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Acknowledgments This book, which is a revision of my dissertation thesis, has had a long gestation . The list of people and institutions who helped in the process and to whom I owe many thanks is also long. The initial research on which this book is based was funded by a grant from the Joint Committee on African Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with funds provided by the Rockefeller Foundation and by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Training Grant. Summer grants from the Center for African Studies and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign provided funds for my preliminary trip to Tanzania in the summer of 1990. The revision of my thesis into book form was funded by a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Anthropological Demography offered through the Of‹ce of Population Research at Princeton University from January 1999 to December 2000. In Tanzania, I am indebted to many people, only a few of whom I mention here formally by name. I thank the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology for permission to undertake research in the United Republic of Tanzania from 1992 through 1994, in particular Mr. Nguli who helped facilitate the research clearance process. The Institute of Development Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam kindly accorded me research af‹liation, and Dr. A. D. Kiwara served as a resourceful contact person. I thank Dr. Ali A. Mzige at the Ministry of Health for allowing me to observe the ‹rst National Safe Motherhood Conference in Tanzania in 1990. I am also grateful to Winnie Mpanju-Shumbusho and her family as well as to the Tanzania Media Women’s Association for the many kindnesses they extended to me during my initial trip to Tanzania in the summer of 1990. Many thanks are also in order for the various government of‹cials and health-care personnel who helped facilitate my research in the Shinyanga Region. Many of the latter were quite patient with my endless questions during the period I observed their work. I hope my descriptions of how some health-care workers interacted with their pregnant clients will be understood in the spirit they are meant: not as a critique of individuals —who are themselves working in less than ideal conditions—but, rather, as illustrations of the complex and often unacknowledged ways global processes have an impact on people living at the local level. I am also deeply and forever indebted to my Tanzanian friends and neighbors in the community of “Bulangwa” and its surrounding villages, especially to the women who shared their stories with me and without whom this research would not have been possible. Although many miles now separate us in terms of physical distance, they are always in my thoughts. It is to them that I dedicate this book. Many thanks are also due to the many mentors, colleagues, and friends in the United States I have encountered along the way. First and foremost are the members of my original dissertation committee: Alma Gottlieb, Clark Cunningham, Bill Kelleher, and Paula Treichler at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Bill Arens from the Department of Anthropology at SUNY who served as an outside reader. Their insightful and critical comments were especially helpful; I have learned much from all of them. I am particularly indebted to Alma Gottlieb , my thesis adviser and committee chair, whose role in this process can be compared to that of a midwife during birth, in that her encouragement through the various stages of this project—proposal writing, ‹eldwork, the writing of the dissertation, and words of wisdom during the revision phase—helped in bringing this book to completion. I am also indebted to Clark Cunningham, who, during the course of one conversation we had soon after I returned from the ‹eld, assured me that there was, indeed, a thesis buried deep within the seemingly amorphous mass of data I had collected over two years, and that it revolved around the notion of risk. I would also like to mention the crucial role played by the late Demitri Shimkin, who ‹rst encouraged me to work in Tanzania, and who provided the initial contacts with Tanzanian of‹cials working within the health sector . The late Albert Scheven, who worked for many years in Tanzania, also provided help on many fronts. In addition to teaching me the basics of the Sukuma language, he generously shared with me...

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