Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives is a collection of anthropological essays that study birth and authoritative knowledge across sixteen different cultures that was published in 1998 in the Journal of Gender Studies. This collection is edited by Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn Sargent. The book opens with a forward by Rayna Rapp. The book examines in detail, the various patterns of birth and how they've changed over time. Not only does the book study child-bearing across cultures, it also is a look into the power that biomedical technology holds in the field. Throughout the collection of essays, the twenty-three authors use authoritative knowledge as a theme to explore the ways it is evidenced and implemented in several different cultures. The book has eighteen chapters, creating five distinct parts.Each part of the book takes a look at authoritative knowledge from a new perspective or culture. The scholars behind the essays themselves come from numerous academic backgrounds to comment on birth and authoritative knowledge in sixteen cultures.Davis-Floyd is quoted to have said that the purpose of the book is to "act both as a useful source of information about birth across cultures and as a charter for future research and further growth in the field."

This part of the book contains Brigitte Jordan's essay ("Authoritative Knowledge and Its Construction") along with context for the reader about the other essays in the book. Brigitte Jordan elaborates on the theme of authoritative knowledge in her book Birth in Four Cultures: A Crosscultural Investigation of Childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, Sweden and the United States. Primarily, this section of essays describes how technology is used in the American setting. Firstly, Jordan elaborates on her idea of authoritative knowledge.She specifically defines it as follows:

"For any particular domain several knowledge systems may exist, some of which, by consensus, carry more weight than others, either because they explain the state of the world better for the purposes at hand...or because they are associated with a stronger power base."

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