Although birth is considered one of the few universals of the human experience, Sheila Cosminsky illustrates through its rituals and traditions how childbirth is culturally informed. Drawing on decades of fieldwork in a Guatemalan finca (plantation) and close connections with the two main comadronas (midwives) on that plantation, Cosminsky provides vivid examples of how pregnancy, childbirth, a...

ABSTRACT The present study, of conceptual bibliographic nature, was based on the theoretical assumptions Historical-Cultural Psychology. Its objective to defend relevance higher mental functions development, from school education, in opposition hegemonic vision that culminates medicalization students. We identified education is pivotal point for good such as attention, which allows us criticize...

Studies regarding the medicalization process generally focus on the way various physical and psychological conditions have been identified as "health" problems, within specific historical contexts. Less well known is how the therapeutic roles of certain "health" professionals were also a result of the confluence of particular historical events. By comparing the professional trajectories of Queb...

Using Jordan's concept of authoritative knowledge, this article describes some of the ways that the prenatal care practices of a group of U.S. women help to consolidate biomedical hegemony. We analyze the considerations that the women took into account when deciding whether or not to accept specific prenatal care recommendations as authoritative, focusing on when and how they used their own "em...

This essay aims to contribute the contemporary transgender debate by using Lili Elbe’s account of her life in Man Into Woman (1933), David Ebershoff’s novel The Danish Girl (2000) and Tom Hooper’s film adaptation latter (2015) as case studies. All three narratives explore biologism medicalization being closely aligned with Frankenstein metaphor terms conceptualization trans bodies. However, thi...