Kissing a Baby Is Not at All Good for Him

Infant Mortality, Medicine, and Colonial Modernity in the U.S.‐Occupied Philippines

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7179009
AutoresBonnie Mcelhinny (University of Toronto, autor de correspondencia)
Año2005
Volumen107
Número2
Páginas183-194
Fecha de publicación2005-05-23
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAmerican Anthropologist (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/aa.2005.107.2.183
OpenAlexW2140747291
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas22
Referencias citadas46

Feminist scholars have begun to consider the ways indigenous practices of child rearing were and are challenged in (post)colonial discourse and practice, and how these practices have become a terrain on which definitions of nation, state, and economy are contested. In this article, I adopt a historical anthropological approach to consider how Filipino child‐rearing strategies were described and stigmatized in educational, public health, and public welfare discourses in the U.S.‐occupied Philippines in the early 20th century. I demonstrate how public health practices and discourses that were generated as part of a “benevolent” campaign against high rates of infant mortality were strategically used as a weapon against Filipino arguments for independence. I also consider how discourses constructing Filipino caregivers as overly indulgent were linked to metropolitan concerns about production of the “new industrial man” and were used to develop a racialized critique of the cultural practices of Filipinos

Colonialism · Economic growth · Economics · Independence · Independence (probability theory · Indigenous · Metropolitan area · Modernity · Political science · Public health · Sociology · State (computer science · Welfare · Australian History and Society · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History · Law · Medicine · Philippine History and Culture