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- Convenors:
-
Cassandra Yuill
(City, University of London)
Maria Paula Prates (University of Oxford)
- Formats:
- Panels
- Stream:
- Bodies
- Location:
- Magdalen Old Law Library
- Start time:
- 19 September, 2018 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
We invite speakers to discuss reproduction and birth as creative phenomena, focusing on the language, actions and spaces where they converge with broader social and ecological contexts and tensions.
Long Abstract:
Birth is many things: a physiological process, a medicalised ritual and a site of transformation and contestation. There is a multiplicity of meanings attached to reproduction and birth, and within and between these meanings are capacities for celebration, conflict and control. Public health and its related discourses are continuously reshaped and suffused with the 'best' way to give birth and to care for mothers. Despite the centrality of maternal health in medical, political and international institutions, the bodies and experiences of women remain on the periphery of these structures. How we talk about and enact birth, and where it takes place reflect both local and global health inequalities and reveal to what extent alterity is constrained by social forms and medical systems. In this panel, we explore these issues and invite speakers to discuss reproduction and birth as creative phenomena, focusing on the language, actions and spaces where they converge with broader social and ecological contexts and tensions.
We welcome papers addressing some of the following questions: How do reproductive and birth practices function as embodied, creative actions? How do new medical and assisted reproductive technologies continue to subvert previous notions of the birthing body? What are the implications of the increasing emphasis on individualised care and informed choice in maternal health? What can fathers' experiences add to our understanding of imagination and embodiment, particularly before and during birth? Is it possible to creatively intervene to improve maternal-infant health and how could anthropologists play a role in these developments?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Aline Regitano (University of Sao Paulo)
Paper short abstract:
Childbirth among Mehinaku women is a process shared with many. Mehinaku women have been chosen the hospitals to have their babies. This paper aims to explore, from bibliographic research and preliminar fieldwork data results how women make sense and experience these processes through their bodies.
Paper long abstract:
Childbirth among Mehinaku women (Upper Xingu/MT/Br) is a process shared with many, contrary to the biological ideia that the pregnant woman is the only who's direct responsible for the growing of the baby in the uterus, there are a variety of agents who inflects to the good development of the children, as close relatives who shares diets and prescriptions, specialists as midwives and shamans, and even non-human entities, as Mahaialo, "the body's owner". This collective process evinces the way women of this region make sense of ontogenesis, reproductive processes, "bodies fabrication". These shared agencies embraces questions of affection and kinship. In this context, the body is presented as a potency who imagines and conceives meanings, feels the fear, pain, and love intrinsic to these processes, communicates with the substances who get into it, receive the agentivity of the older women with their wisdom and specific practices. Recently, Mehinaku women have been chosen the hospitals in the cities that surround the "Indigenous land of Xingu" to have their babies. It implies in radical transformations on the practices traditionally experienced, because in these places there is a unique and dominant way of making sense of the pregnancy and childbirth that prevails. This paper aims to explore, from bibliographic research and preliminar fieldwork data results, the body undissociated of the ideas and affection, seeking to understand how this new configuration provoked by the women' move to hospitals inflects on the way they make sense and experience these processes through their bodies
Laura Godfrey-Isaacs (King's College Hospital)
Paper short abstract:
This interdisciplinary presentation uses feminist film, media and visual arts theory and examples of abusive and violent depictions of women's bodies to suggest how these can be seen to inform our understanding of 'obstetric violence'.
Paper long abstract:
This interdisciplinary, multimedia presentation uses feminist film, media and visual arts theory to uncover influential examples of disrespectful, abusive and violent depictions of women's bodies, to suggest how these can be seen to inform our understanding of 'obstetric violence'.
'Obstetric violence' is a term coined by Veneuelan law in 2010. It is defined as; abusive or disrespectful care of childbearing women by health care professionals, and a lack of concern for physiological birth processes, which leads to a loss of bodily autonomy.
The presentation will explore the powerful cultural legacy generated by the pervasive depiction of the objectification, sexualisation and violence perpetuated against women's bodies in medical illustration and the overt hetero-sexualisation and fetishism of the 'nude'.
In addition, recent phenomena will be looked at, such as gaming culture, the explosion of pornography on the internet, and the mass media's obsession with violence towards women. All these and more, can be seen to encourage a proliferation and perverse pleasure in portrayals of violence and abuse towards women, which, it is suggested, underpins 'obstetric violence'.
However, the presentation also looks at artworks and activist responses by women such as Yoko Ono's infamous 'Cut Piece' (1962) and the Russian music group Pussy Riot's, video 'Straight Outta Vagina' (2016)
The presentation concludes with a reflection on how those in maternity care can use a greater knowledge of the cultural roots of 'obstetric violence' to connect with human rights approaches in birth, women's voices, and a feminist ethics of care.
Karolina Kuberska (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
Using interviews with women in England who have experiences stillbirth or late miscarriage, I would like to explore the significance they attach to the labour process, including physical pain, in the construction of familial bonds with their babies.
Paper long abstract:
Stillbirths and late miscarriages are slowly attracting increasing attention of the British media and the politicians, and the general public as the result, however, they are largely framed through the extreme grief and mental health issues that accompany them. Many people find it surprising that a fetus/baby diagnosed with IUD, intrauterine death, has to be birthed. Even more are shocked to find out that vaginal labour, rather than caesarean sections, is encouraged by medical professionals. As bereavement care following pregnancy loss focuses on giving parents a sense of control and acknowledging the baby, the undeniability of childbirth fits this framework well. In this paper I would like to explore experiences of women whose childbirth resulted in anticipated late miscarriage or stillbirth. Although these birth experiences do not lead to live, healthy babies, they are crucial in the women's narratives of the relationship with the baby, validating these women's sense of motherhood and making the baby's existence more tangible to others. Using interviews with women in England who have experiences stillbirth or late miscarriage, I would like to explore the significance they attach to the labour process, including physical pain and temporality, in the construction of familial bonds with their babies.