Giving Breast Milk:
Body Ethics and Contemporary Breastfeeding Practice
edited by Rhonda Shaw and Alison Bartlett
August 2010
264 pages $34.95
978-0-9866671-0-7
Click below to order at Brunswick Books:
http://brunswickbooks.ca/Giving-Breastmilk/
Review of Giving Breast Milk - October 24, 2011 - The Breastfeeding Blog
Giving Breast Milk Book Review
Reprinted with generous permission of Virigina Thorley and the International Lactation Consultant Association © ILCA May 2011 http://www.ilca.org
This fascinating collection samples new trends in research on breastmilk and the conditions of its production, consumption, and exchange. Imagining breastfeeding as more than an aspect of maternal being, Giving Breastmilk is interested in the ethical relations it generates, as well as it being valuable work that women do.
The chapters trace the social anxieties around breastmilk into courts of law, news media, cinema and international politics, analyse the experiences of mothers, children, intensive care nurses and recipients of donated milk, and consider the impact of milk pumps, AIDS, wet-nurses and marketing campaigns.
The place of breastmilk in culture and politics is never neutral, always contested, and this volume makes a substantial contribution to expanding the meanings of giving breastmilk.
Rhonda Shaw teaches in the School of Social & Cultural Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Since 2002 she has been researching body gifting practices including shared breastfeeding, ovarian egg donation, surrogate pregnancy arrangements, and organ donation and transplantation processes. Rhonda’s work has been published widely in international journals.
Alison Bartlett teaches Women’s Studies at the University of Western Australia. Her previous books include Breastwork: Rethinking Breastfeeding (2005) and Jamming the Machinery: contemporary Australian women’s writing (1998). Her research on cultural meanings of maternity, embodiment and breasted knowledge has been widely published.
Giving Breast Milk
Table of Contents
Introduction
Mapping the Ethics and Politics of Contemporary Breastmilk Exchange: An Introduction - Alison Bartlett and Rhonda Shaw
Part I: Making Milk
The Breast Pump - Cindy Stearns
The Ideological Work of Infant Feeding - Denise A. Copelton, Rebecca McGee, Andrew Coco, Isis Shanbaky, Timothy Riley
“Breast is Best” and Other Messages of Breastfeeding Promotion - Annette Beasley
The Lactating Body and Conflicting Ideals of Sexuality, Motherhood and Self - Monica Campo
Receiving and Enjoying Milk: What Breastfeeding Means to Children - Karleen Gribble
Part II: Sharing Milk
Perspectives on Ethics and Human Milk Banking - Rhonda Shaw
The Story of the Mothers’ Milk Bank of New England (MMBNE) - Naomi Bromberg Bar-Yam
Comparing Sharing and Banking Milk: Issues of Gift Exchange and Community in the Sudan and Ireland - Tanya M. Cassidy and Abdullahi El-Tom
Going with the Flow: Contemporary Discourses of Donor Breastmilk Use and Breastmilk in a Neonatal Intensive Care Setting - Carol Bartle
Wet-nursing, Milk Banks, and Black Markets: The Political Economy of Giving Breastmilk in Canada in the 20th and 21st century - Tasnim Nathoo and Aleck Ostry
Part III: Milk Politics
Breastfeeding And HIV/AIDS: Critical Gaps And Dangerous Intersections - Penny Van Esterik
From Maternal Love to Toxic Exposure: State Interpretations of Breastfeeding Mothers in the Child Welfare System - Jennifer A. Reich
Risk and Culture Revisited: Breastfeeding and the 2002 West Nile Virus Scare in the United States - Bernice L. Hausman
Part IV: Milk Theory
Giving Breastmilk as Being-with - Karen McBride-Henry and Rhonda Shaw
Breastfeeding Envy: Unresolved Patriarchal Envy and the Obstruction of Physiologically-Based Nursing Patterns - Keren Epstein-Gilboa
Breastfeeding and Time: In Search of a Language for Pleasure and Agency
- Alison Bartlett
From “Gift of Loss” to Self Care: The Significance of Induced Lactation in Takashi Miike’s Visitor Q - Fiona Giles
Demeter Press
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