Birth on the Threshold: Childbirth and Modernity in South India

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?

History

Hollen, Cecilia Coale Van

Asia

University of California Press

Cancer and the Kali Yuga: Gender, Inequality, and Health in South India

As news spread that more women died from breast and cervical cancer in India than anywhere else in the world in the early twenty-first century, global public health planners accelerated efforts to prevent, screen, and treat these reproductive cancers in low-income Indian communities.&nbsp;Cancer and the Kali Yuga&nbsp;reveals that women who are the targets of these interventions in Tamil Nadu, South India, hold views about cancer causality, late diagnosis, and challenges to accessing treatment that differ from the public health discourse. Cecilia Coale Van Hollen's critical feminist ethnography centers and amplifies the voices of Dalit Tamil women who situate cancer within the nexus of their class, caste, and gender positions. Dalit women's narratives about their experiences with cancer present a powerful and poignant critique of the sociocultural and political-economic conditions that marginalize them and jeopardize their health and well-being in twenty-first-century India.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hollen, Cecilia Coale Van. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hollen, Cecilia Coale Van

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hollen, Cecilia Coale Van. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Birth on the Threshold: Childbirth and Modernity in South India

Cancer and the Kali Yuga: Gender, Inequality, and Health in South India