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Childbirth Across Cultures
This book will explore the childbirth process through globally diverse perspectives in order to offer a broader context with which to think about birth. We will address multiple rituals and management models surrounding the labor and birth process from communities across the globe. Labor and birth are biocultural events that are managed in countless ways. We are particularly interested in the notion of power. Who controls the pregnancy and the birth? Is it the hospital, the doctor, or the in-laws, and in which cultures does the mother have the control? These decisions, regarding place of birth, position, who receives the baby and even how the mother may or may not behave during the actual de...
Religion and the Subtle Body in Asia and the West
Subtle-body practices are found particularly in Indian, Indo-Tibetan and East Asian societies, but have become increasingly familiar in Western societies, especially through the various healing and yogic techniques and exercises associated with them. This book explores subtle-body practices from a variety of perspectives, and includes both studies of these practices in Asian and Western contexts. The book discusses how subtle-body practices assume a quasi-material level of human existence that is intermediate between conventional concepts of body and mind. Often, this level is conceived of in terms of an invisible structure of channels, associated with the human body, through which flows of ...
Birth and Birthgivers
This volume presents waried essays exploring women's voices, agencies and aesthetics in the traditional handling of chilbearing. Ayurveda as it comprehends reproduction, sohars (birth songs), birth narratives cord-cutters, dais' knowledge and compensation systems, as well as analyses of biomedical dominance and erasure of indigenous knowledge all provide a peek bechind the purdah in this critical reclamation of tradition.
Living and Dying in the Contemporary World
Taking a novel approach to the contradictory impulses of violence and care, illness and healing, this book radically shifts the way we think of the interrelations of institutions and experiences in a globalizing world. Living and Dying in the Contemporary World is not just another reader in medical anthropology but a true tour de force—a deep exploration of all that makes life unbearable and yet livable through the labor of ordinary people. This book comprises forty-four chapters by scholars whose ethnographic and historical work is conducted around the globe, including South Asia, East Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Bringing together the work of established scholars with the vibrant voices of younger scholars, Living and Dying in the Contemporary World will appeal to anthropologists, sociologists, health scientists, scholars of religion, and all who are curious about how to relate to the rapidly changing institutions and experiences in an ever more connected world.
Women and Indigenous Religions
This book examines the critical and often undervalued contributions of women to the culture, well-being, and subsistence of their communities as active, powerful, and wise ritual specialists. From the Dalit midwives in India to the women of the Nahua region in the state of Morelos, Mexico, from the indigenous nations in Turtle Island in Canada to the shamans (male and female) of South Korea and Vietnam, there are still many vital indigenous cultures around the world in which women often hold positions of religious authority and leadership. Women and Indigenous Religions addresses specific issues in the study of religion, such as the multifaceted tensions between indigenous traditions and gender and the genealogy of positions of authority in religion or spiritual matters. A close examination reveals that native religions, with their women specialists, are still a source of inspiration for millions of men and women even in the "advanced" areas in the world. This fact challenges the opinion that indigenous cultures are becoming extinct.
Birth on the Threshold
Even childbirth is affected by globalization—and in India, as elsewhere, the trend is away from home births, assisted by midwives, toward hospital births with increasing reliance on new technologies. And yet, as this work of critical feminist ethnography clearly demonstrates, the global spread of biomedical models of childbirth has not brought forth one monolithic form of "modern birth." Focusing on the birth experiences of lower-class women in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Birth on the Threshold reveals the complex and unique ways in which modernity emerges in local contexts. Through vivid description and animated dialogue, this book conveys the birth stories of the women of Tamil Nadu in their own voices, emphasizing their critiques of and aspirations for modern births today. In light of these stories, author Cecilia Van Hollen explores 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. Ultimately, her book poses the question: How is gender—especially maternity—reconfigured as birth is transformed?
Spiritual Traditions
Contributed essays.
Mental Health from a Gender Perspective
The gender perspective is largely lacking in the discourse on mental health in India while the debate on women s issues rarely incorporates this important topic. At the same time, there is a growing awareness about the special mental health needs of women. Utilising variously experiential, feminist and social science methodologies, the contributors discuss the many psychological, social and political forces which impact on women s mental health. Overall, the book explores perspectives from clinical work and community practices and addresses themes relating to intervention and advocacy. Bringing together gender-sensitive perspectives from a wide range of disciplines, it constitutes an important contribution to feminist discourse within the mental and behavioural sciences.
