Birth on the Threshold

Flexible protocols and paused audio recorders: The limitations and possibilities for technologies of care in two global mental health interventions

“…Yet, sakhis are asked to share their experiences through the technical format of the field guide. The intervention depends on lists, manuals, and questionnaires to consider perinatal depression: an illness experience that is conceptualized nationally and considered locally through frameworks of the everyday (see, for example, ( Addlakha, 2008 ; Pinto, 2014 ; Van Hollen, 2003 ).…”

‘Mothers Have Become Monsters’: Danger, Distress and Deviance in British Evangelical Depictions of Indian Motherhood, 1757–1857

“…mothers became a powerful political device, as claims to protect the interests of vulnerable women and infants were made on behalf of both the colonial state and Indian nationalists. 2 This was epitomised by the controversy surrounding the publication of Katherine Mayo's Mother India in 1927. An American imperial apologist, Mayo blamed the degraded social, political and physical condition of India on the Hindu male's 'manner of getting into the world and his sex-life thenceforward', attacking reproductive practices that took 'a girl child twelve years old, a pitiful physical specimen in bone and blood, illiterate, ignorant, without any sort of training in habits of health' and 'force [d] motherhood upon her at the earliest possible moment'.…”

“…There are many pleasing scenes in India, of the poor delighting in their children…' 49 Thus as Van Hollen points out for the early twentieth century, if Indian women were bad mothers it was usually assumed to be 'because they [were] ignorant, not because they [were] immoral.' 50 In early colonial evangelical accounts, this 'ignorance' was specifically located in socio-religious impositions that limited opportunities for female education, and 'indoctrinated' women with a set of 'false beliefs' and 'superstitions' that were constantly in conflict with her natural inclinations as a mother.…”

Hospital Paperworlds: Medical (Mis)Reporting and Maternal Health in Northern Pakistan

“…Anthropologists of global health have long explored hospital infrastructures and bureaucracies (see Brunson 2010; Livingston 2012; Storeng and Mishra 2014; Street 2014; Strong 2020; Van Hollen 2003; Varley and Varma 2018) and prioritized analysis of the evidence and metrics on which not only health care systems but also governments and their intervention partners’ evaluations rely (see Adams 2016; Brunson and Suh 2020; Davis 2017; Gutschow 2016; Melberg et al. 2018; Oni‐Orisan 2016; Storeng and Behague 2014; Wendland 2016).…”

“…Anthropologists of global health have long explored hospital infrastructures and bureaucracies (see Brunson 2010;Livingston 2012;Storeng and Mishra 2014;Street 2014;Strong 2020;Van Hollen 2003;Varley and Varma 2018) and prioritized analysis of the evidence and metrics on which not only health care systems but also governments and their intervention partners' evaluations rely (see Adams 2016;Brunson and Suh 2020;Davis 2017;Gutschow 2016;Melberg et al 2018;Oni-Orisan 2016;Storeng and Behague 2014;Wendland 2016). Biopolitically speaking, in maternal health policy, planning, and operations, medical records-or scripts-serve as a technocratic domain in which medical and humanitarian expertise and efficacy are empirically verified (see Erikson 2012).…”