Near Birth
eBook - ePub

Near Birth

Contested Values and the Work of Doulas

  1. 257 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Near Birth

Contested Values and the Work of Doulas

About this book

This insightful study of contemporary birthing uses the work of doulas to explore the questions raised near birth: What do we value, and how do we navigate those values when they are tangled in conflict? Pregnancy, birthing, and infant care offer a microcosm of cultural debates. In this ethnography of childbearing in Northern California, Andrea Ford examines how people's birthing decisions and experiences relate to and construct the American ideal of the individual through the values of progress, experience, autonomy, equality, authenticity, immunity, and redemption. Both an anthropologist and a doula who has observed and participated in dozens of births, Ford explores how parents, practitioners, activists, laws, technologies, media, and medical institutions shape the politics of care. Near Birth shows that questions about the best way to have a baby concern much more than health procedures. In the answers lie often-unacknowledged claims about what kinds of personhood matter and what ways of living are valued and valuable.

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Yes, you can access Near Birth by Dr. Andrea Lilly Ford in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Medicine & Gynecology, Obstetrics & Midwifery. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Frontispiece
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Introduction: On Becoming an Individual
  7. 1. Progress: California as Both Utopia and Dystopia
  8. 2. Experience: Ways of Knowing, Being, and Doing Physiology
  9. 3. Autonomy: Negotiating Trust and Control in the Birth Room
  10. 4. Equality: Social Reproduction and Gendered Responsibility
  11. 5. Authenticity: Technology, Nature, and Time
  12. 6. Immunity: Ecological Anxieties about Chemicals, Microbes, and Stress
  13. 7. Redemption: Activism and Imagined Futures
  14. Conclusion: Fears and Fantasies
  15. Notes
  16. Bibliography
  17. Index