Milk, meaning and morality : tracing donated breast milk from donor to baby

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dc.contributor.advisorRoss, Fiona Cen_ZA
dc.contributor.authorWaltz, Miriam H Aen_ZA
dc.date.accessioned2016-06-23T14:51:27Z
dc.date.available2016-06-23T14:51:27Z
dc.date.issued2015en_ZA
dc.description.abstractThis thesis follows the trajectory of donated breast milk as it leaves the dyadic mother-child relationship and is reconfigured through a series of transformations as bodily fluid, food, or medicine, depending on its context and the practices and discursive structures that seek to stabilise it as a particular object. Research was conducted between November 2014 and May 2015 in Cape Town, South Africa, including interviews with eleven donating women and eight weeks of participant observation at a level two maternity hospital. Donors use a rhetoric of 'saving babies', the effect of which is to deny the social tie between donor and recipient, or the potential for consubstantiation. Technologies play a crucial role in aiding the milk's transformation as it follows its trajectory through four nodal points (expressing and storage, pasteurisation and testing, packaging, and prescription) from donors' homes into the clinical setting, where it is framed in terms of safety and risk. Care enters into the constellation of relations that the milk ensures in unexpected ways and figures into the ways the milk is distributed in the hospital. Thus, donated breast milk shifts back and forth between being a bodily fluid, food, and medicine as its trajectory takes it through different constellations of saving, motherhood, technologies, care, safety, risk and medical authority. Different techniques foreground particular properties of the milk, as ultimately a set of moral decisions converges around saving, securing and sustaining life, materialising relationships and forming the milk form one entity into another and back again.en_ZA
dc.identifier.apacitationWaltz, M. H. A. (2015). <i>Milk, meaning and morality : tracing donated breast milk from donor to baby</i>. (Thesis). University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Social Anthropology. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20107en_ZA
dc.identifier.chicagocitationWaltz, Miriam H A. <i>"Milk, meaning and morality : tracing donated breast milk from donor to baby."</i> Thesis., University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Social Anthropology, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20107en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationWaltz, M. 2015. Milk, meaning and morality : tracing donated breast milk from donor to baby. University of Cape Town.en_ZA
dc.identifier.ris TY - Thesis / Dissertation AU - Waltz, Miriam H A AB - This thesis follows the trajectory of donated breast milk as it leaves the dyadic mother-child relationship and is reconfigured through a series of transformations as bodily fluid, food, or medicine, depending on its context and the practices and discursive structures that seek to stabilise it as a particular object. Research was conducted between November 2014 and May 2015 in Cape Town, South Africa, including interviews with eleven donating women and eight weeks of participant observation at a level two maternity hospital. Donors use a rhetoric of 'saving babies', the effect of which is to deny the social tie between donor and recipient, or the potential for consubstantiation. Technologies play a crucial role in aiding the milk's transformation as it follows its trajectory through four nodal points (expressing and storage, pasteurisation and testing, packaging, and prescription) from donors' homes into the clinical setting, where it is framed in terms of safety and risk. Care enters into the constellation of relations that the milk ensures in unexpected ways and figures into the ways the milk is distributed in the hospital. Thus, donated breast milk shifts back and forth between being a bodily fluid, food, and medicine as its trajectory takes it through different constellations of saving, motherhood, technologies, care, safety, risk and medical authority. Different techniques foreground particular properties of the milk, as ultimately a set of moral decisions converges around saving, securing and sustaining life, materialising relationships and forming the milk form one entity into another and back again. DA - 2015 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2015 T1 - Milk, meaning and morality : tracing donated breast milk from donor to baby TI - Milk, meaning and morality : tracing donated breast milk from donor to baby UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20107 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11427/20107
dc.identifier.vancouvercitationWaltz MHA. Milk, meaning and morality : tracing donated breast milk from donor to baby. [Thesis]. University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Social Anthropology, 2015 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20107en_ZA
dc.language.isoengen_ZA
dc.publisher.departmentSocial Anthropologyen_ZA
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Humanitiesen_ZA
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Cape Town
dc.subject.otherSocial Anthropologyen_ZA
dc.titleMilk, meaning and morality : tracing donated breast milk from donor to babyen_ZA
dc.typeMaster Thesis
dc.type.qualificationlevelMasters
dc.type.qualificationnameMAen_ZA
uct.type.filetypeText
uct.type.filetypeImage
uct.type.publicationResearchen_ZA
uct.type.resourceThesisen_ZA
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