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Biomedical subjects

R Davis-Floyd

Publications and source records attributed to R Davis-Floyd.

11 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

La partera profesional: articulating identity and cultural space for a new kind of midwife in Mexico.

This article documents the emergence of a new kind of midwife in Mexico, the thoroughly postmodern partera profesional. It traces the transnational conjunctures that facilitated her creation, illustrates aspects of her philosophy and praxis, and probes her ongoing articulations of identity. These women, who are of diverse sociocultural backgrounds, initially sought training from American direct-entry midwives in the independent out-of-hospital midwifery model; now, they are adapting that model to the situation in Mexico. Through their own practices, through intensive liaison work with traditional midwives, and through organizing national midwifery conferences and meetings, they are creating midwifery as both incipient profession and nascent social movement. Some of them operate outside the medical system while others are carving a niche within it. The mere existence of these self-consciously activist midwives constitutes a critique of monological Mexican medicine and its high cesarean rates; however, these women face a long struggle to define their identities, legalize their practices, and generate a sustainable space within the emergent Mexican technocracy. To their intense dismay, this struggle must take place within the context of the escalating disappearance of the traditional midwives whom they seek to support. The tension they feel between their desire to preserve traditional midwifery and their desire to create professional midwifery is a recurrent theme. These goals alternately complement and conflict with one another, yet both are central to the partera profesional's ongoing efforts at identity articulation.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed2001

The technocratic, humanistic, and holistic paradigms of childbirth.

This article describes three paradigms of health care that heavily influence contemporary childbirth, most particularly in the west, but increasingly around the world: the technocratic, humanistic, and holistic models of medicine. These models differ fundamentally in their definitions of the body and its relationship to the mind, and thus in the health care approaches they charter. The technocratic model stresses mind-body separation and sees the body as a machine; the humanistic model emphasizes mind-body connection and defines the body as an organism; the holistic model insists on the oneness of body, mind, and spirit and defines the body as an energy field in constant interaction with other energy fields. Based on many years of research into contemporary childbirth, most especially through interviews with physicians, midwives, nurses, and mothers, this article seeks to describe the 12 tenets of each paradigm as they apply to contemporary obstetrical and health care, and to point out their futuristic implications. I suggest that practitioners who combine elements of all three paradigms have a unique opportunity to create the most effective obstetrical system ever known.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed1996

Intuition as authoritative knowledge in midwifery and homebirth.

As defined by Jordan (1992, 1993[1978]), authoritative knowledge motivates decision and action. Based on interviews with 22 white middle-class midwives in the United States conducted between 1992 and 1993, this article explores the inner knowing that constitutes a primary source of authoritative knowledge for homebirthers but is granted no authority in the realm of technomedicine. The purpose of this article is to call attention to these midwives' utilization of and reliance on intuition as a guide to action and decision making during homebirths. The midwife-interviewees are highly literate and competent in technological skills and biomedical diagnosis, and are keenly aware of the cultural and legal risks they run when they cannot justify their actions during a birth in logical, rational terms. Nevertheless, the deep value they place on connection, in the context of their holistic model of birth and health care, leads them to listen to and follow their "inner voice" during birth, rather than operating only according to protocols and standard parameters for "normal birth". The nature of intuition and the reasons for and consequences of the general devaluation of intuitive thinking by the wider society are also considered.

Authoritarianism↗