Exploring the social organization of breastfeeding knowledge and developing strategies for promoting breastfeeding

grantor: University of TorontoEmploying a radical new methodology put forth by feminist sociologist Dorothy E. Smith, this thesis is an empirical examination of the social production of breastfeeding knowledge. Beginning from the site of her own standpoint in the everyday/everynight world, the author encounters a three part video text whose primary subject is infant feeding. Led by disjuncture, (a term used to describe the rupture between women's knowing and fathertongue)--the author explicates the ideological practices which accomplish the following conceptual construction of the video text: the equivalency between breastmilk and infant formula; the epidemiologic homogeneity among infants regardless of diet; and the detachment of the mother, and her milk, from her baby. Finally, the author leaves the surface of the text to, in a preliminary way, discover how these concepts are socially organizing and by whom--that is, the relations of ruling, of which the author, as a nurse, is a member.M.Sc