Reinscribing the Birthing Body: Homebirth as Ritual Performance

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).

Die Liegendposition nach vorzeitigem Blasensprung

“…Diese variierenden Aussagen führen zu Verunsicherung oder gar Ängsten der Schwangeren und zu einer verzerrten Einschätzung des tatsächlichen Risikos eines NSV. Hebammen und Gynäkologen müssen sich im Klaren darüber sein, dass sie als Experten für Schwangerschaft und Geburt einen großen Einfl uss auf Schwangere ausüben [38]. Wird eine gesunde Schwangere ohne Risikofaktoren am Termin vor dem sehr seltenen Ereignis eines NSV gewarnt, können bei der betroff enen Frau Ängste vor der Geburt provoziert werden, die den gesamten Geburtsverlauf negativ beeinflussen können oder sogar den Wunsch nach einem Kaiserschnitt hervorrufen [39].…”

Childbirth as a sacred celebration

“…Birth has been described as the happiest moments in life, highlighting peak experiences which manifest in a shared joy wherein individual experiences unify with others as described earlier in this chapter. Simultaneously experiences of birth have been described as a powerful self-actualising experience for mothers (Cheyney 2011, Lokugamage 2011) and fathers (Lahood 2007). Peak experiences do not have a lineal progression as does the movement to self-actualisation yet both emerge from experiential data about being at birth.…”

Researching Sex Work in the Online Age: A Qualitative Approach

“…Work by Sbisà (1996), Pollock (1999) and Klassen (2001) are exceptions. The embodied aspects of birthing have recently begun to receive more attention (Akrich & Pasveer, 2004;Chadwick, 2009;Walsh, 2010;Cheyney, 2011). Despite the increasing interest in researching the embodied aspects of childbirth, it is nonetheless difficult to capture the 'fleshy' experience of birthing in qualitative studies.…”