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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.
In the Sitapurdistrict of Uttar Pradesh, an agricultural region with high rates of infant mortality, maternal health services are poor while family planning efforts are intensive. By following the daily lives of women in this setting, the author considers the women’s own experiences of birth and infant death, their ways of making-do, and the hierarchies they create and contend with. This book develops an approach to the care that focuses on emotion, domestic spaces, illicit and extra-institutional biomedicine, and household and neighborly relations that these women are able to access. It shows that, as part of the concatenation of affect and access, globalized moralities about reproduction are dependent on ambiguous ideas about caste. Through the unfolding of birth and death, a new vision of "untouchability" emerges that is integral to visions of progress.
In contemporary Western culture, the word "fetus" introduces either a political subject or a literal, medicalized entity. Neither of these frameworks does justice to the vast array of religious literature and oral traditions from cultures around the world in which the fetus emerges as a powerful symbol or metaphor. This volume presents essays that explore the depiction of the fetus in the world's major religious traditions, finding some striking commonalities as well as intriguing differences. Among the themes that emerge is the tendency to conceive of the fetus as somehow independent of the mother's body — as in the case of the Buddha, who is described as inhabiting a palace while gestating in the womb. On the other hand, the fetus can also symbolically represent profound human needs and emotions, such as the universal experience of vulnerability. The authors note how the advent of the fetal sonogram has transformed how people everywhere imagine the unborn today, giving rise to a narrow range of decidedly literal questions about personhood, gender, and disability.
In this book, a team of international contributors examine bodies, leakage and boundaries, illuminating the contradictions and dilemmas in women’s healthcare. Using the concept of pollution, this book highlights how women and health issues are categorised, and health workers and women are confined to roles and places defined as socially appropriate. The book explores in-depth current and historical practices, such as: childbirth and midwifery practice policies and social practices around breastfeeding gynaecological nursing, female incontinence and sexually transmitted infections miscarriages and termination of pregnancy. Addressing things out of place, from the idea of ‘dirty work’ to feeling ‘dirty’, from diagnoses that disrupt our self-image to beliefs and practices which undermine health service provision, this book uses the contradictions in our thinking around pollution and power to stimulate thinking around women’s health.
Let your pregnancy be the joyous, exciting and spiritual journey it was always meant to be... While having a baby is a time of great happiness, it can also be the most bewildering experience for those involved. Luckily, this book provides the perfect antidote to all your pregnancy and baby concerns. Right from deciding whether to have a baby to choosing the best hospital for the d-day (delivery day!), Spiritual Pregnancy shows you how to make the most of your pregnancy so that you come through those nine months not only relaxed, but also confident and prepared. This unique volume shows you the best ways to handle the dilemmas that accompany having a baby, while preparing you for the incredib...
The study of medicine and healing traditions is well developed in the discipline of anthropology. Most religious studies scholars, however, continue to assume that "medicine" and "biomedicine" are one and the same and that when religion and medicine are mentioned together, the reference is necessarily either to faith healing or bioethics. Scholars of religion also have tended to assume that religious healing refers to the practices of only a few groups, such as Christian Scientists and pentecostals. Most are now aware of the work of physicians who attempt to demonstrate positive health outcomes in relation to religious practice, but few seem to realize the myriad ways in which healing pervad...
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 ...
Hariti is the ancient Indian goddess of childbirth and women healers, known at one time throughout South and Southeast Asia from India to Nepal and Bali. Daughters of Hariti looks at her 'daughters' today, female midwives and healers in many different cultures across the region. It also traces the transformation of childbirth in these cultures under the impact of Western biomedical technology, national and international health policies and the wider factors of social and economic change. The authors ask what can be done to improve the high rates of maternal and infant deaths and illnesses still associated with childbirth in most societies in this area and whether the wholesale replacement of indigenous knowledge by Western biomedical technology is necessarily a good thing.
When women and men unite they become powerful procreators. However, since menstruation is majorly endured and experienced by women, some men though keep themselves close to the process but the majority distance themselves from discussion and giving care to the women.Procreation is the reality of humankind but we choose not to speak about it and the process related to it yet continues. Now, here is the thing, the majority of men have a fragmented understanding of menstruation. As a result, they see it from the lenses of taboo and not a natural process. There is a constant mention of men here, but let’s change the track and switch to women. What do you think, because women menstruate that al...
This contributed volume explores flexible, adaptable, and sustainable solutions to the shockingly high costs of birth across the globe. It presents innovative and collaborative maternity care practices and policies that are intersectional, human rights-based, transdisciplinary, science-driven, and community-based. Each chapter describes participatory and midwifery-oriented care that helps improve maternal and newborn outcomes within minoritized populations. The featured case studies respond to resource constraints and inequities of access by transforming relations between providers and families or by creating more egalitarian relations among diverse providers such as midwives, obstetricians,...