This masters thesis presents the stories of Doña Eugdocia and Doña Carmen: two parteras empíricas living and working in the area of Estelí, Nicaragua. The stories were constructed from interviews with the parteras empíricas and are influenced by testimonial life history research methods. The stories, complemented by interviews with Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) trainers, locally available training manuals, and interviews with other parteras empíricas function as a counter-narrative to global (TBA) discourse revealing the important but little understood contributions these women make to their respective communities and health care systems. The stories demonstrate important parallels between the parteras empíricas narrowing role in Nicaragua and global TBA discourse regarding their practices. The stories also dispel the notion of the traditional as signifying incapable of change. Instead, considering the parteras empíricas story within a postcolonial framework using Jordans (an anthropologist) conceptualization of authoritative knowledge demonstrates that the parteras empíricas positioning of biomedicine as authoritative is a survival mechanism and not a devaluation of their own epistemological orientations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:SSU.etd-05162010-203319 |
| Date | 18 June 2010 |
| Creators | Mark, Amy |
| Contributors | Dickson, Gerri, Hanson, Lori, Abonyi, Sylvia |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-05162010-203319/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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