"Wives and Midwives"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses Carol Laderman's book, "Wives and Midwives: Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia", presenting an anthropological evaluation of the effects of nutrition on the women of Malaysia. The paper examines Laderman's focus on women, including marriage, childbirth, and sexual values. The paper analyzes the cultural superstitions regarding food and nutrition for women.

From the Paper:

"Medical anthropology, which combines the disciplines of physical anthropology, ethnography, linguistics and archeology, presents a "picture of the human condition in the round," author Laderman writes in her Introduction. And medical anthropology can also be employed to try to understand "the workings of a culture," she adds. Indeed, the way a culture works in one part of the world sheds light and understanding on how cultures work in all corners of the world, which is the principal reason for anthropological study. As for the purpose behind her studies and her book, Laderman writes (7) that she intended to focus on the diet (nutrition) of women following childbirth, but to be thorough, she needed to know if ?the diet during pregnancy varied from the non-pregnant diet,? in order to understand the changes that take place "during the puerperium" (the time between when a woman gives birth and when her uterus returns to its normal size)."

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