Abstract
The recent history of wet nurses in Southern Spain is presented in this article through life stories, specifically the biographical reconstruction of the personal experience of two wet nurses, a mother and her daughter. These testimonies are relevant in that they provide high quality information on the breastfeeding experience of these subaltern nurses, as a part of a feminine history that has thus far remained muted in academic studies.
The article first addresses a theoretical framework on allomaternal nursing in order to then present the case study in detail. The main ethnographic findings allow us to develop an analysis of how the protagonists of these lactations shift from a "suckling subalternity" to empowerment through the value of altruism. The philosophy of the narrative and the approach of collecting herstories of dairy life will be crucial to develop the epistemological and methodological framework.
Keywords:
life (dairy) stories; breastfeeding; subalternity; altruism; empowerment; breastfeeding