Multiplying Obstetrics:Techniques of Surveillance and Forms of Coordination

Authors: Akrich M.¹; Pasveer B.²

Source: Theoretical Medicine, Volume 21, Number 1, January 2000 , pp. 63-83(21)

Publisher: Springer

Buy & download fulltext article:

Price: $47.00 plus tax (Refund Policy)

Abstract:

The article argues against the common notion of disciplinary medical traditions, i.e. Obstetrics, as macro-structures that quite unilinearily structure the practices associated with the discipline. It shows that the various existences of Obstetrics, their relations with practices and vice versa, the entities these obstetrical practices render present and related, and the ways they are connected to experiences, are more complex than the unilinear model suggests. What allows participants to go from one topos to another – from Obstetrics to practice, from practice to politics, from politics to experience – is not self-evidently induced by Obstetrics, but needs to be studied as a surprising range of passages that connect (or don't). Techniques and devices to supervise the delivery, to render present the fetus during pregnancy, and to monitoring birth, are described in order to show that such techniques acquire different roles in connecting and creating Obstetrics as a system and obstetrical practices.

Keywords: technologies; childbirth; obstetrics; multiplicity

Language: English

Document Type: Regular paper

Affiliations: 1: Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Paris, 60, Boulevard Saint Michel, 75006 Paris, France E-mail: akrich@csi.ensmp.fr 2: Faculty of Arts and Culture, University of Maastricht, P.O.Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht The Netherlands E-mail: b.pasveer@tss.unimaas.nl

Publication date: 2000-01-01