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Professionalizing Midwifery: Exploring Medically Imagined Labor Rooms in Rural Rajasthan
Author(s) -
Price Sara
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
medical anthropology quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.855
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1548-1387
pISSN - 0745-5194
DOI - 10.1111/maq.12118
Subject(s) - professionalization , promotion (chess) , health care , birth attendant , ethnography , public relations , sociology , nursing , political science , medicine , maternal health , health services , law , social science , population , demography , politics , anthropology
In India, globalized flows of biomedical discourse like evidence‐based delivery practices (EBDs) and new technologies are reshaping the field of reproductive health care. As iterations of evidence‐based medicine shift, non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) increasingly act as distributive agents for biomedical projects that equate modernized health care spaces and provider‐care techniques with a marked improvement in the safety of birth outcomes. In this article, I examine how particular local iterations of EBDs are distributed to skilled birth attendants (SBAs) who have become sites for globalized projects aimed at reshaping their professional designation. I draw on data collected through in‐depth ethnographic interviews with SBAs practicing in health centers around southern Rajasthan to explore the dynamics and tensions surrounding the professionalization of midwives and the increasing promotion of EBDs in institutional labor rooms.