John Boli Anna Rubtsova Emory University
Transnational corporations market infant formula around the globe, while numerous International Non-governmental Organizations (INGOs) promote breastfeeding. The breastfeeding advocacy movement, which emerged in the 1970s, was instrumental in putting the issue of infant feeding on the agenda of international policy-makers, and numerous international policy initiatives supporting breastfeeding have emerged since 1981. Hence, the primary objective of this project is to investigate how global political, cultural, and economic processes impact infant feeding practices worldwide. The theoretical framework is provided by three sociological theories of globalization - world-polity, world-system, and McDonaldization. The researcher hypothesizes that globalization affects infant feeding through changes in both social institutions (e.g., national legislation) and individual beliefs. Therefore, this project has two components. One component investigates how global processes affect both national adoption of breastfeeding-supportive legislation and national breastfeeding rates; it is based on statistical analyses of publicly available quantitative data. The other component concerns whether and how global processes influence individual decision-making regarding infant feeding. It draws on in-depth interviews with mothers of infants in Kiev, Ukraine, and in Atlanta, Georgia. This research makes contributions to both the field of sociology and society at large. Sociologically, the project will improve our understanding of the macro-micro link by considering the interaction between global- and individual-level processes.
Broader Impacts: At the practical level, many national and international institutions are involved in designing policy measures to improve infant feeding in general, and to increase breastfeeding in particular. This study will broaden understanding of the impact of past policy (e.g., the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes). In addition, by investigating how global processes interact with local contexts and individual beliefs and circumstances, the study will provide new insights that could be instrumental for the development of more effective policies.
