Recipient of the 2006 Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize for the best project in the area of medicine.
The author, a second-generation Greek American, returned to Greece with her young daughter to do fieldwork over the course of a decade. Focusing on Rhodes, an island that blends continuity with the past and rapid social change in often unexpected ways, she interviewed over a hundred women, doctors, and midwives about issues of reproduction.
The result is a detailed portrait of how a longstanding system of "local" gynecological and obstetrical knowledge under the control of women was rapidly displaced in the the period following World War II, and how the technologically-intensive biomedical model that took its place in turn assumed its own distinctive signature.
Bodies of Knowledge is a vivid ethnographic study of how a presumably globalizing and homogenizing process like medicalization can be reshaped as women and medical experts alike selectively accept or reject new practices and technologies. Georges found, for example, that women in Rhodes have enthusiastically embraced some new technologies, like fetal imaging during pregnancy, but rejected others, like medical contraception. They are also avid consumers of popular childbirth manuals.
This book is the recipient of the 2006 Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize for the best project in the area of medicine.
Eugenia Georges, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Rice University, is the author of The Making of a Transnational Community: Migration, Development, and Cultural Change in the Dominican Republic.
This book, written brilliantly and engagingly, is destined to become one of the primary works in the anthropology of reproduction. It is all about cultural uniqueness in the face of globalization, how Greeks so value modernity that they have given up a lot that was Greek in obtaining it, yet the way they 'do' modernity is nevertheless uniquely Greek.
--Robbie Davis-Floyd
Receive special announcements and offers in areas of your choice!
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.