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“Improving the Standard of Motherhood: Infant Welfare in Post-Slavery British Guiana” in Health and Medicine in the circum-Caribbean, 1800-1968

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“Improving the Standard of Motherhood: Infant Welfare in Post-Slavery British Guiana” in Health and Medicine in the circum-Caribbean, 1800-1968

“Improving the Standard of Motherhood: Infant Welfare in Post-Slavery British Guiana” in Health and Medicine in the circum-Caribbean, 1800-1968

This collection, which covers the French, Hispanic, Dutch, and British Caribbean, explores the cultural and social domains of medical experience and considers the dynamics and tensions of power. The chapters emphasize contestations over forms of medicalization and the controls of public health and address the politics of professionalization, not simply as an expression of colonial power but also of the power of a local elite against colonial or neo-colonial control. They pay particular attention to the significance of race and gender, focusing on such topics as conflicts over medical professionalization, control of women’s bodies and childbirth, and competition between ‘European’ and ‘Indigenous’ healers and healing practices. 

About the Author

Juanita De Barros is a professor of History at McMaster University and former president of the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

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