Invoking Vali: Painful technologies of modern birth in south India

Medical Anthropology Quarterly

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 49-77

  Van Hollen, Cecilia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME   (United States)

Author keywords

Gender; India; Modernity; Reproductive technologies

Indexed keywords

ANALGESIC AGENT; ANESTHETIC AGENT; CYANOCOBALAMIN; DIAZEPAM; MORPHINE; OXYTOCIN; SCOPOLAMINE;

AMNESIA; ANESTHESIA; BIRTH CONTROL; CHILD HEALTH CARE; CHILDBIRTH; DRUG EFFECT; ECONOMICS; EPIDURAL ANESTHESIA; GENDER; GENERAL PRACTITIONER; GYNECOLOGY; HEALTH CARE COST; HEALTH CARE PERSONNEL; HUMAN; INDIA; INFANT MORTALITY; LABOR INDUCTION; LABOR PAIN; MATERNAL CARE; MATERNAL MORTALITY; MEDICAL PRACTICE; MIDWIFE; MYOMA; MYOMECTOMY; OBSTETRICS; PAIN; POLITICS; PREGNANCY; PUERPERIUM; REPRODUCTION; REVIEW; RURAL AREA; SOCIAL CLASS; TECHNOLOGY; UTERINE CERVIX DILATATION; UTERUS RELAXATION; ARTICLE; BIRTH; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; ETHNOLOGY; FEMALE; OBSTETRIC ANESTHESIA; PATIENT SATISFACTION; UTILIZATION REVIEW;

ANESTHESIA, OBSTETRICAL; CULTURE; FEMALE; HUMANS; INDIA; LABOR, INDUCED; OXYTOCIN; PARTURITION; PATIENT SATISFACTION; PREGNANCY;

EID: 0038011894     PISSN: 07455194     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/maq.2003.17.1.49     Document Type: Review

References (86)

