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Midwives and Mothers : The Medicalization of Childbirth on a Guatemalan Plantation / Sheila Cosminsky.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Austin : University of Texas Press, [2021]Copyright date: ©2016Description: 1 online resourceContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781477311400
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 618.20097281 23
LOC classification:
  • RG963.G9 C67 2016
  • RG963.G9C67 2016
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1 Midwives, Knowledge, and Power at Birth -- Chapter 2 María’s World: The Plantation -- Chapter 3 The Role of the Midwife: María and Siriaca -- Chapter 4 Hands and Intuition: The Midwife’s Prenatal Care -- Chapter 5 Soften the Pain: Management of Labor and Delivery -- Chapter 6 Looking after Mother and Infant: Postpartum Care -- Chapter 7 To Heal and to Hold: Midwife as Healer and Doctor to the Family -- Chapter 8 Career or Calling: National Health Policies and Midwifery Training Programs -- Chapter 9 Medicalization through the Lens of Childbirth -- Appendix I Medicinal Plants and Remedies Mentioned by Midwives -- Appendix II Common and Scientific Names of Medicinal Plants -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
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.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781477311400

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1 Midwives, Knowledge, and Power at Birth -- Chapter 2 María’s World: The Plantation -- Chapter 3 The Role of the Midwife: María and Siriaca -- Chapter 4 Hands and Intuition: The Midwife’s Prenatal Care -- Chapter 5 Soften the Pain: Management of Labor and Delivery -- Chapter 6 Looking after Mother and Infant: Postpartum Care -- Chapter 7 To Heal and to Hold: Midwife as Healer and Doctor to the Family -- Chapter 8 Career or Calling: National Health Policies and Midwifery Training Programs -- Chapter 9 Medicalization through the Lens of Childbirth -- Appendix I Medicinal Plants and Remedies Mentioned by Midwives -- Appendix II Common and Scientific Names of Medicinal Plants -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

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.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 27. Okt 2021)