Birth on the Threshold

This is an ethnographic study of the ways in which modernity is impacting the experiences of poor women during childbirth in Tamil Nadu, South India, and of the cultural constructions of gender produced in this process.

Cecilia Van Hollen is Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology at Syracuse University

Acknowledgments	ix
Note on Transliteration	xiii
Prologue: Birth on the Threshold	1	(4)
Introduction: Childbirth and Modernity in Tamil Nadu	5	(31)
1. The Professionalization of Obstetrics in Colonial India: The "Problem" of Childbirth in Colonial Discourse	36	(21)
2. Maternal and Child Health Services in the Postcolonial Era	57	(19)
3. Bangles of Neem, Bangles of Gold: Pregnant Women as Auspicious Burdens	76	(36)
4. Invoking Vali: Painful Technologies of Birth	112	(29)
5. Moving Targets: The Routinization of IUD Insertions in Public Maternity Wards	141	(25)
6. "Baby Friendly" Hospitals and Bad Mothers: Maneuvering Development during the Postpartum Period	166	(40)
Conclusion: Reproductive Rights, "Choices," and Resistance	206	(9)
Epilogue	215	(6)
Appendix I. Sample Interview Questionnaires	221	(15)
Appendix II. Official Structure of Maternal-Child Health Care Institutions and Practitioners in Tamil Nadu, 1995	236	(3)
Glossary	239	(4)
Notes	243	(22)
Bibliography	265	(16)
Index	281

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Birth on the Threshold

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials