Birth on the Threshold - Childbirth and Modernity in South India

Author: Cecilia Van Hollen
Publisher: Kali/Zubaan
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 294
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8186706720

Description

Even childbirth is affected by globalization-and in India, as elsewhere, the trend is away from home births assisted by midwives toward hospital births that increasingly rely on new technologies. And yet, as this work of critical feminist ethnography clearly demonstrates, as biomedical models of childbirth spread throughout the globe, they fuse with local practices to create distinctive forms of modern birth.

Through vivid description and animated dialogue, this book conveys the birth stories of the women in Tamil Nadu in their own voices. Cecilia Van Hollen uses these stories to explore larger questions about how the structures of colonialism and postcolonial international and national development have helped to shape the form and meaning of birth for Indian women today.

Contents

Maps appear on pages 17 and 30
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Prologue: Birth on the Threshold
Introduction: Childbirth and Modernity in Tamil Nadu

The Professionalization of Obstetrics in Colonial India:
The Problem of Childbirth in Col