| Description |
xii, 510 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
Foreword / Rayna Rapp -- Introduction: The Anthropology of Birth / Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn F. Sargent -- 1. Authoritative Knowledge and Its Construction / Brigitte Jordan -- 2. An Evolutionary Perspective on Authoritative Knowledge about Birth / Wenda R. Trevathan -- 3. Fetal Ultrasound Imaging and the Production of Authoritative Knowledge in Greece / Eugenia Georges -- 4. The Production of Authoritative Knowledge in American Prenatal Care / Carole H. Browner and Nancy Press -- 5. What Do Women Want? Issues of Choice, Control, and Class in American Pregnancy and Childbirth / Ellen Lazarus -- 6. Authoritative Knowledge and Birth Territories in Contemporary Japan / Deborah Cordero Fiedler -- 7. Ways of Knowing about Birth in Three Cultures / Carolyn F. Sargent and Grace Bascope -- 8. Authoritative Touch in Childbirth: A Cross-Cultural Approach / Sheila Kitzinger -- 9. Authority in Translation: Finding, Knowing, Naming, and Training "Traditional Birth Attendants" in Nepal / Stacy Leigh Pigg -- 10. Changing Childbirth in Eastern Europe: Which Systems of Authoritative Knowledge Should Prevail? / Beverley Chalmers -- 11. Resistance to Technology-Enhanced Childbirth in Tuscany: The Political Economy of Italian Birth / Jane Szurek -- 12. Intuition as Authoritative Knowledge in Midwifery and Home Birth / Robbie Davis-Floyd and Elizabeth Davis -- 13. Randomized Controlled Trials as Authoritative Knowledge: Keeping an Ally from Becoming a Threat to North American Midwifery Practice / Kenneth C. Johnson -- 14. Confessions of a Dissident / Marsden Wagner -- 15. "Women come here on their own when they need to": Prenatal Care, Authoritative Knowledge, and Maternal Health in Oaxaca / Paola M. Sesia -- 16. Maternal Health, War, and Religious Tradition: Authoritative Knowledge in Pujehun District, Sierra Leone / Amara Jambai and Carol MacCormack -- 17. Heeding Warnings from the Canary, the Whale, and the Inuit: A Framework for Analyzing Competing Types of Knowledge about Childbirth / Betty-Anne Daviss -- 18. An Ideal of Unassisted Birth: Hunting, Healing, and Transformation among the Kalahari Ju/'hoansi / Megan Biesele |
| Summary |
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. The book 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 |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Subject |
Birth customs.
|
|
Childbirth -- Cross-cultural studies.
|
|
Knowledge, Sociology of.
|
| Author |
Davis-Floyd, Robbie.
|
|
Sargent, Carolyn F., 1947-
|
| LC no. |
96048263 |
| ISBN |
0520206258 (cloth : alk. paper) |
|
0520207858 (paperback: alk. paper) |
|
