Fistula Politics : Birthing Injuries and the Quest for Continence in Niger / Alison Heller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Heller, Alison, Author.

Series:

Medical Anthropology

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (270 p.) : 25 color and B-W photos

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Obstetric fistula is a birthing injury caused by prolonged obstructed labor that results in urinary and fecal incontinence. It is nearly non-existent in the Global North. In contrast Niger, in West Africa, has one of the highest rates of fistula in the world. In Western humanitarian and media narratives, fistula is presented as deeply stigmatizing, resulting in divorce, abandonment by kin, exile from communities, depression and suicide. In Fistula Politics, Alison Heller illustrates the inaccuracy of these popular narratives and shows how they serve the interests not of the women so affected, but of humanitarian organizations, the media, and local clinics.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Foreword / Manderson, Lenore

List of Abbreviations

Note on Terminology

1. Incontinence and Inequalities

Part I: Living Incontinence

Laraba's Story: Rejection, Resistance, Refusal

2. Fistula Stigma

3. Liminal Wives

Part II: Clinical Encounters

Six Beds, Sixty Minutes

4. The "Worst Place to Be a Mother"

5. The Indeterminable Wait

Part III: The Marketplace of Victimhood

Arantut's Story: The Other Extreme

6. Superlative Sufferers

7. Costs and Consequences

8. The Threshold of Continence

Appendix

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 21. Dez 2019)

ISBN:

1-9788-0040-1

OCLC:

1121056521