Carole H Browner
Biographic Data
| ID | 90938 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carole H Browner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carole H |
| FAMILY NAME | Browner |
| SIGNATURE | BROWNER C H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Los Angeles |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6754-389X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 64 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 606 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 63 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1974 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Moving beyond Neoliberal Models of Health Care
Bookshelf: Reproduction, Globalization, and the State: New Theoretical and Ethnographic Perspectives
The changing contexts of fertility outcomes: Case studies from a remote village in Bali, Indonesia
In the context of ready access to contraceptives, we sought to determine which individual and socio-cultural factors were most important in the dramatic fertility decline seen in an impoverished rural Balinese community. The study built on a 2002 longitudinal survey of 1528 Balinese reproductive-age married women that four years later found a significant proportion did not meet their expressed fertility aspirations. Four case studies of women who…
Lost in Translation: Lessons from California on the Implementation of State-Mandated Fetal Diagnosis in the Context of Globalization
Reproduction, Globalization, and the State: New Theoretical and Ethnographic Perspectives
creative, new anthropological research investigating the impact of these processes on human reproductive activities (Barnard 2000; Ginsburg and Rapp 1995; Inda and Rosaldo 2002; Van Hollen 2003).To help ameliorate this situation, in June 2006 we convened a workshop with eighteen scholars from Asia, Africa, Western Europe, and the United States.Our objectives were to enhance understanding of the consequences for reproduction, reproductive health, …
Matters of Choice: Puerto Rican Women's Struggle for Reproductive Freedom by Iris López
Interrogating the dynamics between power, knowledge and pregnant bodies in amniocentesis decision making
A common assumption is that women who decline prenatal testing distrust biomedicine and trust embodied/experiential knowledge sources, while women who accept testing trust biomedicine and distrust embodied/experiential sources. Another major assumption about prenatal testing utilisation is that women who are open to abortion will undergo prenatal testing while those who are opposed to abortion will decline testing. Yet, previous research has prod…
Diagnostic genetic testing for a fatal illness: The experience of patients with movement disorders
While neurologists encountered the social and ethical concerns associated with diagnosing incurable genetic diseases long before direct DNA testing became available, the increased availability of these tests has magnified these concerns.Most research has focused on the implications of testing asymptomatic individuals; research on the experience of patients with symptoms of heritable conditions is lacking, leaving an ambiguity about their needs wi…
Conscientious Autonomy: What Patients Do vs. What Is Done to Them
Hilde Lindemann, C. H. Browner, Carolyn McLeod, Tom L. Beauchamp, Rebecca Kukla, Conscientious Autonomy: What Patients Do vs. What Is Done to Them, The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 35, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 2005), pp. 4-7
Globalization Raises New Questions about the Politics of Reproduction
The social production of health: Critical contributions from evolutionary, biological, and cultural anthropology
Expectations, Emotions, and Medical Decision Making: A Case Study on the Use of Amniocentesis
The medical decision-making literature has paid scant attention to how prior expectations of patients and clinicians can influence medical encounters and affect patients' choices whether to accept or reject medical testing or treatment. To illuminate the issue, we offer a reflexive analysis of the experiences of a Mexican-American couple offered amniocentesis based on the woman's age and prior pregnancy history. We examine the impact of three pri…
Genetic counseling gone awry: Miscommunication between prenatal genetic service providers and Mexican-origin clients
I'm Not the One They're Sticking the Needle Into: Latino Couples, Fetal Diagnosis, and the Discourse of Reproductive Rights
Despite the growing routinization of prenatal diagnosis, little research has examined men's roles in this reproductive arena or these technologies' possibilities for reinforcing or transforming gender roles and relations. The authors analyze male partners' participation in the amniocentesis decisions of Mexican-origin women at high risk for problems, drawing on interviews with 157 women and 120 of their male partners. The primary aim is to explor…
Chronically Homeless Women's Perceived Deterrents to Contraception
Homeless women report substantial deterrents that reduce their contraceptive use. The multiplicity and heterogeneity of their perceived deterrents suggest a need for reproductive health services that are more integrated and culturally competent than those currently offered
Relationship power, decision making, and sexual relations: An exploratory study with couples of Mexican origin
This study explored how couples of Mexican origin define power in intimate relationships, what makes men and women feel powerful in relationships, and the role of each partner in decision making about sexual and reproductive matters. Interviews were conducted with each partner of 39 sexually active couples and data were analyzed using content analysis. Results indicate that power is perceived as control over one s partner and the ability to make …
Practices of the Pregnant Self: Compliance With and Resistance To Prenatal Norms
Strategies for Motivating Latino Couples' Participation in Qualitative Health Research and Their Effects on Sample Construction
Many investigators report difficulties recruiting low-income Latinos into health research projects, especially when they seek to enroll more than one family member. We developed a series of strategies that proved effective in motivating candidates who were initially reluctant to enroll. There is a possibility that these strategies biased the composition of the sample. Predictably, the reasons participants gave for enrolling were correlated with t…
Testing women, testing the fetus
Interpreting Low-Income Latinas’ Amniocentesis Refusals
As with other medical care, low-income Latinas turn down prenatal genetics services, including amniocentesis, more than any other U.S. group. Amniocentesis is a medical procedure that provides information about a fetus‘ health. Virtually all conditions the test detects are untreatable other than by induced abortion. Because little is known about why Latinas accept or decline amniocentesis and the role ethnicity might play in their decision, we so…
Situating Women's Reproductive Activities
In her pathbreaking book, Abortion and Woman's Choice, Rosalind Pollack Petchesky astutely observed that, in many societies, control over the methods and goals of reproduction is a critical site of contest, particularly between women and men. Yet the circumstances under which reproductive relations will be characterized by conflict, consensus, or some of both have seldom been systematically explored. In this paper, I therefore offer three example…
Latinas, Amniocentesis and the Discourse of Choice
Ethnicity, bioethics, and prenatal diagnosis: The amniocentesis decisions of Mexican-origin women and their partners
Bioethical standards and counseling techniques that regulate prenatal diagnosis in the United States were developed at a time when the principal constituency for fetal testing was a self-selected group of White, well-informed, middle-class women. The routine use of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) testing, which has become widespread since the mid-1980s, introduced new constituencies to prenatal diagnosis. These new constituencies include ethnic minority …
Because of the risks: How US pregnant women account for refusing prenatal screening
On the Medicalization of Medical Anthropology
The following address was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA), November 21,1997, Washington, DC, by outgoing SMA president Carole Browner. It has been edited slightly for publication
The Production of Authoritative Knowledge in American Prenatal Care
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 "embodied" knowledge and experience as a standard agains…
Why women say yes to prenatal diagnosis
A Methodology for Cross-cultural Ethnomedical Research [and Comments and Reply]
Situating Women's Reproductive Activities
In her pathbreaking book, Abortion and Woman's Choice, Rosalind Pollack Petchesky astutely observed that, in many societies, control over the methods and goals of reproduction is a critical site of contest, particularly between women and men. Yet the circumstances under which reproductive relations will be characterized by conflict, consensus, or some of both have seldom been systematically explored. In this paper, I therefore offer three example…
Because of the risks: How US pregnant women account for refusing prenatal screening
Women, household and health in Latin America
Feeding the Fetus: On Interrogating the Notion of Maternal-Fetal Conflict
Susan Markens, C. H. Browner, Nancy Press, Feeding the Fetus: On Interrogating the Notion of Maternal-Fetal Conflict, Feminist Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2, Feminists and Fetuses (Summer, 1997), pp. 351-372
How Modernization Can Also Increase Fertility [and Comments and Reply]
Industrialization, urbanization, and other associated processes of modernization generally lead to a reduction of fertility through the practice of birth control (contraception and induced abortion) and delayed age at marriage. The evidence reviewed in this paper demonstrates that these same processes may also have some fertility-increasing effects. Birth rate data for a few countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia clearly exhibit an increase…
Reproduction, Globalization, and the State: New Theoretical and Ethnographic Perspectives
creative, new anthropological research investigating the impact of these processes on human reproductive activities (Barnard 2000; Ginsburg and Rapp 1995; Inda and Rosaldo 2002; Van Hollen 2003).To help ameliorate this situation, in June 2006 we convened a workshop with eighteen scholars from Asia, Africa, Western Europe, and the United States.Our objectives were to enhance understanding of the consequences for reproduction, reproductive health, …
Female Altruism Reconsidered: The Virgin Mary as economic woman
Standard ethnographic descriptions of Latin American women indicate that the wife-mother role complex is a uniform entity despite the variety of socioeconomic settings in which it is found. Data collected in Cali, Colombia, and San Francisco, California, suggest clear differences in the way working-class Latin American women perform this common role. Caleñas emphasize the dimension of wife and the importance of conjugal affiliation; they pay rela…
Genetic counseling gone awry: Miscommunication between prenatal genetic service providers and Mexican-origin clients
Gender Politics in the Distribution of Therapeutic Herbal Knowledge
Data on the distribution of knowledge about medicinal plants in an indigenous Mexican community challenge several assumptions at the heart of medical anthropology concerning the distribution of therapeutic herbal knowledge. Contrary to expectation, many men in the community were knowledgeable about medicines for managing reproduction and women's reproductive health problems, and men more acculturated to the national society were particularly like…
Relationship power, decision making, and sexual relations: An exploratory study with couples of Mexican origin
This study explored how couples of Mexican origin define power in intimate relationships, what makes men and women feel powerful in relationships, and the role of each partner in decision making about sexual and reproductive matters. Interviews were conducted with each partner of 39 sexually active couples and data were analyzed using content analysis. Results indicate that power is perceived as control over one s partner and the ability to make …
Testing women, testing the fetus
Women's Secrets: Bases for reproductive and social autonomy in a Mexican community
Research in a highland Chinantec (Mexico) community hypothesized that women there monopolized knowledge about medicinal plants for the management of reproduction, which allowed them to regulate their own fertility without male intervention. It was further hypothesized that women who most effectively exercised reproductive autonomy would function more autonomously in other areas of their social lives as well. Instead it was found that women and me…
Interrogating the dynamics between power, knowledge and pregnant bodies in amniocentesis decision making
A common assumption is that women who decline prenatal testing distrust biomedicine and trust embodied/experiential knowledge sources, while women who accept testing trust biomedicine and distrust embodied/experiential sources. Another major assumption about prenatal testing utilisation is that women who are open to abortion will undergo prenatal testing while those who are opposed to abortion will decline testing. Yet, previous research has prod…
On the Medicalization of Medical Anthropology
The following address was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA), November 21,1997, Washington, DC, by outgoing SMA president Carole Browner. It has been edited slightly for publication
Strategies for Motivating Latino Couples' Participation in Qualitative Health Research and Their Effects on Sample Construction
Many investigators report difficulties recruiting low-income Latinos into health research projects, especially when they seek to enroll more than one family member. We developed a series of strategies that proved effective in motivating candidates who were initially reluctant to enroll. There is a possibility that these strategies biased the composition of the sample. Predictably, the reasons participants gave for enrolling were correlated with t…
The Politics of Reproduction in a Mexican Village
I'm Not the One They're Sticking the Needle Into: Latino Couples, Fetal Diagnosis, and the Discourse of Reproductive Rights
Despite the growing routinization of prenatal diagnosis, little research has examined men's roles in this reproductive arena or these technologies' possibilities for reinforcing or transforming gender roles and relations. The authors analyze male partners' participation in the amniocentesis decisions of Mexican-origin women at high risk for problems, drawing on interviews with 157 women and 120 of their male partners. The primary aim is to explor…
Hypoglycemia: Portrait of an Illness Construct in Everyday Use
Most people suffer from multiple ill-defined symptoms from time to time. In this article we consider some reasons why hypoglycemia may have gained widespread lay acceptance in the United States as an explanation for such symptoms. The discussion focuses on how the hypoglycemia construct links the interpretation of symptoms to the cultural milieu in which they are experienced. A group of 12 informants, either self-diagnosed or diagnosed by physici…
Ethnicity, bioethics, and prenatal diagnosis: The amniocentesis decisions of Mexican-origin women and their partners
Bioethical standards and counseling techniques that regulate prenatal diagnosis in the United States were developed at a time when the principal constituency for fetal testing was a self-selected group of White, well-informed, middle-class women. The routine use of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) testing, which has become widespread since the mid-1980s, introduced new constituencies to prenatal diagnosis. These new constituencies include ethnic minority …
Plants used for reproductive health in Oaxaca, Mexico
Gender Roles and Social Change: A Mexican Case Study
way. They may also refuse to participate in development programs if they feel the programs will undermine their relationships with their children. For example, reviewing Cornell University's development efforts in Vicos, Peru, Babb (1980:21, 30) found that many women refused to send their children to school because they saw education destroying traditional family unity. Bourque and Warren's (1981a, 1981b) work on development planning in Peru adds…
Criteria for Selecting Herbal Remedies
The abortion controversy
Abortion Decision Making: Some Findings from Colombia
The reasons why some women seek to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, while others do not, were investigated in interviews with 108 women in Cali, Colombia (where abortion is illegal but reportedly widespread). All the women in the study had experienced an unwanted pregnancy, and in more than half the cases one major or several minor attempts were made to end it. The prospects for economic support from the father of the child emerged as the most im…
Anthropological Research for a Computer Manufacturing Company
This paper discusses a corporation‐financed anthropological study of office work carried out by a university‐based research team. Two aspects of this project were unusual: carrying out ethnographic studies in the offices of a major American corporation and conducting applied ethnographic research for a profitmaking manufacturer. Adapting anthropological methods for use in a business setting proved not to be overly difficult and researchers were a…
The management of early pregnancy: Colombian folk concepts of fertility control
How Modernization Can Also Increase Fertility [and Comments and Reply]
Industrialization, urbanization, and other associated processes of modernization generally lead to a reduction of fertility through the practice of birth control (contraception and induced abortion) and delayed age at marriage. The evidence reviewed in this paper demonstrates that these same processes may also have some fertility-increasing effects. Birth rate data for a few countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia clearly exhibit an increase…
Latin American Urbanization . Douglas Butterworth and John K. Chance
The Social Formation of Childbirth
A Review of Recent Research: The First Birth: A Family Turning Point. Doris R. Entwisle and Susan G. Doering.A Review of Recent Research: Anthropology of Human Birth. Margarita Artschwager Kay, ed.A Review of Recent Research: Ethnography of Fertility and Birth. Carol P. MacCormack, ed.A Review of Recent Research: Childbirth: Alternatives to Medical Control. Shelly Romalis, ed
Female Altruism Reconsidered: The Virgin Mary as economic woman
Standard ethnographic descriptions of Latin American women indicate that the wife-mother role complex is a uniform entity despite the variety of socioeconomic settings in which it is found. Data collected in Cali, Colombia, and San Francisco, California, suggest clear differences in the way working-class Latin American women perform this common role. Caleñas emphasize the dimension of wife and the importance of conjugal affiliation; they pay rela…
Women Practicing Anthropology: Perspectives Across the Discipline
The articles in this special issue of Practicing Anthropology grew out of a symposium on "Women Anthropologists in the Public and Private Sectors: Opportunities for Non-Academic Career Advancement" sponsored by the Committee on the Status of Women (COSWA) at the 1981 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. As organizers of the panel, Donald Lindburg and I sought participants from each subfield of anthropology working in both t…
Male pregnancy symptoms in urban Colombia
Research on men's pregnancy symptoms (couvade) typically seeks to explicate the meaning of the various symptoms for those presumed to be suffering. This paper considers the significance of such symptoms as reported by a group of pregnant women for their male partners. It is hypothesized that women with few sources of extraconjugal social support report partners' symptoms more often than those with more abundant social resources because such women…
The Hypoglycemia-Aggression Hypothesis: Debate versus Research [and Comments and Reply]
In a critical evaluation of work by Ralph Bolton on the relationship between hypoglycemia and aggression among the Qolla of Peru, Ted Lewellen has argued that the Qolla are not highly aggressive, that they have been the victims of pseudoscientific stereotyping and prejudice, that they are not especially prone to problems in glucose homeostasis, and that whatever aggression they display can be explained in large part by their consumption of alcoho…
Chemical bases for medicinal plant use in Oaxaca, Mexico
Plants used for reproductive health in Oaxaca, Mexico
Criteria for Selecting Herbal Remedies
Gender Roles and Social Change: A Mexican Case Study
way. They may also refuse to participate in development programs if they feel the programs will undermine their relationships with their children. For example, reviewing Cornell University's development efforts in Vicos, Peru, Babb (1980:21, 30) found that many women refused to send their children to school because they saw education destroying traditional family unity. Bourque and Warren's (1981a, 1981b) work on development planning in Peru adds…
The Politics of Reproduction in a Mexican Village
A Methodology for Cross-cultural Ethnomedical Research [and Comments and Reply]
Women's Secrets: Bases for reproductive and social autonomy in a Mexican community
Research in a highland Chinantec (Mexico) community hypothesized that women there monopolized knowledge about medicinal plants for the management of reproduction, which allowed them to regulate their own fertility without male intervention. It was further hypothesized that women who most effectively exercised reproductive autonomy would function more autonomously in other areas of their social lives as well. Instead it was found that women and me…
Compliance and the patient's perspective: Controlling symptoms in everyday life
Cross‐cultural perspectives on women and immigration
(1989). Cross‐cultural perspectives on women and immigration. Women's Studies: Vol. 17, Across Cultures: The Spectrum of Women's Lives, pp. 49-51
Women, household and health in Latin America
On Research Methodology for Ethnomedicine
Healers of the Andes: Kallawaya Herbalists and Their Medicinal Plants
Healers of the Andes: Kallawaya Herbalists and Their Medicinal Plants. Joseph W. Bastien (illustrations by Eleanor Forfang Stauffer). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987. 288 pp. 37.50 (Cloth). ISBN 07‐87480‐4
Linguistic Anthropology: Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community. Faye D. Ginsburg
Healers of the Andes: Kallawaya Herbalists and Their Medicinal Plants:Healers of the Andes: Kallawaya Herbalists and Their Medicinal Plants
Sociology (39 works) · Medicine (38 works) · Political science (30 works) · Psychology (25 works) · Pregnancy (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Anthropology (16 works) · Biology (16 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Gender Studies (12 works)