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OverviewThe 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, Dona Maria and her daughter Dona 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. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Sheila CosminskyPublisher: University of Texas Press Imprint: University of Texas Press Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 22.90cm Weight: 0.454kg ISBN: 9781477311394ISBN 10: 1477311394 Pages: 318 Publication Date: 06 December 2016 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print  This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 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 BibliographyReviewsAuthor InformationSHEILA COSMINSKY is professor emerita of anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice at Rutgers University—Camden. She is the coauthor, with Ira Harrison, of a two-volume bibliography, Traditional Medicine, and has published numerous articles on ethnomedicine, midwifery, and maternal and child health and nutrition. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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