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Book Cover
E-book
Author Cosminsky, Sheila, author.

Title Midwives and mothers : the medicalization of childbirth on a Guatemalan plantation / Sheila Cosminsky
Edition First edition
Published Austin : University of Texas Press, 2016

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 303 pages) : illustrations
Series Louann Atkins Temple women & culture series ; book forty-three
Louann Atkins Temple women & culture series ; bk. 43.
Contents Midwives, knowledge, and power at birth -- María's world : the plantation -- The role of the midwife : María and Siriaca -- Hands and intuition : the midwife's prenatal care -- Soften the pain : management of labor and delivery -- Looking after mother and infant : postpartum care -- To heal and to hold : midwife as healer and doctor to the family -- Career or calling : national health policies and midwifery training programs -- Medicalization through the lens of childbirth -- Appendix I. Medicinal plants and remedies mentioned by midwives -- Appendix II. common and scientific names of medicinal plants
Summary 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, Doña Maria and her daughter Doña 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-288) and index
Notes Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed November 8, 2016)
Subject Midwives -- Guatemala -- Social conditions
Traditional medicine -- Guatemala
Childbirth -- Social aspects -- Guatemala
Maternal health services -- Social aspects -- Guatemala
Plantation life -- Health aspects -- Guatemala
Rural development -- Health aspects -- Guatemala
Maternal Health Services
MEDICAL -- Gynecology & Obstetrics.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
Childbirth -- Social aspects
Maternal health services -- Social aspects
Traditional medicine
SUBJECT Guatemala
Subject Guatemala
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2016018052
ISBN 9781477311400
1477311408
9781477311417
1477311416