1. All India Obstetric and Gynaecological Congress 1936 Proceedings of the First All India Obstetric and Gynaecological Congress. Madras: All India Obstetric and Gynaecological Congress.
2. Apple, Rima D., ed. 1990 Women, Health, and Medicine in America: A Historical Handbook. New York: Garland.
3. Arnold, David 1993 Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in 19th-Century India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
4. Bagchi, Jasodhara 1990 Representing Nationalism: Ideology of Motherhood in Colonial Bengal. Economic and Political Weekly 25(42 and 43):WS65-WS71.
5. Bala, Poonam 1991 Imperialism and Medicine in Bengal: A Socio-Historical Perspective. New Delhi: Sage.
6. Becker, Gay 2000 The Elusive Embryo: How Women and Men Approach New Reproductive Technologies. Berkeley: University of California Press.
7. Bhatia, J. C. 1988 A Study of Maternal Mortality in Anantapur District, Andhra Pradesh, India. Bangalore: Indian Institute of Management.
8. Boston Women's Health Collective 1992 The New Our Bodies Ourselves. New York: Simon and Schuster.
9. Chakrabarty, Dipesh 2000 Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
10. Chatterjee, Partha 1990 The Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question. In Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, eds. Pp. 233-253. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
11. Chawla, Janet 1994 Child-Bearing and Culture: Women Centered Revisioning of the Traditional Midwife: The Dai as a Ritual Practitioner. New Delhi: Indian Social Institute.
12. Das Gupta, Monica, and Lincoln C. Chen 1995 Overview. In Women's Health in India: Risk and Vulnerability. Monica Das Gupta, et al., eds. Pp. 1-16. Madras: Oxford University Press.
13. Davis-Floyd, Robbie E. 1992 Birth as an American Rite of Passage. Berkeley: University of California Press.
14. Davis-Floyd, Robbie, and Carolyn F. Sargent, eds. 1997 Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
15. Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Diedre English 1973 Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press.
16. Fielder, Deborah Cordero 1997 Authoritative Knowledge and Birth Territories in Contemporary Japan. In Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Robbie Davis-Floyd Carolyn F. Sargent, eds. Pp. 159-179. Berkeley: University of California Press.
17. Foucault, Michel 1973[1963] The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception. New York: Pantheon Books.
18. Fraser, Gertrude J. 1995 Modern Bodies, Modern Minds: Midwifery and Reproductive Change in an African American Community. In Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction. Faye D. Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp, eds. Pp. 42-58. Berkeley: University of California Press.
19. Gandotra, M. M., and Narayan Das 1988 Infant Mortality and Its Causes. Delhi: Himalaya Publishing House.
20. Georges, Eugenia 1997 Fetal Ultrasound Imaging and the Production of Authoritative Knowledge in Greece. In Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn F. Sargent, eds. Pp. 91-112. Berkeley: University of California Press.
21. Ginsburg, Faye D., and Rayna Rapp 1995 Introduction: Conceiving the New World Order. In Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction. Faye D. Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp, eds. Pp. 1-17. Berkeley: University of California Press.
22. Ginsburg, Faye D., and Rayna Rapp, eds. 1995 Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction. Berkeley: University of California Press.
23. Government of Tamil Nadu 1990 Children and Women in Tamilnadu: A Situation Analysis 1990. Madras: Government of Tamil Nadu.
24. 1993 State Plan of Action for the Child in Tamil Nadu. Madras: Government of Tamil Nadu.
25. 1994a Child Survival and Safe Motherhood in Tamil Nadu. Madras: Directorate of Public Health and Preventative Medicine.
26. 1994b Statistical Handbook of Tamil Nadu. Madras: Directorate of Public Health and Preventative Medicine.
27. The Hindu 1993 India and the World Bank. Hindu, February 23.
28. Horn, David G. 1994 Social Bodies: Science, Reproduction, and Italian Modernity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
29. Illich, Ivan 1976 Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health. New York: Pantheon Books.
30. Jain, Anrudh K., and Pravin Visaria, eds. 1988 Infant Mortality in India: Differentials and Determinants. New Delhi: Sage.
31. Jeffery, Roger 1988 The Politics of Health in India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
32. Jeffery, Patricia, Roger Jeffery, and Andrew Lyon 1988 Labour Pains and Labour Power: Women and Childbearing in India. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books.
