Sheryl Nestel - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Sheryl Nestel
University of British Columbia Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2006
Topia, 2023
Thi article acknowledge the pre cience of MJ Nadeau and Alan Sear ' 2009 article "The Pale tine T... more Thi article acknowledge the pre cience of MJ Nadeau and Alan Sear ' 2009 article "The Pale tine Te t, Countering the Silencing Campaign". It introduce recent re earch with Canadian academic and activi t about their experience of uppreion of peech on Pale tine. The e include political intervention in academic hiring, threat of violence, hara ment by pro-I rael advocate and media outlet and cla room urveillance by pro-I rael campu group , all of which are violation of academic freedom and grave impediment to the production of knowledge.
Resources for Feminist Research, Dec 22, 1994
"[T]here is no vantage outside the actuality of relationships between cultures, between uneq... more "[T]here is no vantage outside the actuality of relationships between cultures, between unequal imperial and non-imperial powers, between different Others, a vantage that might allow one the epistemological privilege of somehow judging, evaluating and interpreting free of the encumbering interests, emotions and engagements of the ongoing relationships themselves" (Edward Said, 1989, p. 216). "Biology is an historical discourse, not the body itself" (Donna Haraway, 1989, p. 290). In 1939, American anthropologist Margaret Mead gave birth to her daughter Catherine in Manhattan's French Hospital, "after many years of experience...in remote villages -- watching children born on a steep wet hillside, in the `evil place' reserved for pigs and defecation" (Mead, 1972, p. 249). Before the birth, she had convinced her obstetrician, Claude Heaton, as well as her pediatrician, Benjamin Spock, to agree to very specific and unusual arrangements for the birth and subsequent care of the infant. Mead insisted that no anesthesia be administered to her unless absolutely necessary and that the baby be allowed to breastfeed on demand. In order to win the cooperation of the nursing staff in meeting these rather extraordinary requests, Heaton showed them a film on childbirth made by Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson during their anthropological field work in New Guinea (Mead, 1972). Mead viewed the female bodies of her New Guinea subjects and other "Primitives" (1) as immutably invested with the "immediacy of the human body plan" (Mead, 1967, p. 57) and therefore able to provide indisputable proof that Mead's own birth plan adhered scrupulously to the trajectory of what she called "woman's biological career line" (Mead, 1967, p. 174). It was Mead's intention in much of her work to juxtapose examples of cultural patterns in other parts of the world with those in North America in order to dislodge notions of what was perceived as natural in North American society (Fischer, 1986). In the 1960s, Mead lent her considerable reputation as well as her anthropological research to the burgeoning North American childbirth reform movement (Edwards and Waldorf,1984). Her cross-cultural studies of childbearing among what she termed "Primitive" women seemed to prove that the medical technology and control which were the norm in American obstetrics distorted women's natural reproductive function. Mead's work and her personal example seemed to protest alienation from the body and argue for a restoration of the self to a "full and easy harmony with the nature of the cosmos" (Torgovnik, 1990, p. 228). Mead was neither the first nor the last critic of technological childbirth to argue that the reproductive behaviour of Primitive women was paradigmatically human. These arguments, produced and sustained by various forms of anthropological knowledge, have been used for well over a century by both radical reformers and some who would defend medical hegemony over childbearing. Together with the visual images which sustain them, they form a powerful discursive armament for those who have struggled recently to redefine childbearing in the West. However, the power and salience of the arguments and representations derive primarily from their ability to construct a racialized Other, "found to have just those properties that the writer's culture lacks and needs" (Haraway, 1989, p.390). While the issue of representation has assumed a central role in contemporary theory, what has been largely neglected is the imperial context which gave rise to various forms of racial representation (Said, 1993). The arguments for natural childbirth examined here rely on a discourse of normalcy and naturalness in the reproductive lives of non-Western women. These arguments are buoyed by visual representations of the reproductive acts of those women, representations which exist within a web of sexual and racial artistic conventions informed, in part, by colonial and postcolonial relations of racial domination. …
TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology, Apr 26, 2010
Canadian Journal of Law and Society, Aug 1, 2000
TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology, Apr 26, 2010
