Childbirth care: the oral history of women who gave birth from the 1940s to 1980s

This study's objective was to gain a greater understanding of the changes that took place in the childbirth care model from the experience of women who gave birth in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil from the 1940s to the 1980s. This is a descriptive study conducted with 20 women using the Thematic Oral History method. Data were collected through unstructured interviews. The theme extracted from the interviews was "The experience of childbirth". The results indicate a time and generational demarcation in the 1970s. Childbirths from 1940 to 1960 occurred in a context of transition from home to hospital births. The 1980s represents a turning point in the elements that compose the childbirth care model, such as the type and place of birth and the professional assisting women, with an increased use of technology and obstetric interventions

A new paleoecological context for the Oldowan-Acheulean in Southern Africa

The influence of climatic and environmental change on human evolution in the Pleistocene is understood largely from extensive East African stable isotope records. These records show increasing proportions of C4 plants in the Early Pleistocene. We know far less about the expansion of C4 grasses in higher latitudes, which were also occupied by early Homo but are more marginal for C4 plants. Here we show that both C3 and C4 grasses, and prolonged wetlands remained major components of Early Pleistocene environments in the central interior of southern Africa based on enamel stable carbon and oxygen isotope data and associated faunal abundance and phytolith evidence, from the site of Wonderwerk Cave. Vegetation contexts associated with Oldowan and Early Acheulean lithic industries, in which climate is driven by an interplay of regional rainfall seasonality together with global CO2 levels, develop along a regional distinct trajectory compared to eastern South Africa and East Africa

The palaeoecological context of the Oldowan-Acheulean in southern Africa

The influence of climatic and environmental change on human evolution in the Pleistocene epoch is understood largely from extensive East African stable isotope records. These records show increasing proportions of C4 plants in the Early Pleistocene. We know far less about the expansion of C4 grasses at higher latitudes, which were also occupied by early Homo but are more marginal for C4 plants. Here we show that both C3 and C4 grasses and prolonged wetlands remained major components of Early Pleistocene environments in the central interior of southern Africa, based on enamel stable carbon and oxygen isotope data and associated faunal abundance and phytolith evidence from the site of Wonderwerk Cave. Vegetation contexts associated with Oldowan and early Acheulean lithic industries, in which climate is driven by an interplay of regional rainfall seasonality together with global CO2 levels, develop along a regional distinct trajectory compared to eastern South Africa and East Africa

A new paleoecological context for the Oldowan-Acheulean in Southern Africa

The influence of climatic and environmental change on human evolution in the Pleistocene is understood largely from extensive East African stable isotope records. These records show increasing proportions of C4 plants in the Early Pleistocene. We know far less about the expansion of C4 grasses in higher latitudes, which were also occupied by early Homo but are more marginal for C4 plants. Here we show that both C3 and C4 grasses, and prolonged wetlands remained major components of Early Pleistocene environments in the central interior of southern Africa based on enamel stable carbon and oxygen isotope data and associated faunal abundance and phytolith evidence, from the site of Wonderwerk Cave. Vegetation contexts associated with Oldowan and Early Acheulean lithic industries, in which climate is driven by an interplay of regional rainfall seasonality together with global CO2 levels, develop along a regional distinct trajectory compared to eastern South Africa and East Africa

New chronology for the southern kalahari group sediments: implications for sediment cycle dynamics and early hominin occupation

The Kalahari Group covers an extensive part of the southern African continent and forms a low-relief landscape dominated by extensive unconsolidated sand. Current depositional models assume that the Kalahari Group sediments accumulated gradually throughout the Cenozoic, but an absence of absolute chronology beyond ~60 ka has left this premise untested. Here, we challenge this age model with new cosmogenic burial ages obtained from a 55 m section of Kalahari Group sediments at Mamatwan Mine near the southern edge of the Kalahari basin. Our results indicate that the majority of the existing section was emplaced rapidly at ~1 Ma. At this time the basin filled to its present level and established the Kalahari sand belts, which fostered the modern savannah. Our data suggest a dynamic landscape, with punctuated cycles of erosion and deposition, in contrast to the accepted concept of a stable basin filling slowly throughout the Cenozoic. The sedimentology and cosmogenic nuclide measurements from the lower Mamatwan Mine section reveal the existence of an extensive Early to Middle Pleistocene water body, persisting at least 420 ka prior to the rapid filling event at ~1 Ma. This water body is contemporaneous with a significant hominin occupation as evidenced by neighboring archaeological excavations. We thus provide the first evidence of association of the high-density hominin occupation in southern Africa with an extensive water body

Indivíduo e pessoa na experiência da saúde e da doença The notions of the person and the individual in the experience of health and illness

Revisão de uma linha de pesquisa no campo das ciências sociais em saúde no Brasil que se centra na hipótese metodológica de uma diferença cultural fundamental entre os modelos relacionais de "pessoa" e o modelo do "indivíduo" ocidental moderno (pensado como livre, autônomo e igual). Essa diferença cultural é de particular importância na caracterização das formas diferenciais de experiência da saúde e da doença entre as classes populares das sociedades nacionais modernas e os segmentos portadores dos saberes biomédicos eruditos, dominantes e oficiais. Estes últimos têm um compromisso originário com algumas características da ideologia do individualismo, tais como o universalismo/racionalismo e o cientificismo/fisicalismo. As representações, práticas e instituições dela dependentes ocupam um espaço de oposição à forma integrada, relacional, holista, como são pensadas e experimentadas as "doenças" (ou, como prefiro, as "perturbações físico-morais") mesmo nos segmentos "individualizados", quanto mais nos segmentos regidos por representações hierárquicas, relacionais, de "pessoa". Apresentam-se os fundamentos antropológicos dessa perspectiva analítica e as diferentes dimensões da produção acadêmica a ela associada, em comparação com as de outras tendências do campo.<br>This is a review of a research line present in Brazilian social science studies about health and illness, characterized by a methodological emphasis in the cultural distinction between relational models of the "person" and the modern Western model of the "individual" (conceived as free, autonomous and equal). That distinction is particularly important for the perception of different forms of the experience of health and illness, mostly between working classes in modern national societies and the social segments responsible for biomedical knowledge, as a learned, dominant or official ideology. This knowledge is fundamentally related to the ideology of individualism, in its universalistic/rationalistic and physicalist/scientificist guises. The complex set of representations, practices and institutions derived from it are systematically opposed to the integrated, embedded and relational condition of the experience of illness (or of "physical-moral disturbances", as I prefer) mostly within those groups where hierarchical, relational, models of the "person" prevail. I evoke the anthropological grounds for this perspective of analysis and describe some of the aspects of the academic production related to it, in comparison with other tendencies in the field