TY - BOOK AU - Vega,Rosalynn A. TI - No Alternative: Childbirth, Citizenship, and Indigenous Culture in Mexico SN - 9781477316788 AV - RG518.M6 V44 2018 U1 - 305.868 72 23 PY - 2021///] CY - Austin : PB - University of Texas Press, KW - Birth customs KW - Mexico KW - Birth customs-Mexico KW - Childbirth KW - Social aspects KW - Childbirth-Social aspects-Mexico KW - Discrimination in medical care KW - Discrimination in medical care-Mexico KW - Indigenous women KW - Social conditions KW - Indigenous women-Mexico-Social conditions KW - Maternal health services KW - Maternal health services-Mexico KW - Midwives KW - Midwives-Mexico KW - Natural childbirth KW - Natural childbirth-Mexico KW - Women KW - Women-Mexico-Social conditions KW - SOCIAL SCIENCE / General KW - bisacsh N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; List of Illustrations --; Acknowledgments --; Introduction --; CHAPTER 1 Commodifying Indigeneity: Politics of Representation --; CHAPTER 2 Humanized Birth: Unforeseen Politics of Parenting --; CHAPTER 3 Intersectionality: A Contextual and Dialogical Framework --; CHAPTER 4 A Cartography of “Race” and Obstetric Violence --; CHAPTER 5 (Ethno)Medical (Im)Mobilities --; CONCLUSION Destination Birth—Time and Space Travel --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index; restricted access N2 - Recent anthropological scholarship on “new midwifery” centers on how professional midwives in various countries are helping women reconnect with “nature,” teaching them to trust in their bodies, respecting women’s “choices,” and fighting for women’s right to birth as naturally as possible. In No Alternative, Rosalynn A. Vega uses ethnographic accounts of natural birth practices in Mexico to complicate these narratives about new midwifery and illuminate larger questions of female empowerment, citizenship, and the commodification of indigenous culture, by showing how alternative birth actually reinscribes traditional racial and gender hierarchies. Vega contrasts the vastly different birthing experiences of upper-class and indigenous Mexican women. Upper-class women often travel to birthing centers to be delivered by professional midwives whose methods are adopted from and represented as indigenous culture, while indigenous women from those same cultures are often forced by lack of resources to use government hospitals regardless of their preferred birthing method. Vega demonstrates that women’s empowerment, having a “choice,” is a privilege of those capable of paying for private medical services—albeit a dubious privilege, as it puts the burden of correctly producing future members of society on women’s shoulders. Vega’s research thus also reveals the limits of citizenship in a neoliberal world, as indigeneity becomes an object of consumption within a transnational racialized economy UR - https://doi.org/10.7560/316764 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781477316788 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9781477316788/original ER -