During the more than 37-year brutal Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the numbers of ... more During the more than 37-year brutal Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the numbers of North American Jews voicing their opposition in public have been dispiritingly small. Since the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000, however, Jewish anti-occupation activists have become a visible political presence in Jewish politics in the United States and Canada. Such groups as Brit Zedek V'Shalom, the Tikkun Community, and Junity (Jewish Unity for a Just Peace) have spawned dozens of regional chapters across North America. Local groups such as Not In My Name (Chicago), Jewish Voices against the Occupation (Seattle), and Jews for Global Justice (Portland, Oregon) have sprung up spontaneously in almost every major North American city. Numerous ad hoc responses have emerged as well. For example, an "Open Letter from American Jews," proclaiming opposition to Israeli government policies in the Occupied Territories and bearing 4,000 signatures, has appeared as a full-page advertisement in The New York Times as well as in a dozen more American and British newspapers. While very few of these groups would identify themselves as religiously observant, almost all have invoked a Jewish ethical tradition of social justice, derived from Jewish texts and rabbinical tradition, to make their political point. In his most recent book, Israel and Palestine out of the Ashes, Jewish theologian Marc Ellis posits a more deeply consequential connection between Jewish history, Jewish ethics, and the occupation. According to Ellis, Director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University (Waco, Texas), Israel's displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian people constitutes such a fundamental transgression of Jewish ethics and morality that it threatens to render Judaism, a religious
This essay reviews recent feminist scholarship, autobiographical narrative and fiction which expl... more This essay reviews recent feminist scholarship, autobiographical narrative and fiction which explores nurses' engagement with empire in Africa and elsewhere in this century. Such literature suggests that while nursing work may have improved native health in colonized regions, it also contributed significantly to the establishment and stabilization of the racialized order of colonial rule. Of particular significance was colonial nursing's intervention into the reproductive practices of native women, resulting in the loss of local knowledges and autonomy, the disruption of complex social links and indigenous health strategies, and the expansion of markets for western capitalism. The setting is that loveliest part of the Central African Federation, the land which curls around the turbulent Lake Nyasa, but the beauty is stripped away when one has to struggle through the bush to the mud hut in the stifling heat of the day or the darkness of night... the crackle of twigs may be due to the tread of a leopard as the author hastens to do battle with superstitious old women and witches in a noisy hut over the exhausted form of a young woman about to become a mother .... And when modern drugs help disperse the miasma of decay and death, the natives use their energies for hatching spells and getting into matrimonial entanglements. That the natives and lepers remain happy and lovable is a living tribute to the author. (From the sleeve of Leper Country by Electra Dory, quoted in Vaughan [1991], p. 158.) In the colonial situation, going to see the doctor, the administrator, the constable, or the mayor are identical moves. The sense of alienation from colonial society and the mistrust of the representatives of its authority are always accompanied by an
Histories of the childbirth reform movement in North America have focussed primarily on women's s... more Histories of the childbirth reform movement in North America have focussed primarily on women's struggle to reclaim female control over childbirth from the hands of male medical practitioners (Edwards and Waldorf, 1984; [Dorothy C. Wertz] and Wertz, 1989; Rothman, 1991). Other work has focussed on the role of class in the victory of the medical profession over women's control of childbearing in North America prior to the twentieth century (Ehrenreich and English, 1978). While battles for the meaning and control of childbirth were undoubtedly fought in the arenas of gender and class, they unfolded in the second half of the twentieth century upon a background which included the challenge and defeat of colonialism, massive immigration of former colonial subjects to the West, as well as protracted racial conflict and the struggle for civil and economic rights by racial minorities and indigenous peoples in North America. Both European colonialism and North American racism relied on various sexual prescriptions based on class, race and gender to sustain the relations of ruling and establish racial and class boundaries (Stoler, 1990). As Sander Gilman (1989, p. 10) has argued, anatomy, reproduction and pathology are employed in the eroticization of racial and gender differences. In the postcolonial era, it can be argued, therefore, that any discussion of sexuality and reproduction which does not factor in race tells only