Overview

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, 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 Details

Author:   Sheila Cosminsky
Publisher:   University of Texas Press
Imprint:   University of Texas Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9781477311387

ISBN 10:   1477311386
Pages:   318
Publication Date:   06 December 2016
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of 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

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Author Information

SHEILA 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.

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