Breastfeeding: New Anthropological Approaches unites sociocultural, biological, and archaeological anthropological scholarship to spark new conversations and research about breastfeeding. While breastfeeding has become the subject of intense debate in many settings, anthropological perspectives have played a limited role in these conversations. The present volume seeks to broaden discussions around breastfeeding by showcasing fresh insights gleaned from an array of theoretical and methodological approaches, which are grounded in the close study of people across the globe.
Drawing on case studies and analyses of key issues in the field, the book highlights the power of anthropological research to illuminate the evolutionary, historical, biological, and sociocultural context of the complex, lived experience of breastfeeding. By bringing together researchers across three anthropological subfields, the volume seeks to produce transformative knowledge about human lactation, breastfeeding, and human milk.
This book is a key resource for scholars of medical and biological anthropology, evolutionary biology, bioarchaeology, sociocultural anthropology, and human development. Lactation professionals and peer supporters, midwives, and others who support infant feeding will find the book an essential read.
Foreword: Translating conversations: bridging biological and social approaches to breastfeeding 1. Introduction: towards new anthropologies of breastfeeding 2. Beyond passive immunity: breastfeeding, milk and collaborative mother-infant immune systems 3. Consuming immunities: milk sharing and the social life of passive immunity 4. Breastsleeping in four cultures: comparative analysis of a biocultural body technique 5. "Natural, like my hair": conceptualizations of breastfeeding among African American women 6. Breastfeeding and body size 7. Mothers, milk, and morals: peer milk sharing as moral motherwork in Central Florida 8. Milk medium chain fatty acids and human evolution 9. Chestfeeding as gender fluid practice 10. Mixed-feeding in humans: evolution and current implications 11. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings: breastfeeding and weaning in the past 12. Shifting weanling's optimum: breastfeeding ecology and infant health in Yucatán 13. New mothers' breastfeeding expectations, challenges, and the return to employment 14. Understanding and enabling breastfeeding in the context of maternal-infant needs Afterword: Breastfeeding: in search of the right questions