a very partial story. The meanings of childbearing, and movements that struggle for those meanings, can therefore be understood to possess a racial dimension. It is not difficult to see how this endeavour could be viewed as an attempt to displace other meanings of childbirth reform including the struggle against misogynist medical conventions, inhumane and unnecessary obstetrical practices, and the medical monopoly over health care. I do not intend, however, to discredit important work which has been accomplished by the childbirth reform movement, but rather to extend the scope of scholarly work on race and reproductive issues and reveal ways in which projects conventionally regarded as liberatory may simultaneously serve ends contrary to liberation. As Jane Flax has argued, "[E]ach discourse has its own set of rules or procedures that govern the production of what is to count as a meaningful or truthful statement...each discourse is simultaneously enabling and limiting" (Flax, 1992, p. 452). Viewed within a discourse that sees gender oppression as the central organizing feature of society, childbirth reform is a worthy liberatory project working to restore female control and agency in the arena of reproductive politics. This discourse assumes a subjectivity based on gender that transcends other categories such as race, sexuality, geography, ability, etc. It can be argued however, that different women have different investments in reproduction. The subject at the centre of childbirth reform strategies may in fact be engaged in the "consolidation and concealment of authority" (Butler, 1992, p. 15) when the issue of racial domination goes unacknowledged in reform strategies which employ race to make their arguments. This paper is in part, a response to Judith Butler's call for a consideration of the function of the subject in the exercise of authority (1992). It is an attempt to expand rather than limit the number of discourses we must consider when pursuing any vision of "liberation." The fledgling North American natural childbirth movement of the 1940s drew heavily on the writings of a British obstetrician and World War I army surgeon, Grantly [Dick-Read]. Dick-Read believed that childbirth was not meant to be painful and that the fear of birth displayed by "civilized" women was responsible for the pain they experienced ([Sheila Kitzinger], 1990). Dick-Read had arrived at this conclusion while observing the seemingly painless birth of a young working-class woman in Whitechapel during his internship. The young woman apparently PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM
Until 1993, when midwifery was made a profession in Ontario, Canada was the only industrialized c... more Until 1993, when midwifery was made a profession in Ontario, Canada was the only industrialized country that did not recognize midwifery (Bourgeault 1999). Save for a few small religious, remote and Aboriginal communities it was rare that a woman in Canada gave birth anywhere other than a hospital attended by a physician. However, in the 1970s a tiny but growing movement of women sought and took control of their birth experiences by choosing to give birth in their own homes with the assistance of friends. These friends were self-taught midwives whose approach to pregnancy and childbirth was very different than those of their medical counterparts. Unlike physicians who are taught that birth is normal after the fact, midwives treat birth as a normal natural event and see labouring women as their own birth experts. This social movement was taking shape across the country, but it was in Ontario where these lay-trained midwives were the first to make it across the professional finish lin...
Resources for Feminist Research, 1994
"[T]here is no vantage outside the actuality of relationships between cultures, between uneq... more "[T]here is no vantage outside the actuality of relationships between cultures, between unequal imperial and non-imperial powers, between different Others, a vantage that might allow one the epistemological privilege of somehow judging, evaluating and interpreting free of the encumbering interests, emotions and engagements of the ongoing relationships themselves" (Edward Said, 1989, p. 216). "Biology is an historical discourse, not the body itself" (Donna Haraway, 1989, p. 290). In 1939, American anthropologist Margaret Mead gave birth to her daughter Catherine in Manhattan's French Hospital, "after many years of experience...in remote villages -- watching children born on a steep wet hillside, in the `evil place' reserved for pigs and defecation" (Mead, 1972, p. 249). Before the birth, she had convinced her obstetrician, Claude Heaton, as well as her pediatrician, Benjamin Spock, to agree to very specific and unusual arrangements for the birth and subsequent care of the infant. Mead insisted that no anesthesia be administered to her unless absolutely necessary and that the baby be allowed to breastfeed on demand. In order to win the cooperation of the nursing staff in meeting these rather extraordinary requests, Heaton showed them a film on childbirth made by Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson during their anthropological field work in New Guinea (Mead, 1972). Mead viewed