The feeding of human milk to socially and biologically unrelated infants is not a new phenomenon, but the Euroamerican values of individualism have generated expectations that mothers are individually responsible for feeding their own infants. Using a bio-communities of practice framework, this dynamic new analysis explores the emotional and material dimensions of the growing milk sharing practice in the Global North and its implications for contemporary understandings of infant feeding in the US. Ranging widely across themes of motherhood, gender and sociology, this is a compelling empirical account of infant feeding that stimulates new thinking about a contentious practice.

How did the study of sociology develop? History and Theory focuses on the development of sociological theorists' ideas about society and social research over time. Ideas of major classical theorists such as Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, and Max Weber are explored, as well as a range of schools of thought in sociology, including structural functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, ethnomethodology, critical theory, and postmodernism and emancipatory theories. This brand-new, full-color volume concludes with a discussion of the relationship between sociological theory and public policy.