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This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.

1: Introduction -- 1.1. The Study -- 1.2. The Setting -- 1.3. Methodology -- 1.4. Theoretical Perspectives on Health Care Decisions -- 2: The Cultural Context of Therapeutic Choice -- 2.1. Bariba Conceptions of the Order of the Universe -- 2.2. Diagnosis and Treatment -- 2.3. Divination -- 2.4. The Use of Substances -- 2.5. Medicines -- 3: Beliefs and Practices Surrounding Reproductive Processes -- 3.1. Menstruation and Clitoridectomy -- 3.2. Conception -- 3.3. Development of Fetus -- 3.4. Contraception -- 3.5. Abortion -- 3.6. Sterility -- 4: Status Among the Bariba: The Roles and Responsibilities of Women -- 4.1. Status in Bariba Society -- 4.2. Position of Women -- 4.3. Economic Subsistence -- 4.4. Political Arena -- 4.5. Domestic Relations -- 4.6. Household Responsibilities -- 5: Sociological and Career Attributes of Midwives -- 5.1. Healers: Midwives and Medicine People -- 5.2. Implications of Role Expectations for Birth Assistance -- 5.3. Recruitment of Matrones and Method of Skill Acquisition -- 5.4. Sources of Medical Knowledge -- 5.5. Matrones Own Reproductive Histories -- 5.6. Age at Unsupervised Delivery -- 5.7. Assistance at Own Child's Delivery -- 5.8. Remuneration -- 5.9. Comprehensive Care by Matrones -- 5.10. Pregnancy Counseling -- 5.11. Matrone's Role Variability -- 5.12. Spirit Possession -- 5.13. Inheritance of Spirits -- 5.14. Healing and Sambani -- 5.15. The Matrone Prototype -- 6: The Meaning of Efficacy in Relation to Obstetrical Care Preferences -- 7: Birth Assistance in the Rural Area: Patterns of Delivery Assistance -- 7.1. Delivery Assistance: Patterns of Selection in the Rural Area -- 7.2. Midwifery as a Therapeutic System -- 7.3. Structured Interviews with Matrones -- 8: Client-Practitioner Encounters -- 8.1.1. The Case of Adama -- 8.1.2. The Case of Sako -- 8.1.3. The Case of the Prolapsed Cord -- 8.1.4. The Case of the Terrifying Breech 120 -- 8.1.5 The Case of Bona -- 8.2. Pain as a Cultural Phenomenon -- 8.3. Pregnancy (by Nicole) -- 8.4. Conclusion -- 9: Utilization of National Health Services for Maternity Care in the District of Kouande -- 9.1. Clinic vs. Home Delivery: A Pehunko Sample -- 9.2. Utilization of the Pehunko Dispensary -- 9.3. Pehunko Women at the Kouande Maternity Clinic -- 9.4. The Kouande Maternity Clinic: General Utilization -- 10: Conclusion -- 10.1. Implications of the Bariba Study for the Cross-Cultural Study of Midwifery -- 10.2. The Involvement of Indigenous Midwives in National Health Systems -- 10.3. Training Programs -- Appendices -- Appendix A: Demographic Data -- Appendix B: Female Circumcision Songs -- Notes.

Globalization, including the global flows of people, is clearly linked to disease transmission and vulnerability to health risks among immigrant populations. Anthropological research on transnational migration and health documents the implications of population movements for health and well-being. Studies of immigrant health reveal the importance of the social, political, and economic production of distress and disease as well as the structures and dynamics that produce particular patterns of access to health services. This review points to underlying political, economic, and social structures that produce particular patterns of health and disease among transnational migrants. Both critical and phenomenological analyses explore ideas of alterity and community, which underlie the production and management of immigrant health. Research on immigrant health underscores the importance of further attention to policies of entitlement and exclusion, which ultimately determine health vulnerabilities and accessibility of health care.

(Originally published in American Ethnologist, 19, 3, 523-537.) An exploration of the implications of a gender preference for girls in Jamaica focuses on child care practices, including child abandonment, drawing on 1987-1989 research in a low-income Kingston neighborhood, comprising census & reproductive history information; interview data from 50 women; anthropometric assessment of 211 primary school students; analysis of 114 case reports of abandoned children; & morbidity survey data on 40 children. The position of Jamaican women as mothers, heads of household, & primary economic providers is discussed in relation to gender preferences. Analyses reveal a pattern of gender preference for girls that was exacerbated by a deteriorating economic situation. It is suggested that higher mortality & morbidity rates among boys born to low-income women may have been due to cultural values favoring girls, & negative attitudes exhibited by mothers toward their male offspring could influence health status. Economic stress is found to be the dominant factor involved in abandonment, although moral/psychological defects on the part of the mother were also cited, especially in situations where the child was not left with responsible people. Six individual cases are related to illustrate various conditions of abandonment. 6 Tables, 52 References. J. Lindroth

Introduces a book on the cultural politics of childhood that focuses on the public nature of childhood & the private inability of families to protect children from economic/political realities that influence biological/psychological disease. Childhood involves discourses & cultural practices that promote both love/protection & abuse. Contributors build on the idea that children are actors in the creation of cultural definitions to explore the impact of everyday practices, as well as global political-economic structures, on the place & treatment of children. It is contended that the neoliberalism, modernity, & technology of the 1970s & 1980s had an adverse effect on child survival. In many countries, transitions to democracy in the 1990s were accompanied by the emergence of children's rights discourse, but it remains unclear how this discourse will be interpreted & applied to communities with radically different social, cultural, & historical contexts. Changing notions of the social value of children are discussed, along with elements of a child-centered anthropology. Each chapter is synopsized. 80 References. J. Lindroth

Global Health Goals & Local Constraints in a Rural Peruvian Clinic / by Morgan K. Hoke, Samya R. Stumo, and Thomas L. Leatherman -- Science and Sanctity : Biomedicine and Christianity at an Ethiopian Hospital / by Anita Hannig -- The Cosmopolitan Hospital / by Cheryl Mattingly -- "Dangerous Disease" : Epilepsy in Asante / by William C. Olsen -- The Salience of the State in Biomedicine : Congo and Uganda Cases / compared by John M. Janzen -- Creating a therapeutic Community : Lessons from Allada Hospital Benin / y Mark Nichter, Ghislain Emmanuel Sopoh, and Roch Christian Johnson -- Medical "Errands" among Women with Cervical Cancer in Guatemala / by Anita Chary and Peter Rohloff -- Routinized Caring or a "Call" to Nursing : Shifts in Hospital Nursing in Rukwa, Tanzania / by Adrienne E. Strong -- "We Work with What We Have, Not with What We Would Like to Have" : Hospital Care in Mexico / by Vania Smith-Oka and Kayla Hurd -- The Navigation of Public Hospitals by West African Immigrants with Cancer in Paris, France / by Carolyn Sargent -- Each Child is Unique : The Responsible US Parent's Take on Hospital Care Gone Wrong / by Elisa J. Sobo -- Making Ethnographic Sense of Cesarean Rates in Greek Public Hospitals / by Eugenia Georges -- The Nightside of Medicine : Obstetric Suffering and Ethnographic Witnessing in a Pakistani Hospital / by Emma Varley -- Afterword / by Claire Wendland.