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

全球卫生专家对低护理率表示担忧，并正在寻求有针对性的干预措施，以大幅改善护理实践，但很少有关于护理或母乳银行历史的研究。该项目调查了科学家，医生，父母和政策制定者如何从19世纪到现在产生了各种形式的护理知识，以及这些不同的理解如何受到挑战，坚持和/或改变。它有五个主要目标：（1）研究护理科学知识的产生和转化;（2）探索护理技术和工艺的历史;（3）调查对护理中涉及的人类劳动的理解的变化;（4）考虑对护理中涉及的劳动的种族化理解;（5）追踪母乳银行的成长和发展。总的来说，该项目将有助于了解为什么护理在不同的时刻或多或少是常见的，对谁来说，它将有助于那些参与努力支持孕产妇和婴儿健康，因为它涉及到护理，牛奶银行，以及家人做出的决定本计画应用历史与质的分析，以档案资料与口述历史，检视护理工作与母乳喂养和母乳银行的历史有关的护理工作和生物物质的商品化的研究。在这样做的时候，它提供了一个新的视角，对护理中涉及的劳动形式的种族化理解与生物库实践的发展之间的关系，生物库实践使生产牛奶的妇女失去个性。生殖劳动，亲密劳动和护理工作的历史和社会学研究;性别和妇女研究;以及医学、公共卫生、劳工、该奖项反映了NSF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.