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No Alternative : Childbirth, Citizenship, and Indigenous Culture in Mexico / Rosalynn A. Vega.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Austin : University of Texas Press, [2021]Copyright date: ©2018Description: 1 online resource (238 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781477316788
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 305.868 72 23
LOC classification:
  • RG518.M6 V44 2018
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
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
Summary: 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.
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)9781477316788

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 online access with authorization star

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

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.

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 26. Apr 2022)