Hancart Petitet Pascale auteur aut IRD text bookSection eng text/pdf born digital access 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. specialized INDE TAMIL NADU 106ANTHRO1 050MEDECI Jullien C. ed. edt IRD Jeffery R. ed. edt IRD 96-118 Oxford (GBR) Oxford University Press New York 2021 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010089831 10.1093/oso/9780190130718.003.0004 978-0-19-013071-8 [F B010089831] https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010089831 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/intranet/publi/2024-04/010089831.pdf Accès réservé (Intranet de l'IRD) IRD - Base Horizon / Pleins textes 2024-03-13 2025-02-24 fdi:010089831 fre