the female bodies of her New Guinea subjects and other "Primitives" (1) as immutably invested with the "immediacy of the human body plan" (Mead, 1967, p. 57) and therefore able to provide indisputable proof that Mead's own birth plan adhered scrupulously to the trajectory of what she called "woman's biological career line" (Mead, 1967, p. 174). It was Mead's intention in much of her work to juxtapose examples of cultural patterns in other parts of the world with those in North America in order to dislodge notions of what was perceived as natural in North American society (Fischer, 1986). In the 1960s, Mead lent her considerable reputation as well as her anthropological research to the burgeoning North American childbirth reform movement (Edwards and Waldorf,1984). Her cross-cultural studies of childbearing among what she termed "Primitive" women seemed to prove that the medical technology and control which were the norm in American obstetrics distorted women's natural reproductive function. Mead's work and her personal example seemed to protest alienation from the body and argue for a restoration of the self to a "full and easy harmony with the nature of the cosmos" (Torgovnik, 1990, p. 228). Mead was neither the first nor the last critic of technological childbirth to argue that the reproductive behaviour of Primitive women was paradigmatically human. These arguments, produced and sustained by various forms of anthropological knowledge, have been used for well over a century by both radical reformers and some who would defend medical hegemony over childbearing. Together with the visual images which sustain them, they form a powerful discursive armament for those who have struggled recently to redefine childbearing in the West. However, the power and salience of the arguments and representations derive primarily from their ability to construct a racialized Other, "found to have just those properties that the writer's culture lacks and needs" (Haraway, 1989, p.390). While the issue of representation has assumed a central role in contemporary theory, what has been largely neglected is the imperial context which gave rise to various forms of racial representation (Said, 1993). The arguments for natural childbirth examined here rely on a discourse of normalcy and naturalness in the reproductive lives of non-Western women. These arguments are buoyed by visual representations of the reproductive acts of those women, representations which exist within a web of sexual and racial artistic conventions informed, in part, by colonial and postcolonial relations of racial domination. …
Colour Coded Health Care offers a review of relevant academic and community-based research on rac... more Colour Coded Health Care offers a review of relevant academic and community-based research on racial disparities in the health of Canadians appearing between 1990-2010. In addition to surveying the research on mortality and morbidity by racialized groups in Canada, it surveys the evidence of bias, discrimination and stereotyping in health care delivery. This research shows non-European immigrants are twice as likely as the Canadian-born to report deterioration in health subsequent to immigration. Moreover, Black immigrants were 76 percent more likely to assess themselves as “unhealthy” than other racialized groups. Recent research on the physiological impact of racism suggests that living in a racist environment increases the risk of illness for racialized individuals. Some studies also suggest that racialized people experience racism in their interactions with the health care system, which may have an impact on access to health care and to life-saving screening procedures. This sur...
Canadian Journal of Sociology Online March-April 2007 ... The Implications of Professionalizing M... more Canadian Journal of Sociology Online March-April 2007 ... The Implications of Professionalizing Midwifery in Ontario ... Push! The Struggle for Midwifery in Ontario. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006, 376 pp. 29.95paper(0−7735−3025−8),29.95 paper (0-7735-3025-8), 29.95paper(0−7735−3025−8),80.00 hardcover (0-7735-2977-2)
Canadian journal of law and society, 2000
RésuméCet article décrit la pratique du «tourisme de la profession de sage-femme» par laquelle, l... more RésuméCet article décrit la pratique du «tourisme de la profession de sage-femme» par laquelle, les sages-femmes en Ontario ont fait des stages dans des cliniques de maternité de pays du Tiers-monde en vue d'obtenir l'expérience clinique qu'elles ne pouvaient pas obtenir ici avant la légalisation de la profession dans la province. Plusieurs sages-femmes ont aussi pu mieux se faire reconnaître sur le plan professionnel pour leurs connaissances directes des méthodes obstétriques utilisées par les femmes du Tiers-monde, c'est-à-dire par des femmes qui, selon une mythologie soutenue dans le mouvement pour l'accouchement naturel, posséderaient, en ce qui concerne les accouchements, des connaissances féminines innées qui n'auraient pas encore été corrompues par les pratiques médicales des pays de l'Ouest. L'émergence nouvelle de la profession de sage-femme en Amérique du Nord est un exemple convaincant de la manière dont, par des affirmations épistémologiqu...
