Cecilia Van Hollen is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Syracuse University.

Maps
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Prologue: Birth on the Threshold
Introduction: Childbirth and Modernity in Tamil Nadu
1. The Professionalization of Obstetrics in Colonial India: The "Problem" of Childbirth in Colonial Discourse
2. Maternal and Child Health Services in the Postcolonial Era
3. Bangles of Neem, Bangles of Gold: Pregnant Women as Auspicious Burdens
4. Invoking Vali: Painful Technologies of Birth
5. Moving Targets: The Routinization of IUD Insertions in Public Maternity Wards
6. "Baby Friendly" Hospitals and Bad Mothers: Maneuvering Development during the Postpartum Period
Conclusion: Reproductive Rights, "Choices," and Resistance
Epilogue
Appendix I. Sample Questionnaires for Interviews
Appendix II. Official Structure of Maternal-Child Health Care Institutions and Practitioners in Tamil Nadu, 1995
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Even childbirth is affected by globalization-and in India, as elsewhere, the trend is away from home births, assisted by midwives, toward hospital births with increasing reliance on new technologies. And yet, as this work of critical feminist ethnography clearly demonstrates, the global spread of biomedical models of childbirth has not brought forth one monolithic form of "modern birth." Focusing on the birth experiences of lower-class women in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Birth on the Threshold reveals the complex and unique ways in which modernity emerges in local contexts.
Through vivid description and animated dialogue, this book conveys the birth stories of the women of Tamil Nadu in their own voices, emphasizing their critiques of and aspirations for modern births today. In light of these stories, author Cecilia Van Hollen explores larger questions about how the structures of colonialism and postcolonial international and national development have helped to shape the form and meaning of birth for Indian women today. Ultimately, her book poses the question: How is gender-especially maternity-reconfigured as birth is transformed?