Childbirth, maternity, and medical pluralism in French colonial Vietnam, 1880-1945

Bibliographic Information

Childbirth, maternity, and medical pluralism in French colonial Vietnam, 1880-1945

Thuy Linh Nguyen

(Rochester studies in medical history, v. 37)

University of Rochester Press, 2016

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [229]-237) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Explores the complex interactions between French medicine and Vietnamese childbirth traditions, documenting the emergence of a plural system of maternity services that incorporated both biomedical knowledge and local birthing traditions. This book explores the interactions between French medicine and Vietnamese childbirth traditions, examining how these interactions shaped maternal and infant health care in Vietnam. Armed with the language and expertise of modernmedicine, French physicians and administrators set out on a mission to relocate Vietnamese childbirth to a clinical setting. But as the French ventured into indigenous communities, they found themselves negotiating with a myriad of Vietnamese cultural practices relating to childbirth and infant care. Thwarted by local resistance, cultural misunderstanding, and ambiguous policy, the Western model of hospital birth neither displaced nor transformedindigenous birthing traditions in the ways the French had envisioned. Instead, as author Thuy Linh Nguyen demonstrates, the emergence of a plural system of maternity services, many of which were based on local practices and beliefs, served as a testimony to the compromises and adaptations made by both the French and Vietnamese populations. Thuy Linh Nguyen is assistant professor of history at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, NY.

Table of Contents

Introduction The First Encounters Maternity Hospitals Colonial Midwives The Ba mu and Childbirth Pluralism Scientific Motherhood and the Teaching of Maternity The Depression Era and the Discovery of the Child Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

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