Milton Herrera is an Adjunct Assistant Medical Professor at the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, The City College of New York in New York City. He has a Ph.D. in both Physical and Cultural Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York, and an M.D. degree from Universidad Central del Ecuador in Quito, Ecuador. Herrera is a medical anthropologist and human biologist interested in biology and cultural interactions. His research examines the effects of stress, resilience, and plasticity on health and illness. He is involved in international academic collaboration in subjects on culture and health.
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Overview
The primary focus of this
book is the phenomenon of breastmilk insufficiency. As we might expect, the concept of breastmilk
volume is as puzzling to breastfeeding mothers as it is to researchers, since
the amount of breastmilk an infant consumes when breastfeeding is generally
impossible for the breastfeeding mother to know exactly. So, the phenomenon of breastmilk
insufficiency is basically the “perception” by the mother of not having enough
breastmilk for her infant at some point during lactation. The implication of this perception can be
devastating when mothers eventually stop breastfeeding altogether. Unfortunately, the perception of breastmilk
insufficiency is increasing worldwide, and, more than ever, we need to
understand the causation of the phenomenon to take concrete measures to curb
it. There is also a need to examine
variation in breastfeeding patterns in different cultures.
Description
This book is
an outgrowth of the field research on the phenomenon of breastmilk
insufficiency in Esmeraldas, Ecuador (2008).
Theoretically speaking, in these pages, the reader will find a constant
link between the cultural and biological spheres, thus further developing the
interdisciplinary theory on the breastmilk insufficiency phenomenon.
Methodologically speaking, this book is based on data from a prospective
longitudinal study. This work is
expected to contribute not only to the literature of human biology and medical
anthropology, but also to the fields of geography, demography, medicine,
nursing, physiology and psychology, among others.
This book’s specific aims
are threefold: first, to elucidate, define, and analyze the phenomenon of
breastmilk insufficiency. Second, to
show breastfeeding data from a Latin America region –for scholars to have more
data to examine breastfeeding’s human ecology.
Third, to share the first-hand methodology and fieldwork techniques used
for many years, that can be replicated in further research.
Moreover,
this book broadens the ideas gleaned from the study of
breastfeeding to biological and cultural phenomena in general. Characterizing the interaction between
biological and cultural factors as a dance, these two types of factors are
explored in detail, while arguing that that they are not only inextricably
linked, but that they are part and parcel of a whole phenomenon made up of the
interaction between the two. It is also
argued that this dance is fundamentally changing the human experience, in terms
of both biology and culture –which have become so intertwined that they should
be given a new name, culbios.
Book details
- Genre:social science
- Sub-genre:Anthropology / Physical
- Language:English
- Pages:228
- Paperback ISBN:9781098342821
