ABSTRACT
Politics may be defi ned as the practice of prudent, shrewd and judicious policy. Politics is about power. How, then, can politics have anything to do with breastfeeding? When health, profi ts, and the empowerment of women are at stake, how could politics not be involved? Extraordinary changes in the way power is allocated in the world would be necessary for breastfeeding to fl ourish in this world. Many people believe such changes are impossible to make, that we have “advanced” too far into industrial capitalism to ever retreat into natural infant feeding regimes not based on profi ts. But even state policies infl uencing infant feeding practices can change, particularly when people begin to ask some very basic questions about child survival.
