Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University, USA.
Med Anthropol Q. 2011 Dec;25(4):519-42. doi: 10.1111/j.1548-1387.2011.01183.x.
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).
在本文中，我从怀孕开始到产后即刻，考察了美国家庭分娩的助产士及其客户的临床实践，并对其进行了符号和仪式内容的解构。我使用从开放式、半结构化访谈和深入的参与式观察中收集的数据，描述了仪式在家庭分娩中作为一种越轨的过渡仪式的构建、表现和维持中所扮演的角色。由于助产士在仪式上精心设计了护理方法，利用其符号权力向参与者传递了一套反霸权价值观，因此她们非常自觉地试图剥去医学化分娩护理的虚构。她们的目标是：暴露那些在现代技术官僚产科所自然化的监管和自我监管过程之外“成长”并生育孩子的坚强而有能力的女性。因此，家庭分娩实践不仅仅是基于证据的护理策略。它们是有意操纵的技术颠覆仪式，旨在重新书写孕妇的身体，并重新划定分娩空间（家庭）和权威（助产士和母亲）。
