Anthropology and Phenomenology of Birth

Date of Award

2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

Second Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Vesperi, Maria

Keywords

Midwifery, Phenomenology, Ethnography, Birth

Area of Concentration

Anthropology

Abstract

This thesis intends to supplement an ethnographic portrayal of a free-standing birthing home with a phenomenological discussion of what it means for birth to be an intersubjective event. Combining writing from Michael Jackson, Francoise Dastur, and Maurice Medeau-Ponty articulates how intersubjectivity was integral to creating the event of birth at the birthing home. Intersubjective engagement allowed individuals to construct their birth experiences both before and after they occurred. The disclosure of personal stories, advice, and simple information shaped how clients viewed their pregnancies, births and parenting choices. Clients' birth narratives and anticipations were staged in terms that can best be understood as existential: navigating the birth process which ultimately lay outside of their control, and yet which they could, and hoped to, alter and guide. As Melissa Cheyney has written, out-of-hospital birthers responded to a larger context in which out-of-hospital birth was challenged, portrayed as unsafe and/or as abnormal. Clients anticipated their births and retold their narratives, in order to decenter questions about 'what if something goes wrong' and to retell the experience as a safe, natural and fulfilling process, over which they had influence.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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