3 books come out in 2021 from Robbie Davis-Floyd

Robbie Davis-Floyd is proud to announce that she had 3 books come out in 2021! This was pure coincidence: one of them took a full 10 years to produce, another took two years, and the third took only six months—so they just happened to all come out in the same year—yet surely, this is some kind of record! These books, all edited collections, are:

• Birthing Models on the Human Rights Frontier: Speaking Truth to Power, eds. Betty-Anne Daviss and Robbie Davis-Floyd, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021.

• Sustainable Birth in Disruptive Times, eds. Kim Gutschow, Robbie Davis-Floyd, and Betty-Anne Daviss. Switzerland: Springer, 2021.

• Birthing Techno-Sapiens: Human-Technology Co-Evolution and the Future of Reproduction, ed. Robbie Davis-Floyd. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021.

All three of these books contain many suggestions for the implementation of better maternity care models around the world. Robbie would particularly like to draw your attention to a chapter in Sustainable Birth in Disruptive Times on "Sustainable Birth Care in Disaster Zones and Pandemics: Low-Tech, Skilled Touch," in which co-authors Robbie, Robin Lim, Vicki Penwell, and Tsipy Ivry demonstrate that what is most needed for maternity care in disaster zones—and indeed everywhere—is skilled midwifery care along with some essential, low-tech equipment.   

And Robbie is even more thrilled to announce that the 3rd edition of her first book, Birth as an American Rite of Passage, will be coming out in May of this year. She considers this to be her magnus opus, and hopes that it will have as much success as the first two editions did! It is a revision and update of the second edition, and is based on not only her original dataset of 100 interviews with mothers, but also on a new dataset of 65 interviews, enabling her to go back and forth in time for comparative purposes. Here is the description on the back cover:

This classic book, first published in 1992 and again in 2003, has inspired three generations of childbearing people, birth activists and researchers, and birth practitioners—midwives, doulas, nurses, and obstetricians—to take a fresh look at the "standard procedures" that are routinely used to "manage" American childbirth. It was the first book to identify these non-evidence-based obstetric interventions as rituals that enact and transmit the core values of the American technocracy, thereby answering the pressing question of why these interventions continue to be performed despite all evidence to the contrary. This third edition brings together Davis-Floyd's insights into the intense ritualization of labor and birth and the technocratic, humanistic, and holistic models of birth with new data collected in recent years. 

In terms of her applied work, Robbie has long been heavily involved in the creation and dissemination of the International Childbirth Initiative: 12 Steps to Safe and Respectful MotherBaby Family Maternity Care, found at www.icichildbirth.org, which was launched in 2018 by the International Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology (FIGO—its acronym in French—and by the International MotherBaby Childbirth Organization (IMBCO), of which Robbie has been a Board member since 2006 . 

To date, the ICI Foundational Principles and 12 Steps are being implemented in 60 sites in the following countries: Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, Trinidad, Turkey, and the United States. Countries that are initiating implementation (applications in progress) include Argentina, Australia, Burkina Faso, China, the Czech Republic, Germany, Honduras, Mexico, Nigeria, and Uruguay. A unique feature of ICI implementation is that it requires the involvement of community members. Researchers are needed to study the implementation process, identify any barriers to it, and suggest practical ways to overcome those barriers. If you are interested, please contact Robbie at davis-floyd@outlook.com. 

Robbie would also like you to know that she serves as Lead Editor for the Routledge Book Series Social Science Perspectives on Childbirth and Reproduction, and would welcome your Book Proposals, which should be sent directly to her!