Search results for ""author abigail l. palko""

For myriad reasons, breastfeeding is a fraught issue among mothers in the U.S. and other industrialized nations, and breastfeeding advocacy in particular remains a source of contention for feminist scholars and activists. Breastfeeding raises many important concerns surrounding gendered embodiment, reproductive rights and autonomy, essentializing discourses and the struggle against biology as destiny, and public policies that have the potential to support or undermine women, and mothers in particular, in the workplace. The essays in this collection engage with the varied and complicated ways in which cultural attitudes about mothering and female sexuality inform the way people understand, embrace, reject, and talk about breastfeeding, as well as with the promises and limitations of feminist breastfeeding advocacy. They attend to diffuse discourses about and cultural representations of infant feeding, all the while utilizing feminist methodologies to interrogate essentializing ideologies that suggest that women’s bodies are the “natural” choice for infant feeding. These interdisciplinary analyses, which include history, law, art history, literary studies, sociology, critical race studies, media studies, communication studies, and history, are meant to represent a broader conversation about how society understands infant feeding and maternal autonomy.

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Mothers, Mothering, and Globalization is an anthology that cogently and powerfully examines the diverse and complex experiences of motherhood and mothering from a broad interdisciplinary perspective. The lucid analysis of how globalization influences the lives of mothers, especially in regard to cultural, political, historical, social, and economic factors, provides a compelling examination of the myriad of relationships between mothering and globalization. The collection also surveys multiple approaches to mothers, mothering, and globalization and contributes to a nascent dialogue through its interrogation of the impact of globalization on mothers and mothering practices through the lenses of feminist ideologies; literary criticism; and cultural, social, and economic analyses.

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