33. Jejeebhoy, Shireen J., and Saumya Rama Rao 1995 Unsafe Motherhood: A Review of Reproductive Health. In Women's Health in India: Risk and Vulnerability. Monica Das Gupta, et al., eds. Pp. 122-152. Madras: Oxford University Press.
34. Jolly, Margaret 2002 Introduction. Birthing beyond the Confines of Tradition and Modernity? In Birthing in the Pacific: Beyond Tradition and Modernity? Vicki Lukere and Margaret Jolly, eds. Pp. 1-32. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
35. Jordan, Brigette 1978 Birth in Four Cultures: A Crosscultural Investigation of Childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, Sweden, and the United States. 1st edition. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
36. 1993 Birth in Four Cultures: A Crosscultural Investigation of Childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, Sweden, and the United States. 4th edition. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
37. Kitzinger, Sheila 1991[1980] The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
38. Kynch, Jocelyn 1987 Some State Responses to Male and Female Need in British India. In Women, State, and Ideology: Studies from Africa and Asia. Haleh Afshar, ed. Pp. 130-151. Albany: State University of New York Press.
39. Lakshmi, C. S. 1990 Mother, Mother-Community and Mother-Politics in Tamil Nadu. Economic and Political Weekly 25(42 and 43): WS72-WS83.
40. Lal, Maneesha 1994 The Politics of Gender and Medicine in Colonial India: The Countess of Dufferin's Fund, 1885-1888. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 68(1):29-66.
41. Leavitt, Judith W. 1986 Brought to Bed: Child-Bearing in America, 1750-1950. New York: Oxford University Press.
42. Lock, Margaret, and Patricia Kaufert 1998 Introduction. In Pragmatic Women and Body Politics. Margaret Lock and Patricia Kaufert, eds. Pp. 1-27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
43. Lukere, Vicki, and Margaret Jolly, eds. 2002 Birthing in the Pacific: Beyond Tradition and Modernity? Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
44. Mahadevan, K, M. S. R. Murthy, P. R. Reddy, P. J. Reddy, V. Gowri, and S. Sivaraju 1985 Infant and Childhood Mortality in India: Bio-Social Determinants. Delhi: Mittal Publications.
45. Mari Bhat, P. N., K. Navaneethan, and S. Irudaya Rajan 1995 Maternal Mortality: Estimates from an Econometric Model. In Women's Health in India: Risk and Vulnerability. Monica Das Gupta, et al., eds. Pp. 97-121. Madras: Oxford University Press.
46. Martin, Emily 1987 The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon Press.
47. Miller, L. G. 1979 Pain, Parturition, and the Profession: Twilight Sleep in America. In Health Care in America: Essays in Social History. S. Reverby and D. Rosner, eds. Pp. 19-37. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
48. Mukhopadhyay, Alok 1992 Health Systems and Services. In State of India's Health. Mukhopadhyay, Alok, ed. Pp. 53-85. New Delhi: Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI).
49. Oakley, Ann 1984 The Captured Womb: A History of the Medical Care of Pregnant Women. New York: Basil Blackwell.
50. Ortiz, Anna 1997 "Bare-Handed" Medicine and Its Elusive Patients: The Unstable Construction of Pregnant Women and Fetuses in Dominican Obstetrics Discourse. Feminist Studies 23(2):263-288.
51. Osherson, Samuel, and Lorna Amarasingham 1981 The Machine Metaphor in Medicine. In Social Contexts of Health, Illness and Patient Care. Elliot Mishler, ed. Pp. 218-249. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
52. Parsai, Gaigi 1995 Tamil Nadu Family Planning Drive "A Success." Hindu, May 4.
53. Pear, Robert 1999 Mothers on Medicaid Overcharged for Pain Relief. New York Times, March 8.
54. Pigg, Stacy Leigh 1997 Authority in Translation: Finding, Knowing, Naming, and Training "Traditional Birth Attendants" in Nepal. In Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn F. Sargent, eds. Pp. 233-262. Berkeley: University of California Press.
55. Radhika, Vaidya M., and A. V. Balasubramanian 1990 Mother and Child Care in Traditional Medicine, Part 2. Madras: LSPSS Monograph No. 4.
56. Ram, Kalpana 1994 Medical Management and Giving Birth: Responses of Coastal Women in Tamil Nadu. In Reproductive Health Matters 4:20-26.
57. 1998 Maternity and the Story of Enlightenment in the Colonies: Tamil Coastal Women, South India. In Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific. Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly, eds. Pp. 114-143. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
58. 2001a Implicit and Discursive Knowledge: Fieldwork among Midwives in South India. Lecture presented in the Department of Anthropology lecture series on Anthropology Engages Ethics, University of Notre Dame, April 23.
