Main description:

A comprehensive overview of how complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and traditional medicine (TM) affect women's reproductive health, this volume brings together a diverse collection of perspectives from the field to explore the role of CAM and TM across cultures. Providing a detailed analysis, authors address the cultural values and medicinal uses of CAM and TM for reproductive health among women in different sociocultural environments and geographic settings. Maria Costanza Torri and Jennie Hornosty's edited collection explores how traditional practices can improve the well-being of women and highlights the differences and complementarities between traditional medicine and biomedicine. Accessible and pedagogically rich, this is a crucial contribution to medical anthropology, sociology of health and medicine, women's health, public health, and health policy.

Contents:

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: Key Issues and Historical Perspective
Chapter 1. Introducing Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Traditional Medicine, and Gender, Daniel Hollenberg and Maria Costanza Torri
Chapter 2. Women as Healers in the Global Community: An Overview from Antiquity to the Present, Daniel Hollenberg
Chapter 3. Herbal Fertility Treatments in Colonial North America and Prospects for Modern Medicine, Cheryl Lans and Rachel Westfall
Chapter 4. Being "There" for Pregnant Women: Canadian Midwives in Aboriginal and Settler Communities, Cecilia Benoit, Dena Carroll, and Rachel Westfall
Part II: Global South
Chapter 5. Childbirth in Brazil: Voices of Brazilian Women, Natalia Rejane Salim and Julie Laplante
Chapter 6. Towards the Construction of Intercultural Birth Practices and Reproductive Health in Ecuador: The Case Study of San Luis Hospital, Maria Costanza Torri
Chapter 7. Giving Birth in the City of Cochabamba, Bolivia: Traditional Birth Attendants' Practices Versus Biomedical Maternal Health Care, Maria Costanza Torri and Julie Laplante
Chapter 8. Women, Jamu, and Breastfeeding Practices in Indonesia, John Paul Nyonator
Chapter 9. Traditional Medicine and Reproductive Health, Conception, and Fertility in Turkey, Tamer Edirne
Chapter 10. Birth from the Peripheries: Local Realities in Dzodze, Ghana, John Paul Nyonator
Paer III: Global North
Chapter 11. How Alternative? A Postcolonial Feminist Analysis of Two Popular Complementary and Alternative Medicine Hot Flash Remedies, Nadine E. Ijaz
Chapter 12. The Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine by Australian Women for Infertility, Jo-Anne Rayner and Karen Willis
Chapter 13. Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners' Constructions of "Hard" and "Soft" Evidence in the Treatment of Fertility Issues: Opportunities and Challenges, Ana M. Ning
Chapter 14. The Value of Complementary and Alternative Medicine for Breast Cancer Survivorship, Ausanee Wanchai, Jane M. Armer, and Bob R. Stewart
Conclusion
Contributors