Description
Book SynopsisAn ethnography of pregnancy and birth at a large New York City public hospital, that explores the role of race in the medical setting. It investigates how race - commonly seen as biological in the medical world - is socially constructed among women dependent on the public healthcare system for prenatal care and childbirth.
Trade Review"Powerful... Bridges builds a thoughtful and important argument... An enormously challenging and valuable book." -- Rayna Rapp Anthropological Quarterly "The richness of this book's ethnographic accounts is truly extraordinary, as is a detailed discussion of federal and state programs... Highly recommended." Choice "Her work should be read by everyone involved in delivering healthcare to those without class privilege." -- Rayna Rapp Anthropological Quarterly "A beautifully written and well researched ethnographic study of the delivery of prenatal and birth health care at one of our nation's most preeminent public hospitals." -- Laura Mamo American Journal Of Sociology
Table of ContentsACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE
CLASS
1 / Alpha Hospital: Unique, But Not Singular
2 / Pregnancy, Medicaid, State Regulation, and Legal Subjection
3 / Th e Production of Unruly Bodies
APRT TWO
RACE
4 / Th e “Primitive Pelvis,” Racial Folklore, and Atavism in Contemporary Forms of
Medical Disenfranchisement
5 / The Curious Case of the “Alpha Patient Population”
6 / Wily Patients, Welfare Queens, and the Reiteration of Race
EPILOGUE
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
