At Work in the Field of Birth: Midwfery Narratives of Nature, Tradition, and Home

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 196 pages
• Published by: Vanderbilt University Press January 5, 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0826515770
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0826515773
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Weighs: 11.4 ounces

Product Description


At Work in the Field of Birth is an ethnographic study of midwifery in Canada in the wake of its historic transition from the margins as a grassroots social movement devoted to low-tech, woman-centered care to a regulated profession within the public health care system. In January 1994, after decades of lobbying by midwives and their supporters, the province of Ontario recognized midwifery as a profession for the first time in more than a century.

Through stories about becoming and being a midwife and stories about receiving midwifery care, this book describes how fundamental tenets of midwifery philosophy and practice--the meaning of tradition, natural birth, and home birth, and the place of medical technology in midwifery--are being reworked by the practical and ideological challenges of midwifery's new place within the formal health care system. MacDonald presents contemporary midwifery as a complex cultural system in which "nature" and "tradition" emerge as dynamic rather than esssentialized social categories of meaning and experience.

STORY EXCERPT:
Martina, another rural midwife, tells me "My great-grandmother was a midwife . . . so I sort of have this idea that there is still a bit of that in my blood. But at the same time-I mean, we don't just get called during labour-it's much more clinical. We are doing blood work that my grandmother wouldn't have done and more lab work and tests. But I want to hold on to some of that. I don't want to become a techno midwife. It's not what I want to do at all. It doesn't mean tat we don't use technology or are not willing to-we certainly do, all the time. But I think that one thing that attracts women to midwives and certainly attracts women to become midwives is the sense of the neighbour, the friend, having a cup of tea. It is more friendly, you've got time to spend with women."

About The Author
Margaret MacDonald teaches in the Department of Anthropology at York University in Toronto.