59. 2001b Rationalizing Fecund Bodies: Family Planning Policy and the Modern Indian Nation-State. In Borders of Being: Citizenship, Fertility, and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific. Margaret Jolly and Kalpana Ram, eds. Pp. 82-117. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
60. Ram, Kalpana, and Margaret Jolly, eds. 1998 Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
61. Ramaswamy, Sumati 1997 Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891-1970. Berkeley: University of California Press.
62. Ramusack, Barbara 1996 Motherhood and Medical Intervention: Women's Bodies and Professionalism in India After World War I. Paper presented for panel on "The Modernization of Health Care in India: Women as Practitioners and Patients" at the 25th Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison, Wisconsin, October 18-20.
63. 1997 Issues of Equity: Maternal Medical Facilities in Rural Mysore, 1880-1920. Paper presented for panel on "Maternal Birth Experiences: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives" at the 26th Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison, Wisconsin, October 18.
64. Rapp, Rayna 1991 Moral Pioneers: Women, Men, and Fetuses on a Frontier of Reproductive Technology. In Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era. Micaela di Leonardo, ed. Pp. 383-395. Berkeley: University of California Press.
65. 2000 Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America. New York: Routledge.
66. Ravindran, T. K. Sundari 1995 Women's Health in a Rural Poor Population in Tamil Nadu. In Women's Health in India: Risk and Vulnerability. Monica Das Gupta, et al., eds. Pp. 175-211. Madras: Oxford University Press.
67. Reissman, Catherine K. 1983 Women and Medicalization: A New Perspective. Social Policy 14(1):3-18.
68. Rozario, Santi 1998 The Dai and the Doctor: Discourses on Women's Reproductive Health in Rural Bangladesh. In Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific. Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly, eds. Pp. 144-176. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
69. Russett, Cynthia Eagle 1989 Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
70. Sandhya, S. 1991 Socio-Economic and Cultural Correlates of Infant Mortality: A Demographic Appraisal. New Delhi: Concept Publishing.
71. Sargent, Carolyn F. 1982 The Cultural Context of Therapeutic Choice: Obstetrical Care Decisions among the Bariba of Benin. Boston: D. Reidel.
72. 1989 Maternity, Medicine, and Power: Reproductive Decisions in Urban Benin. Berkeley: University of California Press.
73. Sargent, Carolyn, and Grace Bascope 1997 Ways of Knowing about Birth in Three Cultures. In Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn F. Sargent, eds. Pp. 183-208. Berkeley: University of California Press.
74. Sargent, Carolyn, and Joan Rawlins 1992 Transformations in Maternity Services in Jamaica. Social Science and Medicine 35:1225-1232.
75. Shiva, Mira 1992 Women and Health. In State of India's Health. Alok Mukhopadhyay, ed. Pp. 265-301. New Delhi: Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI).
76. Smith-Rosenberg, Caroll 1985 Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York: Oxford University Press.
77. Srinivasa, D. K., K. A. Narayan, Asha Oumachigui, and Gutam Roy 1997 Prevalence of Maternal Morbidity in a South Indian Community. P. iii. Pondicherry, India: Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research.
78. Trawick, Margaret 1992 Death and Nurturance in Indian Systems of Healing. In Paths to Asian Medical Knowledge. Charles Leslie and Allan Young, eds. Pp. 129-159. Berkeley: University of California Press.
79. UNICEF 1990 Children and Women in India: A Situation Analysis. New Delhi: UNICEF.
80. Van Hollen, Cecilia 1998 Moving Targets: Routine IUD Insertion in Maternity Wards in Tamil Nadu, India. Reproductive Health Matters 6(11):98-106.
81. 2002 "Baby Friendly" Hospitals and Bad Mothers: Maneuvering Development in the Postpartum Period in Tamil Nadu, South India. In Daughters of Hariti: Birth and Female Healers in South and Southeast Asia. Santi Rozario and Geoffrey Samuel, eds. Pp. 163-181. New York: Routledge Press.
82. 2003 Birth on the Threshold: Childbirth and Modernity in South India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
83. Visaria, P. 1971 The Sex Ratio of the Population of India. Monograph no. 10, Census of India, 1961, vol. 1. New Delhi: Manager of Publications.
84. Wadley, Susan 1980 Paradoxical Powers of Tamil Women. In The Powers of Tamil Women. Susan Wadley, ed. Pp. 153-170. Syracuse: Foreign and Comparative Studies Program, Syracuse University.
85. Wadley, Susan, ed. 1980 The Powers of Tamil Women. Syracuse: Foreign and Comparative Studies Program, Syracuse University.
86. World Health Organization (WHO) 1996 WHO South-East Asia Region: Regional Health Report. New Delhi: WHO.