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Former obstetrician and childbirth pioneer Michel Odent argues that the aspect of human lifestyle that has been most profoundly changed in recent decades is the period of time surrounding the birth of a child. Since this formative time is considered critical in defining our species, Homo sapiens, fundamental changes in this area should herald significant evolution in regard to how babies are born. This, surely, should be at the heart of our discussions of the future, even above considerations of how humanity and planet earth interact.
'This book should be read by anyone involved in birth work, and in future oriented scientific disciplines, anyone working on sustainable development goals, resilience, and planetary boundaries. It is an essential read for explorers of the future and people necessitating transdisciplinary science to explore solutions for our planetary crises ... His writing is clear and organized, the chapters can be very short, his argumentation is persuasive and can seem disconnected at times until the connection is found; we enter the brain of a great systems thinker ...; Michel Odent's scientifically evidenced linkages between seemingly disconnected events grows our understanding of interconnectedness; a key quality for the survival of humanity.'Midwifery TodayAt a global scale, love hormones are now redundant in the critical period surrounding birth ... reasons for questions?Between 1970 and 1990, in many parts of the world, the rates of caesareans escalated from roughly 5% to roughly 25%. During this short phase of history, the father's participation became routine. Is there a link between these facts?Health care systems are on the way to collapsing. Should we go on focusing on the preventive and curative treatments of particular diseases or should we give a greater importance to the way our basic adaptive systems, involved in what we commonly call health, reach a high degree of maturity?These examples are sufficient to illustrate the 'neo-Socratic attitude' of the author. Our contemporaries are constantly dealing with unprecedented situations. Question marks, therefore, can symbolise the current phase of our history. Throughout this book, radically new situations are analysed, before appropriate questions are phrased.At a time when people commonly debate on the long-term effects of human activities without considering the probable transformations of Homo, one cannot avoid a preliminary question: How to reach an audience made up of female and male open-minded people who are turned towards the future but have not yet realised that the important period surrounding birth has been radically transformed during the past decades?In the age of cultural blindness related to overspecialization, The Future of Homo is also a training tool to think across boundaries.Related Link(s)
Outer Origin examines the individual, social, and spiritual implications of ectogenesis, also known as artificial womb technology. Formerly considered the topic of science fiction, such devices are currently being developed and will soon be a medical reality. This book offers readers information on the status of this technology and considers the ways in which it may one day fully replace human gestation. Ectogenesis has previously been assessed with the future child in mind, but this book, instead, envisions what it might mean for women. It explores the value of pregnancy and childbirth in the twenty-first century and questions the notion that artificial wombs will lead to full equality of the sexes. Outer Origin seeks to elevate the maternal experience by reflecting on the meaning of reproductive technology in our lives. People everywhere must ponder the significance of what has heretofore been their most common link—shared natality and birth. If not, Homo sapiens will enter a deep dive into the unknown—that of not being of woman born.
This book examines the future of birthing practices, particularly by focusing on epidural analgesia in childbirth. It describes historical and cultural trajectories that have shaped the way in which birth is understood in Western, developed nations. In setting out the nature of epidural history, knowledge and practice, the book delves into related birth practices within the hospital setting. By critically examining these practices, which are embedded in a scientific discourse that rationalises and relies upon technology use, the authors argue that epidural analgesia has been positioned as a safe technology in contemporary maternity culture, despite it carrying particular risks. In examining alternative research the book proposes that increasing epidural rates are not only due to greater pain relief requirements or access but are influenced by technocratic values and a fragmented maternity system. The authors outline the way in which this epidural discourse influences how information is presented to women and how this affects their choices around the use of pain relief in labour.
