PMID: 22338293Feb 18, 2012Paper

Reinscribing the birthing body: homebirth as ritual performance

Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Melissa Cheyney

Abstract

In this article, I examine the clinical practices engaged in by U.S. homebirth midwives and their clients from the beginning of pregnancy through to the immediate postpartum period, deconstructing them for their symbolic and ritual content. Using data collected from open-ended, semistructured interviews and intensive participant-observation, I describe the roles ritual plays in the construction, performance, and maintenance of birth at home as a transgressive rite of passage. As midwives ritually elaborate approaches to care to capitalize on their semiotic power to transmit a set of counterhegemonic values to participants, they are attempting, quite self-consciously, to peel away the fictions of medicalized birthing care. Their goal: to expose strong and capable women who "grow" and birth babies outside the regulatory and self-regulatory processes naturalized by modern, technocratic obstetrics. Homebirth practices are, thus, not simply evidence-based care strategies. They are intentionally manipulated rituals of technocratic subversion designed to reinscribe pregnant bodies and to reterritorialize childbirth spaces (home) and authorities (midwives and mothers).

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Citations

Jan 20, 2016·Women and Birth : Journal of the Australian College of Midwives·Rachel ReedMargaret Barnes
Dec 8, 2015·Women and Birth : Journal of the Australian College of Midwives·Alison Happel-Parkins, Katharina A Azim
Feb 18, 2014·Midwifery·Susan CrowtherDeb Spence
Dec 4, 2014·Midwifery·Susan CrowtherDeb Spence
Mar 7, 2014·Qualitative Health Research·Melissa CheyneyPaul Burcher
Mar 6, 2015·Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics : JERHRE·Rebecca Scott YoshizawaJosé Guilherme Cecatti
Apr 30, 2020·Perspectives on Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science·Orli Dahan
Sep 1, 2016·Medical Anthropology Quarterly·April Driesslein
Nov 30, 2018·Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry·Annekatrin Skeide
Dec 15, 2020·Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health·Ellen L TildenJonathan M Snowden
Jan 6, 2021·Medical Anthropology·Annekatrin Skeide
Feb 7, 2021·Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, and Neonatal Nursing : JOGNN·Jessica Coburn, Jennifer J Doering

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