Birthing Models on the Human Rights Frontier: Speaking Truth to Power (Social Science Perspectives on Childbirth and Reproduction)

This book addresses the politics of global health and social justice issues around birth, focusing on dynamic communities that have chosen to speak truth to power by reforming dysfunctional health care systems or creating new ones outside the box.

The chapters present models of childbirth at extreme ends of a spectrum―from the conflict zones and disaster areas of Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, and Indonesia, to high-risk tertiary care settings in China, Canada, Australia, and Turkey. Debunking notions about best care, the volume illustrates how human rights in health care are on a collision course with global capitalism and offers a number of specific solutions to this ever-increasing problem.

This volume will be a valuable resource for scholars and students in anthropology, sociology, health, and midwifery, as well as for practitioners, policy makers, and organizations focused on birth or on social activism in any arena.

Betty-Anne Daviss has served as a midwife for 45 years and is internationally renowned as a breech expert and researcher on home birth and ethnography in childbirth. She is Adjunct Professor at the Pauline Jewett Institute of Gender and Women’s Studies, Carleton University, Canada, and has privileges at l’Hôpital Montfort and the Ottawa Hospital.

Robbie Davis-Floyd is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Rice University, Houston, Texas. She is a well-known international speaker and researcher on transformational models in childbirth, midwifery, and obstetrics.