ON BIOMEDICINE
ON BIOMEDICINE Atwood D. Gaines and Robbie Davis-Floyd This entry appears in the Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology, eds. Carol and Melvin Ember. Yale: Human Relations Area Files, 2003. Naming the Subject The designation “Biomedicine” as the name of the professional medicine of the West emphasizes the fact that this is a preeminently biological medicine. As such, it can be distinguished from the professional medicines of other cultures and, like them, its...
Read MoreOn Pregnancy
On Pregnancy Robbie E. Davis-Floyd, Ph.D. and Eugenia Georges, Ph.D. This entry appears in the Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, New Haven CT: Human Relations Area Files, 1996. pp. 1014-1016. The experience of pregnancy encompasses physiological, psychological, spiritual, and socio-cultural dimensions. Because the future of any given culture depends heavily on women’s procreative abilities, these abilities carry strong social significance. Thus, every culture takes upon itself the...
Read MoreCulture and Birth: The Technocratic Imperative
Culture and Birth: The Technocratic Imperative This aticle was published in the International Journal of Childbirth Education, 9(2):6-7, 1994 Through the act of controlling birth, we disassociate ourselves with its raw power. Disassociation makes it easier to identify with our “civilized” nature, deny our “savage” roots and connection with indigenous cultures. Birth simultaneously encompasses the three events that civilized societies fear–birth, death, and...
Read MoreAnthropology and Birth Activism: Who Knows?
Anthropology and Birth Activism: Who Knows? Robbie Davis-Floyd Last night at a dinner for birth activists and scholars held in Seattle in the home of Penny Simkin, the most revered of American doulas, the 15 or so women (and one man) gathered there held our glasses aloft as Penny made the last toast–“for all the women who don’t know.” My reactions trembled on the existential brink. As both an anthropologist and a birth activist, I am trained to honor and respect women’s choices...
Read MoreOn Childbirth
On Childbirth This entry appears in the Blackwell Dictionary of Anthropology. Thomas Barfield, ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996 Childbirth is the work of women as they labor and bear down with their uterine muscles to push their babies from the private inner world of their wombs into the larger world of society and culture. Although childbirth is a universal fact of human physiology, where, how, with whom, and even when a woman gives birth are often culturally determined. The...
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