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Birthing, corporality and care among the Guarani Mbyá of southern Brazil

Prates, M. ORCID: 0000-0002-9528-7512 & Rodgers, D. (2021). Birthing, corporality and care among the Guarani Mbyá of southern Brazil. Vibrant : Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 18, doi: 10.1590/1809-43412021v18a501

Abstract

In this paper I draw attention to the happening of childbirth among the Guarani-Mbyá women. I highlight the centrality of a care language in the act of birth and of being born supported by the production of human bodies and kin. From Yva deliveries’ stories I explore the connection between silences, bodies and human and non-human socialities by interweaving it with native modes of care and a critical analysis of the medicalization of birth derived from the relationship with the “Juruá (“white”) system”. I emphasize a non-reductive understanding of life and health in the translation of epistelomogies of care between indigenous and biomedical sociocosmologies. The data presented are results from a long-term ethnographic research carried out among guarani-mbyá collectives of the southern Brazil.

Publication Type: Article
Publisher Keywords: Delivery and Birth; Guarani-Mbyá; Epistemologies of care; Medicalisation of Birth; Corporeality
Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology
H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Departments: School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Healthcare Services Research & Management
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