Robbie Davis-Floyd PhD joined the Rice faculty in 2020. Her research interests are as follows:
Medical/reproductive anthropology: The anthropology of reproduction; transformational models in childbirth, midwifery, obstetrics, reproduction, and maternity care; birth, midwifery, and obstetric knowledge systems; biomedicine as a cultural system; maternity care and COVID-19; integrative medicine; shamanism.
Interpretive/symbolic anthropology: Belief systems; ritual; rites of passage; shamanism; mythologies of science and technology; religion; cults.
Science and technology studies: The ARTs; aerospace engineers and the commercialization of outer space; early history of NASA.
Futures research: Emergent cultural systems; the use of scenarios for futures planning; local/global dynamics and globalization processes; the transnational development of midwifery; the emergence of humanistic and holistic obstetricians; the likely cyorgian transformation of homo- into techno-sapiens as we co-evolve ourselves with our technologies.
Regional specializations: The U.S. and Latin America, especially Mexico and Brazil.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
1997 Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, eds. Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn Sargent. (Berkeley: University of California Press.)
1998 Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots, eds. Robbie Davis-Floyd and Joseph Dumit. (New York: Routledge.)
2003 Birth as an American Rite of Passage. (Berkeley: University of California Press.) 2nd edition
2006 Mainstreaming Midwives: The Politics of Change, eds. Robbie Davis-Floyd and Christine Barbara Johnson (New York: Routledge.)
2009 Birth Models That Work, eds. Robbie Davis-Floyd, Leslie Barclay, Betty-Anne Daviss, and Jan Tritten. Berkeley: University of California Press
2016. The Power of Ritual, by Robbie Davis-Floyd and Charles D. Laughlin. Brisbane, Australia: Daily Grail Press.
2018 Ways of Knowing about Birth: Mothers, Midwives, Medicine, and Birth Activism by Robbie Davis-Floyd and Colleagues. Long Grove IL: Waveland Press.
2019 Birth in Eight Cultures, eds. Robbie Davis-Floyd and Melissa Cheyney. Long Grove IL: Waveland Press.
2021 Birthing Models on the Human Rights Frontier: Speaking Truth to Power, eds. Betty-Anne Daviss and Robbie Davis-Floyd. Abindgon, Oxon: Routledge.
2021 Sustainable Birth in Disruptive Times, eds. Kim Gutschow, Betty-Anne Daviss, and Robbie Davis-Floyd. New York: Springer Nature.
2021 A Special Issue of Fontiers in Sociology on “The Global Impacts of COVID-19 on Maternity Care,” eds. Robbie Davis-Floyd and Kim Gutschow.
2021 Birthing Techno-Sapiens: Human-Technology Co-Evolution and the Future of Reproduction, ed. Robbie Davis-Floyd. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.