"This volume contains social science analyses of Swiss, Chilean, Mexican, US, Greek, and Irish obstetrics and obstetricians, particularly around their reasons for the overuse of cesareans; a chapter on "4 Stages of Cognition" and a condition called "Substage," which describes how these concepts apply to obstetricians; and a chapter on why obstetricians fear home birth. This book is a must-read for students, social scientists, and all maternity care practitioners who seek to understand obstetricians' differing ideologies and motives for practicing as they do"--
Volume 2 in this landmark 3-volume series The Anthropology of Obstetrics and Obstetricians: The Practice, Maintenance, and Reproduction of a Biomedical Profession looks at cognition, risk, and responsibility in obstetrics.
This volume contains social science analyses of Swiss, Chilean, Mexican, US, Greek, and Irish obstetrics and obstetricians, particularly around their reasons for the overuse of cesareans; a chapter on "4 Stages of Cognition" and a condition called "Substage," which describes how these concepts apply to obstetricians; and a chapter on why obstetricians fear home birth.
This book is a must-read for students, social scientists, and all maternity care practitioners who seek to understand obstetricians' differing ideologies and motives for practicing as they do.
An excerpt from Vania Smith-Oka and Lydia Dixon's chapter:
For systemic changes to occur, we must understand doctors decision-making rationales and take their fear-based perspectives about risk and responsibility into account, while also paying attention to the concerns raised by scholars and activists.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: An Overview of This Volume and of Significant Concepts Used
Robbie Davis-Floyd and Ashish Premkumar
Chapter
1. Open and Closed Knowledge Systems, the 4 Stages of Cognition, and
the Obstetric Management of Birth
Robbie Davis-Floyd
Chapter
2. From Mastership to Active Management of Labor: The Culture of
Irish Obstetrics and Obstetricians
Margaret Dunlea, Martina Hynan, Jo Murphy-Lawless, Magdalena Ohaja,
Malgorzata Stach and Jeannine Webster
Chapter
3. Becoming an Obstetrician in Greece: Medical Training, Informal
Scripts, and the Routinization of Cesarean Birth
Eugenia Georges
Chapter
4. Physiologic Birth Entails Economic Damage: Financial Incentives
for the Performance of Cesareans in Chile
Michelle Sadler and Gonzalo Leiva
Chapter
5. The Introduction of Natural Cesareans in Swiss Hospitals: A
Conversation with One of Its Pioneers
Caroline Chautems, Irene Maffi, and Alexandre Farin
Chapter
6. Scoring Women, Calculating Risk: The MFMU VBAC Calculator
Nicholas Rubashkin
Chapter
7. On Risk and Responsibility: Contextualizing Practice among
Mexican Obstetricians
Vania Smith-Oka and Lydia Z. Dixon
Chapter
8. Crossing Bodily, Social, and Intimate Boundaries: How Class,
Ethnic, and Gender Differences Are Reproduced in Medical Training in Mexico
Vania Smith-Oka and Megan K. Marshalla
Chapter
9. The Limitations of Understanding Structural Inequality:
Obstetricians Accounts of Caring for Substance-Using Patients in the US
Katharine McCabe
Chapter
10. Contraceptive Provision by Obstetricians/Gynecologists in the
US: Biases, Misperceptions, and Barriers to an Essential Reproductive Health
Service
Melissa Goldin Evans
Chapter
11. Cognition, Risk, and Responsibility: Home Birth and Why
Obstetricians Fear It
Amali U. Lokugamage and Claire Feeley
Conclusions: Concepts, Conceptual Frameworks, and Lessons Learned
Robbie Davis-Floyd and Ashish Premkumar
Index
Robbie Davis-Floyd PhD, Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, Rice University, Houston, Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology, and Senior Advisor to the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction, is a well-known medical/reproductive anthropologist and international speaker and researcher in transformational models in childbirth, midwifery, obstetrics, and reproduction.
