
Download or read book Consuming Motherhood written by Janelle S. Taylor and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Consuming Motherhood' addresses the provocative question of how motherhood & consumption, as ideologies & as patterns of social action, mutally shape & constitute each other in contemporary life.
Download or read book Sociology of Sexualities written by Kathleen J. Fitzgerald and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2024-09-02 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sociology of Sexualities is an insightful exploration of sexuality through a sociological lens, offering a comprehensive understanding of sexualities and gender identities. The Third Edition brings to light the current societal challenges faced by LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, the influence of technology on sexuality, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sexual behaviors.
Download or read book Blessed Events written by Pamela E. Klassen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blessed Events explores how women who give birth at home use religion to make sense of their births and in turn draw on their birthing experiences to bring meaning to their lives and families. Pamela Klassen introduces a surprisingly diverse group of women, in their own words, while also setting their birth stories within wider social, political, and economic contexts. In doing so, she emerges with a study that disrupts conventional views of both childbirth and religion by blurring assumed divisions between conservative and feminist women and by taking childbirth seriously as a religious act. Most American women who have a choice give birth in a hospital and request pain medication. Yet enough women choose and advocate unmedicated home birth--and do so for carefully articulated reasons, social resistance among them--to constitute a movement. Klassen investigates why women whose religious affiliations range from Old Order Amish to Reform Judaism to goddess-centered spirituality defy majority opinion, the medical establishment, and sometimes the law to have their babies at home. In considering their interpretations--including their critiques of the dominant medical model of childbirth and their views on labor pain--she examines the kinds of agency afforded to or denied women as they derive religious meanings from childbirth. Throughout, she identifies tensions and affinities between feminist and traditionalist appraisals of the symbolic meaning of birth and the power of women. What does home birth--a woman-centered movement working to return birth to women's control--mean in practice for women's gender and religious identities? Is this supreme valuing of procreation and motherhood constraining, or does it open up new realms of cultural and social power for women? By asking these questions while remaining cognizant of religion's significance, Blessed Events challenges both feminist and traditionalist accounts of childbearing while broadening our understanding of how religion is ''lived'' in contemporary America.
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 Normal Childbirth written by Susan Downe and published by Elsevier Health Sciences. This book was released on 2008-05-30 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition builds on the strengths of the popular first edition, with updated national and international data, and the most recent debate around the controversial area of childbirth. With the increasing risk of litigation, there can be a tendency to classify women as 'at risk' if they present with even a hint of a problem. This is a contentious area and midwives need to be aware of the wide parameters of 'normal' in order to practise autonomously, effectively and safely. This book provides an evidence-based source for all midwives and other health professionals with an interest normal birth. Explores the wider range of normal childbirth that is unique to individual mothers and babies Challenges the assumptions underpinning current beliefs and attitudes Updated statistics, both national and international Latest research and debate
Download or read book Sustainable Birth in Disruptive Times written by Kim Gutschow and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-03-22 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This contributed volume explores flexible, adaptable, and sustainable solutions to the shockingly high costs of birth across the globe. It presents innovative and collaborative maternity care practices and policies that are intersectional, human rights-based, transdisciplinary, science-driven, and community-based. Each chapter describes participatory and midwifery-oriented care that helps improve maternal and newborn outcomes within minoritized populations. The featured case studies respond to resource constraints and inequities of access by transforming relations between providers and families or by creating more egalitarian relations among diverse providers such as midwives, obstetricians, and nurses that minimize inefficient hierarchies within maternity care. The authors build on a growing awareness that quality and respectful midwifery care has lower costs and improved outcomes for child bearers, newborns, and providers. Topics include: Sustainable collaborations including transfers of care among midwives and obstetricians in India, The Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, and Denmark Midwifery-oriented, femifocal, indigenous, and inclusive models of care that counter obstetric violence and gender stereotypes in Mexico, Chile, Guatemala, Argentina, and India Doula care and midwifery care for women of color, previously incarcerated women, indigenous women, and other minoritized groups in the global north and south Practices and metrics for improving quality of newborn and maternal care as well as maternal and newborn outcomes in disruptive times and disaster settings Sustainable Birth in Disruptive Times is an essential and timely resource for providers, policy makers, students, and activists with interests in maternity care, midwifery, medical anthropology, maternal health, newborn health, obstetrics, childbirth, medicine, and global health in disruptive times.
