Maternity and
Reproductive Health
in Asian
Societies
Edited by
Lenore Manderson &
Pranee Liamputtong Rice
The
Book
This collection examines enduring and topical questions in sexual and reproductive health in a range of contemporary Asian cultures. Beliefs and practices surrounding conception, pregnancy, birth, and confinement are studies in culturally specific contexts in Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Important and widely applicable health issues are also addressed, including the perception and management of HIV/AIDS, experiences of menopause and the interaction of cosmopolitan (“western”) medicine with traditional healthcare.
The
Editors
Lenore Manderson is an inaugural ARC Federation Fellow and Professor of Medical Anthropology at Monash University. She has conducted research in anthropology, social history and public health in Australia, South East and East Asia, and Africa, and has a broad interest in social inclusion, inequality, health, illness and wellbeing, and the social and political-economic factors that shape the human condition. She is co-editor of Chronic Conditions, Fluid States (2010) and author, among other works, of Surface Tensions (2011).
Pranee Liamputtong Rice
a table of
Contents
& Authors
PART I: BIRTH AND ITS INFLECTIONS
Chapter 1
Japanese women’s views on having children: the concepts of sazu-kara and tsuku-ru
Chapter 2
Of blood and foetuses: female fertility and women’s reproductive health in a North Balinese village
Chapter 3
Health beliefs and the use of antenatal care among pregnant women in southern Thailand
Chapter 4
Use of health services by Filipino women during childbearing episodes
PART II: FROM HER WOMB . . .
Chapter 5
Journey to the land of light: birth among Hmong women
Chapter 6
A baby is born in Site 2 Camp: pregnancy, birth and confinement among Cambodian refugee women
Chapter 7
Healers and modern health services: antenatal, birthing and postpartum care in rural East Lombok, Indonesia
Chapter 8
Women as “good citizens”: maternal and child health in a Sasak village
Chapter 9
Tso Yueh-tzu (sitting the month) in contemporary Taiwan
PART III: THE WORKINGS OF THE BODY: ISSUES OF SEXUAL HEALTH
Chapter 10
White blood and falling wombs: ethnogynaecology in northeast Thailand
Chapter 11
No problem”: reproductive tract infections in Indonesia
Chapter 12
Blood beliefs in a transitional culture in northeastern Thailand
Chapter 13
Only when I have borne all my children!: the menopause in Hmong women
Chapter 14
TEEN “Vectors” and “Protectors”: women and HIV/AIDS in the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic