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JANNELI F. MILLERPh.D., University of Arizona, 2003 |
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JANNELI F. MILLERPh.D., University of Arizona, 2003 |
My research is centered on birthing practices, in particular solitary, or ‘unassisted' birth, with attention to the sociocultural and political economic factors dictating what kind of choices women make during their childbearing year. I am interested in the interface between local practice and national and international public health policy in rural and developing contexts where cross cultural conceptualizations of appropriate reproductive care may vary greatly. In my work I draw upon qualitative anthropological methods in combination with clinical strategies to shed light upon differential power dynamics at work in pluralistic health contexts. Gender roles, religion & cosmology, ethnomedicine and ethnobotany, as well as narrative expressions of states of health and disease are essential to my understanding of birth. I take an applied approach in my research and believe the anthropological perspective is fundamental to successful public health care services and education as well as primary health care, particularly when addressing infant and maternal mortality and family planning. I also focus on the role of men at birth, as well as the human rights of women in reproductive health care interactions.
I have conducted health research primarily with indigenous peoples of the Southwestern US and Northern Mexico , including the Navajo, Hopi, Tohono O'odam and Apache, and spent three years doing dissertation fieldwork among the Rarámuri of Northern Mexico. My work with the Rarámuri consisted of a comparative ethnographic analysis of birthing practices of women living in the urban barrios of Chihuahua City with those living in remote villages in the Sierra Madre. I found solitary birth to be a culturally efficacious practice among the Rarámuri, and note how differential allocation of medical resources had a more profound negative impact upon maternal and infant mortality than birthing alone did. I am currently in the process of developing applied research directed at improving reproductive health outcomes among the Rarámuri, as well as a comparative study of Rarámuri and Cora reproductive practices.
Miller, Janneli F.
(in press) Husband Assisted Birth Among the Rarámuri. In The Second Sex: Men, Sexuality and Masculinity , Maruska la Cour Mosegaard, Helene Goldberg and Tine Tjørnhøj-Thomsen, eds. University of California Press.
1996 “I Have a Frog in My Stomach” Mythology and Truth in Life History. In Unrelated Kin: Race and Gender in Women's Personal Narratives , Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis and Michéle Foster, eds. New York : Routledge, pp. 103-119.
1994 Paradox, Process & Mystery: An Exploration of Anthropology and Healing . Arizona Anthropologist 11:1-29.
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