1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910597158103321

Autore

Cassidy Tanya

Titolo

Banking on milk : an ethnography of donor human milk relations / / Tanya Cassidy and Fiona Dykes, with Bernard Mahon

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London : , : Routledge, , 2019

ISBN

0-203-71305-2

1-351-36410-3

1-351-36411-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (147 pages)

Collana

Routledge studies in the sociology of health and illness

Disciplina

649.33

Soggetti

Breast milk - Collection and preservation

Breastfeeding

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- 1. Ethnography of exchanging human milk in the contemporary world -- 2. Moving hospital wetnurses to bureaus and banks -- 3. Building the science and society of human milk with banks / with Bernard P. Mahon -- 4. "It's not rocket science": practice and policy in human milk banking -- 5. Pumping for preemies -- 6. Building liquid bridges -- Endword / Tanya Cassidy.

Sommario/riassunto

Banking on Milk takes the reader on a journey through the everyday life of donor human milk banking across the United Kingdom (UK) and beyond, asking questions such as the following: Why do people decide to donate? How do parents of recipients hear about human milk? How does milk donation impact on lifestyle choices? Chapters record the practical everyday reality of work in a milk bank by drawing on extensive ethnographic observations and sensitive interview data from donors, mothers of recipients and the staff of four different milk banks from across the UK, and visits to milk banks across Europe and North America. It discusses the ongoing pressures to do with supply, demand and distribution. An empirically informed "ethnography of the contemporary", where both biosociality and biopower abound, this book includes an exploration of how milk banks evolved from registering wet nurses with hospitals, showing how a regulatory culture



of medical authority began to quantify and organize human milk as a commodity. This book is a valuable read for all those with an interest in breastfeeding or organ and tissue donation from a range of fields, including midwifery, sociology, anthropology, geography, cultural studies and public health.