Birth on the Threshold : Childbirth and Modernity in South India

Contents: Note on transliteration. Prologue: Birth on the threshold. Introduction: childbirth and modernity in Tamil Nadu. 1. The professionalization of obstetrics in "Colonial India" the "Problem" of childbirth in colonial discourse. 2. Maternal and child health services in the postcolonial era. 3. Bangles of Neem, bangles of gold: pregnant women as auspicious burdens. 4. Invoking Vali: painful technologies of birth. 5. Moving targets: the routinization of IUD insertions in public maternity wards. 6. "Baby Friendly" hospitals and bad mothers: maneuvering development during the postpartum period. Conclusion: Reproductive Rights, "choices", and resistance. Epilogue. Appendices: 1. Sample interview questionnaires. 2. Official structure of maternal-child health care institutions and practitioners in Tamil Nadu, 1995. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

"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 of 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." (jacket)