Resources For Feminist Research, Dec 22, 1994
University of British Columbia Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2006
Topia, 2023
Thi article acknowledge the pre cience of MJ Nadeau and Alan Sear ' 2009 article "The Pale tine T... more Thi article acknowledge the pre cience of MJ Nadeau and Alan Sear ' 2009 article "The Pale tine Te t, Countering the Silencing Campaign". It introduce recent re earch with Canadian academic and activi t about their experience of uppreion of peech on Pale tine. The e include political intervention in academic hiring, threat of violence, hara ment by pro-I rael advocate and media outlet and cla room urveillance by pro-I rael campu group , all of which are violation of academic freedom and grave impediment to the production of knowledge.
Resources for Feminist Research, Dec 22, 1994
"[T]here is no vantage outside the actuality of relationships between cultures, between uneq... more "[T]here is no vantage outside the actuality of relationships between cultures, between unequal imperial and non-imperial powers, between different Others, a vantage that might allow one the epistemological privilege of somehow judging, evaluating and interpreting free of the encumbering interests, emotions and engagements of the ongoing relationships themselves" (Edward Said, 1989, p. 216). "Biology is an historical discourse, not the body itself" (Donna Haraway, 1989, p. 290). In 1939, American anthropologist Margaret Mead gave birth to her daughter Catherine in Manhattan's French Hospital, "after many years of experience...in remote villages -- watching children born on a steep wet hillside, in the `evil place' reserved for pigs and defecation" (Mead, 1972, p. 249). Before the birth, she had convinced her obstetrician, Claude Heaton, as well as her pediatrician, Benjamin Spock, to agree to very specific and unusual arrangements for the birth and subsequent care of the infant. Mead insisted that no anesthesia be administered to her unless absolutely necessary and that the baby be allowed to breastfeed on demand. In order to win the cooperation of the nursing staff in meeting these rather extraordinary requests, Heaton showed them a film on childbirth made by Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson during their anthropological field work in New Guinea (Mead, 1972). Mead viewed the female bodies of her New Guinea subjects and other "Primitives" (1) as immutably invested with the "immediacy of the human body plan" (Mead, 1967, p. 57) and therefore able to provide indisputable proof that Mead's own birth plan adhered scrupulously to the trajectory of what she called "woman's biological career line" (Mead, 1967, p. 174). It was Mead's intention in much of her work to juxtapose examples of cultural patterns in other parts of the world with those in North America in order to dislodge notions of what was perceived as natural in North American society (Fischer, 1986). In the 1960s, Mead lent her considerable reputation as well as her anthropological research to the burgeoning North American childbirth reform movement (Edwards and Waldorf,1984). Her cross-cultural studies of childbearing among what she termed "Primitive" women seemed to prove that the medical technology and control which were the norm in American obstetrics distorted women's natural reproductive function. Mead's work and her personal example seemed to protest alienation from the body and argue for a restoration of the self to a "full and easy harmony with the nature of the cosmos" (Torgovnik, 1990, p. 228). Mead was neither the first nor the last critic of technological childbirth to argue that the reproductive behaviour of Primitive women was paradigmatically human. These arguments, produced and sustained by various forms of anthropological knowledge, have been used for well over a century by both radical reformers and some who would defend medical hegemony over childbearing. Together with the visual images which sustain them, they form a powerful discursive armament for those who have struggled recently to redefine childbearing in the West. However, the power and salience of the arguments and representations derive primarily from their ability to construct a racialized Other, "found to have just those properties that the writer's culture lacks and needs" (Haraway, 1989, p.390). While the issue of representation has assumed a central role in contemporary theory, what has been largely neglected is the imperial context which gave rise to various forms of racial representation (Said, 1993). The arguments for natural childbirth examined here rely on a discourse of normalcy and naturalness in the reproductive lives of non-Western women. These arguments are buoyed by visual representations of the reproductive acts of those women, representations which exist within a web of sexual and racial artistic conventions informed, in part, by colonial and postcolonial relations of racial domination. …
TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology, Apr 26, 2010
Canadian Journal of Law and Society, Aug 1, 2000
TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology, Apr 26, 2010
