Organizer: Santi Rozario, University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
Chair: Geoffrey Samuel, Lancaster University, U.K.
Discussant: Jeanette Snyder, University of Wisconsin, Madison
The limited range of studies so far available on birth practices in South Asia (mostly from North India and Bangladesh) suggests that South Asia forms a distinct cultural region in this respect. Specific features include (1) a high degree of concern with pollution and supernatural danger; (2) traditional low caste female birth attendants (dai, etc.) whose primary purpose is to remove pollution rather than aid the birth process itself; (3) little or no ante-natal care; (4) limited post-natal care for mother and child. The low status of female birth attendants is connected with their role as removers of pollution, but it can also be seen as resulting from a process of marginalization of female healing practitioners by the male-dominated healing professions. Modernity allows for a renegotiation of this relationship, as female birth attendants acquire access to biomedical techniques, and as the Western construction of midwife as a skilled professional impacts on the South Asian situation. The two Newar papers present aspects of the "traditional" situation, though the high status of the Dyamaju healers may reflect the extent to which Newar society departs from the norms of Hindu and Muslim society in North India and Bangladesh. The remaining two papers explore the renegotiation of the female birth attendant's role which is taking place in the encounter with modernity.
Barbara Johnson, Smithsonian Institution
This is a discussion of the ethnographic filming of labor, delivery, and immediate postpartum care in a Jyapu (Newar) farming village in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. The presentation will use video excerpts detailing the social setting of labor which takes place in the company of female relations and the traditional birth attendant-neighbor; the exchange of information through stories about other births, hospital births, and problem births; the traditional role of food and religious beliefs; the immediate post-partum care of mother by family and neighbors; and washing and oiling of the baby by the traditional birth attendant. Complete film footage is available with translation of all Newari dialogue through the Human Studies Film Archive at Smithsonian Institution, and a 20 minute edited videotape with English subtitles will also be available for viewing at the meeting.
Linda Iltis, University of Washington
Amidst a diverse Hindu and Buddhist pantheon of gods and goddesses, the Newars of Kathmandu Valley have an especially deep reverence for their apical ancestor-god couple, the great grandfather and great grandmother, Aju and Ajima. Ajima, also known as Hariti, is the tutelary grandmother goddess for Newar women healers called Dyamaju or Hariti Ma. The Goddess, her god family, and her human counterpart serve family and community as healers in contexts ranging from pregnancy and childbirth to disease and communal violence. Although specialization involves childbirth matters, the caste status of the Dyamaju is far from low. Her techniques involve diagnosis, healing, removal of self-blame, and prognosis evaluations. Her success as a ritual medical specialist is attributed to her rich narrative repertoire and comprehensive knowledge and potential physical embodiment of "all the gods"-especially the local gods-in her community. Her invocation of a familiar grandmother-to-child relationship through the primary tutelary goddess family narrative serves as a formal ritualized foundation in all her rituals, leading the patient by the hand, guiding and teaching. The patient identifies with a familiar relationship and participates in his or her own healing.
Kalpana Ram, Australian National University
In present-day India, influential political groupings argue that modernity is a preserve of alienated Westernized middle classes and intellectuals, and therefore a "pseudo" value. Women, the rural sectors and intimate spheres of personal life such as birth are all understood as the domain of the traditional where religion remains supreme. The paper argues that modernity shapes these areas as surely as any others. The rural midwife-rarely discussed without using the prefix "traditional" to describe her-has to contend with the formative dominance of modernity, as much as she is shaped by the religious and medical discourses which give meaning to her work. I examine the discursive tensions thus set up within the modes of self-preservation employed by midwives. Three contrasting case studies are employed to further explore the specificities of caste and religion which re-code the meanings of modernity in each location.
Santi Rozario, University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia;
Co-Author: Geoffrey Samuel, Lancaster University, U.K.
The dai or traditional birth attendant in rural Bangladesh is the principal source of help available to poorer village families in the event of a difficult birth. She is also, however, a low status and generally uneducated person whose primary function in the birthing process appears to be the removal of pollution. I have elsewhere described how the dai's attempt to deal with the contradictions implicit in their situation. Here I examine the ways in which the presence of Western biomedical birth technology, with its very different construction of the midwife as a skilled professional rather than an untrained menial, affects the dai's position. While government programs for the training of birth attendants have had limited impact in rural areas, maternity clinics attached to Catholic missions have had more success in providing local models for midwifery as a valued profession. Case studies from Rupganj and Noakhali districts illustrate the interaction between "traditional" and "modern" representations of the birth attendant.
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