Hancart Petitet Pascale. (2021). Training birth attendants in India : authoritative knowledge social forms, practices, and paradoxes. In :
Jullien C. (ed.), Jeffery R. (ed.). Childbirth in South Asia : old challenges and new paradoxes. Oxford (GBR) ; New York : Oxford University Press, 96-118. ISBN 978-0-19-013071-8.
Titre du document
Training birth attendants in India : authoritative knowledge social forms, practices, and paradoxes
Année de publication
2021
Type de document
Partie d'ouvrage
Auteurs
Hancart Petitet Pascale
In
Jullien C. (ed.), Jeffery R. (ed.) Childbirth in South Asia : old challenges and new paradoxes
Source
Oxford (GBR) ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2021,
96-118 ISBN 978-0-19-013071-8
This chapter documents the local and global processes of construction, legitimization and delegitimization, and the political uses of the knowledge of traditional birth attendants - TBAs. Based on four years' ethnographical investigation in Tamil Nadu, this chapter discusses the issue from various points of view. It looks at the debates of actors involved in the national and international public health agendas, Indian movements promoting 'Natural Childbirth', and movements in favour of the preservation of traditional systems of medicine. TBAs are variously perceived as wicked mothers whose archaic practices must be controlled, the archetypal ambassadors of traditional knowledge, or as relevant actors bringing together ideal elements of any development activity - locality, community, and low cost. This careful reading of the contemporary social representations of TBAs and of their role reconfigurations offers a lens to examine authoritative knowledge's social forms, practices, and paradoxes.
