Extracting vitalities: Cuts in Indigenous women's bodies‐territories (Brazil)

Journal article

In this article, I explore the connections between the medicalization of childbirth and environmental devastation through Guarani‐Mbyá understandings of life and the living. I argue that the cuts made to Guarani‐Mbyá women's vaginas (episiotomies) in Brazilian hospitals are experienced and situated on the same cosmopolitical level as the cuts made in their ancestral territories by fences that demarcate soybean plantations and cattle ranches. What I call an extractivism of vitalities occurs precisely through both bodies and territories. In exploring this issue, I highlight connections obvious to Indigenous women: Their bodies and territories are inherently linked by vital forces that are shared and modulated through different qualities of relations involving humans and other‐than‐human beings.

Authors: Prates, MP

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Medical Anthropology Quarterly: International Journal for the Analysis of Health
• Article number: e70052
• Publication date: 2025-12-30
• Acceptance date: 2025-11-06
• DOI: 10.1111/maq.70052
• EISSN: 1548-1387
• ISSN: 0745-5194
• Language: English
• Keywords: South America; extractivism; Indigenous women; nonconsensual episiotomies; vitalities