During the more than 37-year brutal Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the numbers of ... more During the more than 37-year brutal Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the numbers of North American Jews voicing their opposition in public have been dispiritingly small. Since the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000, however, Jewish anti-occupation activists have become a visible political presence in Jewish politics in the United States and Canada. Such groups as Brit Zedek V'Shalom, the Tikkun Community, and Junity (Jewish Unity for a Just Peace) have spawned dozens of regional chapters across North America. Local groups such as Not In My Name (Chicago), Jewish Voices against the Occupation (Seattle), and Jews for Global Justice (Portland, Oregon) have sprung up spontaneously in almost every major North American city. Numerous ad hoc responses have emerged as well. For example, an "Open Letter from American Jews," proclaiming opposition to Israeli government policies in the Occupied Territories and bearing 4,000 signatures, has appeared as a full-page advertisement in The New York Times as well as in a dozen more American and British newspapers. While very few of these groups would identify themselves as religiously observant, almost all have invoked a Jewish ethical tradition of social justice, derived from Jewish texts and rabbinical tradition, to make their political point. In his most recent book, Israel and Palestine out of the Ashes, Jewish theologian Marc Ellis posits a more deeply consequential connection between Jewish history, Jewish ethics, and the occupation. According to Ellis, Director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University (Waco, Texas), Israel's displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian people constitutes such a fundamental transgression of Jewish ethics and morality that it threatens to render Judaism, a religious
This essay reviews recent feminist scholarship, autobiographical narrative and fiction which expl... more This essay reviews recent feminist scholarship, autobiographical narrative and fiction which explores nurses' engagement with empire in Africa and elsewhere in this century. Such literature suggests that while nursing work may have improved native health in colonized regions, it also contributed significantly to the establishment and stabilization of the racialized order of colonial rule. Of particular significance was colonial nursing's intervention into the reproductive practices of native women, resulting in the loss of local knowledges and autonomy, the disruption of complex social links and indigenous health strategies, and the expansion of markets for western capitalism. The setting is that loveliest part of the Central African Federation, the land which curls around the turbulent Lake Nyasa, but the beauty is stripped away when one has to struggle through the bush to the mud hut in the stifling heat of the day or the darkness of night... the crackle of twigs may be due to the tread of a leopard as the author hastens to do battle with superstitious old women and witches in a noisy hut over the exhausted form of a young woman about to become a mother .... And when modern drugs help disperse the miasma of decay and death, the natives use their energies for hatching spells and getting into matrimonial entanglements. That the natives and lepers remain happy and lovable is a living tribute to the author. (From the sleeve of Leper Country by Electra Dory, quoted in Vaughan [1991], p. 158.) In the colonial situation, going to see the doctor, the administrator, the constable, or the mayor are identical moves. The sense of alienation from colonial society and the mistrust of the representatives of its authority are always accompanied by an
Histories of the childbirth reform movement in North America have focussed primarily on women's s... more Histories of the childbirth reform movement in North America have focussed primarily on women's struggle to reclaim female control over childbirth from the hands of male medical practitioners (Edwards and Waldorf, 1984; [Dorothy C. Wertz] and Wertz, 1989; Rothman, 1991). Other work has focussed on the role of class in the victory of the medical profession over women's control of childbearing in North America prior to the twentieth century (Ehrenreich and English, 1978). While battles for the meaning and control of childbirth were undoubtedly fought in the arenas of gender and class, they unfolded in the second half of the twentieth century upon a background which included the challenge and defeat of colonialism, massive immigration of former colonial subjects to the West, as well as protracted racial conflict and the struggle for civil and economic rights by racial minorities and indigenous peoples in North America. Both European colonialism and North American racism relied on various sexual prescriptions based on class, race and gender to sustain the relations of ruling and establish racial and class boundaries (Stoler, 1990). As Sander Gilman (1989, p. 10) has argued, anatomy, reproduction and pathology are employed in the eroticization of racial and gender differences. In the postcolonial era, it can be argued, therefore, that any discussion of sexuality and reproduction which does not factor in race tells only a very partial story. The meanings of