This benchmark collection of cross-cultural essays on reproduction and childbirth extends and enriches the work of Brigitte Jordan, who helped generate and define the field of the anthropology of birth. The authors' focus on authoritative knowledge--the knowledge that counts, on the basis of which decisions are made and actions taken--highlights the vast differences between birthing systems that give authority of knowing to women and their communities and those that invest it in experts and machines.
Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge offers first-hand ethnographic research conducted by anthropologists in sixteen different societies and cultures and includes the interdisciplinary perspectives of a social psychologist, a sociologist, an epidemiologist, a staff member of the World Health Organization, and a community midwife. Exciting directions for further research as well as pressing needs for policy guidance emerge from these illuminating explorations of authoritative knowledge about birth. This book is certain to follow Jordan's Birth in Four Cultures as the definitive volume in a rapidly expanding field.
Foreword xi Rayna Rapp Introduction: The Anthropology of Birth 1(54) Robbie Davis-Floyd Carolyn F. Sargent PART I THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF AUTHORITATIVE KNOWLEDGE IN CHILDBIRTH Authoritative Knowledge and Its Construction 55(25) Brigitte Jordan An Evolutionary Perspective on Authoritative Knowledge about Birth 80(11) Wenda R. Trevathan PART II INTRACULTURAL VARIATIONS IN AUTHORITATIVE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT BIRTH: BIOMEDICAL HEGEMONY AND WOMENS CHOICES Fetal Ultrasound Imaging and the Production of Authoritative Knowledge in Greece 91(22) Eugenia Georges The Production of Authoritative Knowledge in American Prenatal Care 113(19) Carole H. Browner Nancy Press What Do Women Want? Issues of Choice, Control, and Class in American Pregnancy and Childbirth 132(27) Ellen Lazarus Authoritative Knowledge and Birth Territories in Contemporary Japan 159(24) Deborah Cordero Fiedler PART III INTERCULTURAL VARIATIONS IN AUTHORITATIVE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT BIRTH: HIERARCHY, COMMUNITY, AND THE LOCAL SOCIAL GROUND Ways of Knowing about Birth in Three Cultures 183(26) Carolyn F. Sargent Grace Bascope Authoritative Touch in Childbirth: A Cross-Cultural Approach 209(24) Sheila Kitzinger Authority in Translation: Finding, Knowing, Naming, and Training ``Traditional Birth Attendants in Nepal 233(30) Stacy Leigh Pigg Changing Childbirth in Eastern Europe: Which Systems of Authoritative Knowledge Should Prevail? 263(24) Beverley Chalmers PART IV FIGHTING THE SYSTEM: CREATING AND MAINTAINING ALTERNATIVE MODELS OF AUTHORITATIVE KNOWLEDGE Resistance to Technology-Enhanced Childbirth in Tuscany: The Political Economy of Italian Birth 287(28) Jane Szurek Intuition as Authoritative Knowledge in Midwifery and Home Birth 315(35) Robbie Davis-Floyd Elizabeth Davis Randomized Controlled Trials as Authoritative Knowledge: Keeping an Ally from Becoming a Threat to North American Midwifery Practice 350(16) Kenneth C. Johnson Confessions of a Dissident 366(31) Marsden Wagner PART V VIABLE INDIGENOUS SYSTEMS OF AUTHORITATIVE KNOWLEDGE: CONTINUITY IN THE FACE OF CHANGE ``Women come here on their own when they need to: Prenatal Care, Authoritative Knowledge, and Maternal Health in Oaxaca 397(24) Paola M. Sesia Maternal Health, War, and Religious Tradition: Authoritative Knowledge in Pujehun District, Sierra Leone 421(20) Amara Jambai Carol MacCormack Heeding Warnings from the Canary, the Whale, and the Inuit: A Framework for Analyzing Competing Types of Knowledge about Childbirth 441(33) Betty-Anne Daviss An Ideal of Unassisted Birth: Hunting, Healing, and Transformation among the Kalahari Ju/hoansi 474(19) Megan Biesele Notes on Contributors 493(8) Index 501
Robbie Davis-Floyd, Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas, is author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage (California, 1992) and co-editor of Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots (1997). Carolyn F. Sargent, Professor of Anthropology and Director of Women's Studies at Southern Methodist University, is author of Maternity, Medicine, and Power: Reproductive Decisions in Urban Benin (California, 1989) and coeditor of Medical Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Method (1996).
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