While the process of childbirth is, in some sense, everywhere the same, it is also everywhere different in that
each culture has produced a birthing system that is strikingly dissimilar from the others. Based on her fieldwork
in the United States, Sweden, Holland, and Yucatan, Jordan develops a framework for the discussion and investigation
of different birthing systems. Illustrated with useful examples and lively anecdotes from Jordan's own fieldwork,
the Fourth Edition of this innovative comparative ethnography brings the reader to a deeper understanding of childbirth
as a culturally grounded, biosocially mediated, and interactionally achieved event.
Table of Contents
Foreword 1993 (Robbie Davis-Floyd)
Preface to the Fourth Edition 1993
Preface to the Third Edition 1983
Part I. CHILDBIRTH IN BIOSOCIAL, CROSSCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
1. A Biosocial Framework for the Crosscultural Comparison of Childbirth Practices
2. Buscando La Forma--An Ethnography of Contemporary Maya Childbirth in Yucatan
3. The Crosscultural Comparison of Birthing Systems
4. Fieldwork in Four Cultures: Methods and Experience
5. Birthing Systems and Change
Part II. AUTHORITATIVE KNOWLEDGE IN CHILDBIRTH
6. The Achievement of Authoritative Knowledge in an American Hospital Birth
7. Modes of Teaching and Learning: Pedagogy and the Construction of Authoritative Knowledge
8. Cosmopolitical Obstetrics: Technology and the Social Distribution of Authoritative Knowledge