childbearing, and movements that struggle for those meanings, can therefore be understood to possess a racial dimension. It is not difficult to see how this endeavour could be viewed as an attempt to displace other meanings of childbirth reform including the struggle against misogynist medical conventions, inhumane and unnecessary obstetrical practices, and the medical monopoly over health care. I do not intend, however, to discredit important work which has been accomplished by the childbirth reform movement, but rather to extend the scope of scholarly work on race and reproductive issues and reveal ways in which projects conventionally regarded as liberatory may simultaneously serve ends contrary to liberation. As Jane Flax has argued, "[E]ach discourse has its own set of rules or procedures that govern the production of what is to count as a meaningful or truthful statement...each discourse is simultaneously enabling and limiting" (Flax, 1992, p. 452). Viewed within a discourse that sees gender oppression as the central organizing feature of society, childbirth reform is a worthy liberatory project working to restore female control and agency in the arena of reproductive politics. This discourse assumes a subjectivity based on gender that transcends other categories such as race, sexuality, geography, ability, etc. It can be argued however, that different women have different investments in reproduction. The subject at the centre of childbirth reform strategies may in fact be engaged in the "consolidation and concealment of authority" (Butler, 1992, p. 15) when the issue of racial domination goes unacknowledged in reform strategies which employ race to make their arguments. This paper is in part, a response to Judith Butler's call for a consideration of the function of the subject in the exercise of authority (1992). It is an attempt to expand rather than limit the number of discourses we must consider when pursuing any vision of "liberation." The fledgling North American natural childbirth movement of the 1940s drew heavily on the writings of a British obstetrician and World War I army surgeon, Grantly [Dick-Read]. Dick-Read believed that childbirth was not meant to be painful and that the fear of birth displayed by "civilized" women was responsible for the pain they experienced ([Sheila Kitzinger], 1990). Dick-Read had arrived at this conclusion while observing the seemingly painless birth of a young working-class woman in Whitechapel during his internship. The young woman apparently PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM
Until 1993, when midwifery was made a profession in Ontario, Canada was the only industrialized c... more Until 1993, when midwifery was made a profession in Ontario, Canada was the only industrialized country that did not recognize midwifery (Bourgeault 1999). Save for a few small religious, remote and Aboriginal communities it was rare that a woman in Canada gave birth anywhere other than a hospital attended by a physician. However, in the 1970s a tiny but growing movement of women sought and took control of their birth experiences by choosing to give birth in their own homes with the assistance of friends. These friends were self-taught midwives whose approach to pregnancy and childbirth was very different than those of their medical counterparts. Unlike physicians who are taught that birth is normal after the fact, midwives treat birth as a normal natural event and see labouring women as their own birth experts. This social movement was taking shape across the country, but it was in Ontario where these lay-trained midwives were the first to make it across the professional finish lin...
Resources for Feminist Research, 1994
"[T]here is no vantage outside the actuality of relationships between cultures, between uneq... more "[T]here is no vantage outside the actuality of relationships between cultures, between unequal imperial and non-imperial powers, between different Others, a vantage that might allow one the epistemological privilege of somehow judging, evaluating and interpreting free of the encumbering interests, emotions and engagements of the ongoing relationships themselves" (Edward Said, 1989, p. 216). "Biology is an historical discourse, not the body itself" (Donna Haraway, 1989, p. 290). In 1939, American anthropologist Margaret Mead gave birth to her daughter Catherine in Manhattan's French Hospital, "after many years of experience...in remote villages -- watching children born on a steep wet hillside, in the `evil place' reserved for pigs and defecation" (Mead, 1972, p. 249). Before the birth, she had convinced her obstetrician, Claude Heaton, as well as her pediatrician, Benjamin Spock, to agree to very specific and unusual arrangements for the birth and subsequent care of the infant. Mead insisted that no anesthesia be administered to her unless absolutely necessary and that the baby be allowed to breastfeed on demand. In order to win the cooperation of the nursing staff in meeting these rather extraordinary requests, Heaton showed them a film on childbirth made by Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson during their anthropological field work in New Guinea (Mead, 1972). Mead viewed the female bodies of her New Guinea subjects