Partial Stories: Maternal Death from Six Angles Wendland Claire L.

A close look at stories of maternal death in Malawi that considers their implications in the broader arena of medical knowledge.By the early twenty-first century, about one woman in twelve could expect to die of a pregnancy or childbirth complication in Malawi. Explanatory stories circulated through hospitals and villages, proliferating among a range of practitioners: nurse-midwives, traditional birth attendants, doctors, epidemiologists, herbalists. Specific deaths became object lessons.

Economic underdevelopment? Was biology to blame? Immoral behavior?

Tradition? Were the dead themselves at fault?In Partial Stories, Claire L. Wendland considers these explanations for maternal death, showing how they reflect competing visions of the past and shared concerns about social change.

Drawing on extended fieldwork, Wendland reveals how efforts to legitimate a single