Somewhere in Africa, more than a million years ago, a line of apes began to rear their young differently than their Great Ape ancestors. From this new form of care came new ways of engaging and understanding each other. How such singular human capacities evolved, and how they have kept us alive for thousands of generations, is the mystery revealed in this bold and wide-ranging new vision of human emotional evolution. Mothers and Others finds the key in the primatologically unique length of human childhood. If the young were to survive in a world of scarce food, they needed to be cared for, not only by their mothers but also by siblings, aunts, fathers, friends—and, with any luck, grandmothers. Out of this complicated and contingent form of childrearing, Sarah Hrdy argues, came the human capacity for understanding others. Mothers and others teach us who will care, and who will not. From its opening vision of “apes on a plane”; to descriptions of baby care among marmosets, chimpanzees, wolves, and lions; to explanations about why men in hunter-gatherer societies hunt together, Mothers and Others is compellingly readable. But it is also an intricately knit argument that ever since the Pleistocene, it has taken a village to raise children—and how that gave our ancient ancestors the first push on the path toward becoming emotionally modern human beings.
This book emphasizes a mother's role in the development of the child's brain and emotional infrastructures.
In the tradition of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, a winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books shows how four tools enabled has us humans to control the destiny of our species "A wondrous, visionary work." --Tim Flannery, scientist and author of the bestselling The Weather Makers What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Readers of Sapiens will say a cognitive revolution -- a dramatic evolutionary change that altered our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones -- caused a cultural explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time. She explains how, through four key elements -- fire, language, beauty, and time -- our species diverged from the evolutionary path of all other animals, unleashing a compounding process that launched us into the Space Age and beyond. Provocative and poetic, Transcendence shows how a primate took dominion over nature and turned itself into something marvelous.
This book offers a vision of politics that govern the womb; from antiquity (‘be fertile and replenish the earth’), through the ages (hysterectomy, to extirpate women’s ‘hysteria’), up to the present time (abortion wars; assisted reproduction), and into the future (reprogenetics; the artificial womb). It explores how the womb has served humanity, either tacitly or explicitly, through the ages and examines how women have accepted and still perceive the rules created by men as natural - including the new anti-abortion laws in the USA - because ‘that is the way things are.’ The book also explores how the emerging of assisted reproduction technologies and novel genetic tools (reprogenetics) will pose additional challenges to womb bearers, as all women will be made to reproduce with IVF. What is more, the advent of the artificial womb is in sight; the gender and social implications of this development would be enormous. Certainly not just another organ, the womb has been and remains a powerful tool that cannot be left to the decisions of half of the population. This book engages a wide audience, including women and men, professionals and laypersons who are interested in gender, politics, legislation, women’s health, and ethics.
A powerful new theory of human nature suggests that our secret to success as a species is our unique friendliness “Brilliant, eye-opening, and absolutely inspiring—and a riveting read. Hare and Woods have written the perfect book for our time.”—Cass R. Sunstein, author of How Change Happens and co-author of Nudge For most of the approximately 300,000 years that Homo sapiens have existed, we have shared the planet with at least four other types of humans. All of these were smart, strong, and inventive. But around 50,000 years ago, Homo sapiens made a cognitive leap that gave us an edge over other species. What happened? Since Charles Darwin wrote about “evolutionary fitness,” the idea of fitness has been confused with physical strength, tactical brilliance, and aggression. In fact, what made us evolutionarily fit was a remarkable kind of friendliness, a virtuosic ability to coordinate and communicate with others that allowed us to achieve all the cultural and technical marvels in human history. Advancing what they call the “self-domestication theory,” Brian Hare, professor in the department of evolutionary anthropology and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University and his wife, Vanessa Woods, a research scientist and award-winning journalist, shed light on the mysterious leap in human cognition that allowed Homo sapiens to thrive. But this gift for friendliness came at a cost. Just as a mother bear is most dangerous around her cubs, we are at our most dangerous when someone we love is threatened by an “outsider.” The threatening outsider is demoted to sub-human, fair game for our worst instincts. Hare’s groundbreaking research, developed in close coordination with Richard Wrangham and Michael Tomasello, giants in the field of cognitive evolution, reveals that the same traits that make us the most tolerant species on the planet also make us the cruelest. Survival of the Friendliest offers us a new way to look at our cultural as well as cognitive evolution and sends a clear message: In order to survive and even to flourish, we need to expand our definition of who belongs.