In India, globalized flows of bio-medical discourse, practices and technologies are
reshaping the field of reproductive healthcare, and the performance of childbirth more
specifically. These projects aim to produce institutional delivery rooms that are "safe and
modernized" by equating the utilization of westernized, obstetric techniques for
managing delivery with better birth outcomes. Yet, these projects often evoke dynamic
tensions between the imagined labor rooms NGOs seek to produce and the lived realties
of labor in a local context. In this thesis, I examine the ways NGOs market and
disseminate state and global discourses around safe, institutional delivers to local
communities through a case study of one NGO working in rural southern Rajasthan.
Drawing on data from participant observation and in-depth, semi-structured interviews
with NGO staff and skilled-birth attendants employed by community health centers, I
argue that at the interface of NGO, state, and global relations of power, a commodified
discourse in the form of Evidenced-based Delivery (EBD) practices is emerging. This
discourse is marketed through a political economy of hope that promotes EBDs as
essential for safe delivery. In this system, NGOs function as conduits for transmitting
idealized notions of the safe and modern delivery room, and thereby affect a shift in what
skilled-birth attendants and communities come to expect from their childbirth experiences
-- expectations that I argue are often difficult to meet given current training levels,
limited economic resources, and a diverse set of cultural values around childbirth. My
findings indicate that while Evidence-based Delivery practices may improve birth
outcomes in some contexts, in the delivery rooms of rural Rajasthan, they are functioning
essentially as technologies that capitalize on the political economy of hope by evoking
the medical imaginary. / Graduation date: 2012
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/30204 |
| Date | 25 April 2012 |
| Creators | Price, Sara (Sara Nicole) |
| Contributors | Cheyney, Melissa J. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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