Table Of ContentBIRTH AND DEATH
Usually conceived in opposition to each other – birth as a hopeful beginning,
death as an ending – this book brings them into dialogue with each other to argue
that both are central to our experiences of being in the world and part of living.
Writtenbytwoauthors,thisbooktakesanintergenerationalapproachtohighlight
the connections and disconnections between birth and death; adopting a relational
approach allows the book to explore birth and death through the key relationships
that constitute them: personal and social, private and public, the affective and social
norms, the actual and the virtual and the ordinary and profound.
Of interest to academics and students in the fields of feminism, phenomenology
andthelifecourse,thebookwillalsobeofrelevancetopolicymakersintheareasof
birth activism and end of life care. Drawing from personal stories, everyday life and
publicly contested examples, the book will also be of interest to a more general
readership as it engages with questions we all at some point will grapple with.
Kath Woodward is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Open University. She
researches gendered embodiment and feminist theories and psychosocial approa-
ches, for example, to being in the zone. She has published extensively on the
sexual politics of sport, social divisions and transforming identities.
Sophie Woodward is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Man-
chester. She carries out research into material culture, materiality and everyday
lives, and has a particular interest in creative methods. She has a parallel interest in
feminist theories and feminist movements; she is the author of several books in the
areas of everyday consumption, material culture and feminism.
BIRTH AND DEATH
Experience, Ethics, Politics
Kath Woodward and Sophie Woodward
Firstpublished2020
byRoutledge
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andbyRoutledge
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©2020KathWoodwardandSophieWoodward
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BritishLibraryCataloguing-in-PublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Names:Woodward,Kath,author.|Woodward,Sophie,author.
Title:Birthanddeath:experience,ethics,politics/KathWoodwardandSophie
Woodward.
Description:MiltonPark,Abingdon,Oxon;NewYork,NY:Routledge,2020.|
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2019039382(print)|LCCN2019039383(ebook)|
ISBN9780815380672(hardback)|ISBN9780815380689(paperback)|
ISBN9781351212632(ebook)
Subjects:LCSH:Lifecycle,Human--Socialaspects.|Childbirth--Socialaspects.|
Death--Socialaspects.
Classification:LCCHQ519.W662020(print)|LCCHQ519(ebook)|
DDC305.2--dc23
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2019039382
LCebookrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2019039383
ISBN:978-0-8153-8067-2(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-8153-8068-9(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-3512-1263-2(ebk)
TypesetinBembo
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
This book is dedicated to Sheila Kitzinger whose life and
work in birth and her approach to her own death are its
inspiration.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
1 Birth and death 1
2 Sheila Kitzinger: a life in birth and a good death 15
3 Personal and social 34
4 Visibility and visualisation 53
5 Public and private: rituals and routines 70
6 The medical and the natural: embodied selves 87
7 Crossing boundaries: ethics and experience 105
8 Conclusion: giving birth, dying and mostly, living 122
References 133
Index 144
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are very grateful to the Routledge team, especially to Emily Briggs, who has
believedinourprojectthroughoutandremainedpatient,andtoLakshitaJoshi,our
editorial assistant who has been supportive, patient and encouraging. We would
also like to thank our copyeditor, Sarah Webb.
1
BIRTH AND DEATH
Birth and death might seem to be worlds apart, except in the most tragic circum-
stances of neonatal or maternal death and stillbirths. Birth is a beginning, death an
end; birth is a source of hope and optimism and death the cause of grief. By
thinking about birth and death together in this book, we will start to problematize
these oppositions by highlighting the nuances and complexities of birth and death
as they are planned for, experienced and managed. Birth and death are very much
part of life and living. The ways in which they are profoundly and routinely con-
nected are the subject of this book; the profound and routine are central to how
we understand birth and death as they are both ordinary and everyday as well as
being life-changing and defining experiences. We develop an approach to birth
and death that encompasses their routine everyday experiences as well as their
extraordinary and transformatory implications in myriad different ways. We aim to
deconstruct and challenge how these experiences are understood and represented,
not least at a time of enormous technological and scientific intervention and when
there has been a huge increase in the volubility of debate, especially about how
individuals, families, community groups, and medical institutions and experts plan
for, prepare and manage these events. In this opening chapter we will outline why
we are looking at birth and death together as well as how we have written and are
approaching the book – as intergenerational, co-authored and through the use of
personal stories.
This book emerged from our previous co-authored book on feminism which
explored the connections and disconnections between different generations of
feminist ideas and activisms (Woodward and Woodward, 2009). We edited a spe-
cial issue of Frontiers Gender, Sex and Sexuality Studies journal on the topic of birth
with Mary Christopher, which has contributions that explore relations between
medicalisations and specific cultural practices (Davis-Floyd, 2018), racialised
inequalities (Scuro, 2018) and considering nonhuman births (Ison et al., 2018). We
