Mal-Nutrition

Mal-Nutrition documents how maternal health interventions in Guatemala are complicit in reproducing poverty. Policy makers speak about how a critical window of biological growth around the time of pregnancy—called the "first 1,000 days of life"—determines health and wealth across the life course. They argue that fetal development is the key to global development. In this thought-provoking and timely book, Emily Yates-Doerr shows that the control of mothering is a paradigmatic technique of American violence that serves to control the reproduction of privilege and power. She illustrates the efforts of Guatemalan scientists, midwives, and mothers to counter the harms of such mal-nutrition. Their powerful stories offer a window into a form of nutrition science and policy that encourages collective nourishment and fosters reproductive cycles in which women, children, and their entire communities can flourish.

"This sensitive, wide-ranging, and beautifully written ethnography teaches us how the language of biological reproduction works to appropriate women’s rich generative and creative capacities for the reproduction of empire." — CARLOTA McALLISTER, author of The Good Road

"Gripping and intricately layered in its analysis, this groundbreaking work illuminates how interventions purporting to improve women’s health and reproduction so often do more to uphold the very structures underlying gender violence and health inequality." — MEGAN A. CARNEY, author of The Unending Hunger

"Mal-Nutrition brilliantly reveals a global struggle behind vulnerable women—against sexual violence and the displacement of their communities by agricapital. This is a timely and urgent book." — RAYNA RAPP, author of Testing Women, Testing the Fetus

EMILY YATES-DOERR is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Oregon State University and author of The Weight of Obesity.