Towards an anthropology of care: Breastfeeding as a care work

Abstract

This paper discusses different aspects of anthropological research on breastfeeding, corporeality and ethics of care. The main focus is on the problem of relating care studies to the breastfeeding phenomenon and the conceptualisation of woman’s body, sexuality and motherhood. The paper suggests the need for a critical approach to the problems of caregiver domination and care receiver vulnerability in the “chain-of-care”, as well as the need for an anthropological contextualisation of relationships between care professionals’ and women’s experience.

Keywords

• breastfeeding
• body
• feminism
• motherhood
• care work
• care studies