Main description:

This open access edited book brings together new research on the mechanisms by which maternal and reproductive health policies are formed and implemented in diverse locales around the world, from global policy spaces to sites of practice. The authors - both internationally respected anthropologists and new voices - demonstrate the value of ethnography and the utility of reproduction as a lens through which to generate rich insights into professionals' and lay people's intimate encounters with policy.

Authors look closely at core policy debates in the history of global maternal health across six different continents, including:

Women's use of misoprostol for abortion in Burkina Faso
The place of traditional birth attendants in global maternal health
Donor-driven maternal health programs in Tanzania
Efforts to integrate qualitative evidence in WHO maternal and child health policy-making

Anthropologies of Global Maternal and Reproductive Health will engage readers interested in critical conversations about global health policy today. The broad range of foci makes it a valuable resource for teaching in medical anthropology, anthropology of reproduction, and interdisciplinary global health programs. The book will also find readership amongst critical public health scholars, health policy and systems researchers, and global public health practitioners.

Contents:

Foreword

Craig Janes

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Introduction

Lauren J. Wallace, Margaret E. Macdonald & Katerini T. Storeng

Part I. Implementation Disconnects and Policy Rhetoric

Chapter 2. Baby (not so) Friendly: Implementation of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative in Serbia

Ljiljana Pantovic

Chapter 3. The Promise and Neglect of Follow-up Care in Obstetric Fistula Treatment in Uganda

Bonnie Ruder & Alice Aturo Emasu

Chapter 4. The Domestication of Misoprostol for Abortion in Burkina Faso: Interactions Between Caregivers, Drug Vendors and Women

Seydou Drabo

Chapter 5. The 'Sustainability Doctrine' in Donor-driven Maternal Health Programs in Tanzania

Meredith G. Marten

Part II. Policy Ambivalence

Chapter 6. The Place of Traditional Birth Attendants in Global Maternal Health: Policy Retreat, Ambivalence, and Return

Margaret E. MacDonald

Chapter 7. Conflicted Reproductive Governance: The Co-existence of Rights-Based Approaches and Coercion in India's Family Planning Policies

Maya Unnithan

Part III. Contesting Authoritative Knowledge and Practice

Chapter 8. Regulating Midwives: Foreclosing Alternatives in the Policy-making Process in West Java, Indonesia

Priscilla Anne Magrath

Part IV. The Rise of Evidence and its Uses

Chapter 9. Making Space for Qualitative Evidence in Global Maternal and Child Health Policy-making

Christopher J. Colvin

Chapter 10. The International Childbirth Initiative: An Applied Anthropologist's Account of Developing Global Guidelines

Robbie Davis-Floyd

Chapter 11. Selling Beautiful Births: The Use of Evidence by Brazil's Humanised Birth Movement

Lucy Irvine