Birthing, corporality and care among the Guarani-Mbyá of southern Brazil

Abstract

In this paper I draw attention to the happening of childbirth among the Guarani-Mbyá women. I highlight the centrality of a care language in the act of birth and of being born supported by the production of human bodies and kin. From Yva deliveries’ stories I explore the connection between silences, bodies and human and non-human socialities by interweaving it with native modes of care and a critical analysis of the medicalization of birth derived from the relationship with the “Juruá (“white”) system”. I emphasize a non-reductive understanding of life and health in the translation of epistelomogies of care between indigenous and biomedical sociocosmologies. The data presented are results from a long-term ethnographic research carried out among guarani-mbyá collectives of the southern Brazil.

Composing bodies with the COVID-19 vaccine: the cosmopolitics of health among Guarani peoples

“…It will stay there, next to the child's body, until its properties are completely absorbed and it disintegrates by itself. This practice ensures that these more-thanhuman and other-than-human vitalities compose the body-person (Prates 2021, Signori 2022.…”