Scholars Award: From Wet Nursing to Milk Banks: A History of Nursing

全球健康专家关注低护理率，并正在寻求有针对性的干预措施，有可能大幅改善护理实践，但很少有关于护理或母乳银行历史的研究。这个项目调查了从19世纪到现在，科学家、医疗从业者、父母和政策制定者是如何产生各种形式的护理知识的，以及这些不同的理解是如何受到挑战、维护和/或改变的。它有五个主要目标：(1)检查有关护理的科学知识的生产和转化；(2)探索护理技术和技术的历史；(3)调查对护理中人力劳动的理解的变化；(4)考虑对护理中劳动的种族化理解；(5)追溯母乳库的成长与发展。总的来说，该项目将有助于了解为什么在不同时期哺乳或多或少是常见的，以及对谁来说是常见的，它将有助于那些参与支持母婴健康工作的人，因为这涉及到哺乳、母乳库和家庭对婴儿营养作出的决定。本项目将历史和定性分析应用于档案材料和口述历史，以研究护理与护理工作和生物物质商品化研究相关的母乳喂养和母乳银行的历史。在这样做的过程中，它提供了一个新的视角，研究了对护理中劳动形式的种族化理解与生物银行实践的发展之间的关系，这种实践使生产母乳的妇女的母乳去人格化。该项目有助于STS正在进行的关于性别，种族和技术共同构成的方式的对话；对生育劳动、亲密劳动和照料工作的历史和社会学研究；性别与妇女研究；以及医学史、公共卫生史、劳工史和性别史。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Global health experts are concerned with low nursing rates and are seeking targeted interventions with the potential to substantially improve nursing practices, yet there have been few studies of the history of nursing or milk banking. This project investigates how scientists, medical practitioners, parents, and policy makers have produced diverse forms of knowledge about nursing from the 19th century to the present and how these various understandings have been challenged, upheld, and/or changed. It has five main goals: (1) examine the production and transformation of scientific knowledge about nursing; (2) explore the history of nursing techniques and technologies; (3) investigate changing understandings of the human labor involved in nursing; (4) consider racialized understanding of the labor involved in nursing; and, (5) trace the growth and development of milk banks. Overall, the project will contribute to understanding of why nursing is more or less common at different moments and for whom, and it will be useful for those involved in efforts to support maternal and infant health as it relates to nursing, milk banking, and the decisions families make vis-a-vis infant nutrition.This project applies historical and qualitative analysis to archival materials and oral histories to examine nursing as intertwined with the histories of wet nursing and milk banking in relation to studies of carework and the commodification of biosubstances. In so doing, it provides a novel perspective on the relationship between racialized understandings of the forms of labor involved in nursing and the development of biobanking practices that depersonalize milk from the women who produce it. The project contributes to ongoing conversations in STS about the ways in which gender, race, and technology are co-constitutive; to historical and sociological studies of reproductive labor, intimate labor, and carework; to gender and women’s studies; and to histories of medicine, public health, labor, and gender.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.