and other "Primitives" (1) as immutably invested with the "immediacy of the human body plan" (Mead, 1967, p. 57) and therefore able to provide indisputable proof that Mead's own birth plan adhered scrupulously to the trajectory of what she called "woman's biological career line" (Mead, 1967, p. 174). It was Mead's intention in much of her work to juxtapose examples of cultural patterns in other parts of the world with those in North America in order to dislodge notions of what was perceived as natural in North American society (Fischer, 1986). In the 1960s, Mead lent her considerable reputation as well as her anthropological research to the burgeoning North American childbirth reform movement (Edwards and Waldorf,1984). Her cross-cultural studies of childbearing among what she termed "Primitive" women seemed to prove that the medical technology and control which were the norm in American obstetrics distorted women's natural reproductive function. Mead's work and her personal example seemed to protest alienation from the body and argue for a restoration of the self to a "full and easy harmony with the nature of the cosmos" (Torgovnik, 1990, p. 228). Mead was neither the first nor the last critic of technological childbirth to argue that the reproductive behaviour of Primitive women was paradigmatically human. These arguments, produced and sustained by various forms of anthropological knowledge, have been used for well over a century by both radical reformers and some who would defend medical hegemony over childbearing. Together with the visual images which sustain them, they form a powerful discursive armament for those who have struggled recently to redefine childbearing in the West. However, the power and salience of the arguments and representations derive primarily from their ability to construct a racialized Other, "found to have just those properties that the writer's culture lacks and needs" (Haraway, 1989, p.390). While the issue of representation has assumed a central role in contemporary theory, what has been largely neglected is the imperial context which gave rise to various forms of racial representation (Said, 1993). The arguments for natural childbirth examined here rely on a discourse of normalcy and naturalness in the reproductive lives of non-Western women. These arguments are buoyed by visual representations of the reproductive acts of those women, representations which exist within a web of sexual and racial artistic conventions informed, in part, by colonial and postcolonial relations of racial domination. …
Colour Coded Health Care offers a review of relevant academic and community-based research on rac... more Colour Coded Health Care offers a review of relevant academic and community-based research on racial disparities in the health of Canadians appearing between 1990-2010. In addition to surveying the research on mortality and morbidity by racialized groups in Canada, it surveys the evidence of bias, discrimination and stereotyping in health care delivery. This research shows non-European immigrants are twice as likely as the Canadian-born to report deterioration in health subsequent to immigration. Moreover, Black immigrants were 76 percent more likely to assess themselves as “unhealthy” than other racialized groups. Recent research on the physiological impact of racism suggests that living in a racist environment increases the risk of illness for racialized individuals. Some studies also suggest that racialized people experience racism in their interactions with the health care system, which may have an impact on access to health care and to life-saving screening procedures. This sur...
Canadian Journal of Sociology Online March-April 2007 ... The Implications of Professionalizing M... more Canadian Journal of Sociology Online March-April 2007 ... The Implications of Professionalizing Midwifery in Ontario ... Push! The Struggle for Midwifery in Ontario. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006, 376 pp. 29.95paper(0−7735−3025−8),29.95 paper (0-7735-3025-8), 29.95paper(0−7735−3025−8),80.00 hardcover (0-7735-2977-2)
Canadian journal of law and society, 2000
RésuméCet article décrit la pratique du «tourisme de la profession de sage-femme» par laquelle, l... more RésuméCet article décrit la pratique du «tourisme de la profession de sage-femme» par laquelle, les sages-femmes en Ontario ont fait des stages dans des cliniques de maternité de pays du Tiers-monde en vue d'obtenir l'expérience clinique qu'elles ne pouvaient pas obtenir ici avant la légalisation de la profession dans la province. Plusieurs sages-femmes ont aussi pu mieux se faire reconnaître sur le plan professionnel pour leurs connaissances directes des méthodes obstétriques utilisées par les femmes du Tiers-monde, c'est-à-dire par des femmes qui, selon une mythologie soutenue dans le mouvement pour l'accouchement naturel, posséderaient, en ce qui concerne les accouchements, des connaissances féminines innées qui n'auraient pas encore été corrompues par les pratiques médicales des pays de l'Ouest. L'émergence nouvelle de la profession de sage-femme en Amérique du Nord est un exemple convaincant de la manière dont, par des affirmations épistémologiqu...
Resources For Feminist Research, Dec 22, 1994