List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: An Overview of This Volume and of Significant Concepts Used
Robbie Davis-Floyd and Ashish Premkumar

Chapter 1. Open and Closed Knowledge Systems, the 4 Stages of Cognition, and the Obstetric Management of Birth
Robbie Davis-Floyd

Chapter 2. From “Mastership” to Active Management of Labor: The Culture of Irish Obstetrics and Obstetricians
Margaret Dunlea, Martina Hynan, Jo Murphy-Lawless, Magdalena Ohaja, Malgorzata Stach and Jeannine Webster

Chapter 3. Becoming an Obstetrician in Greece: Medical Training, Informal Scripts, and the Routinization of Cesarean Birth
Eugenia Georges

Chapter 4. Physiologic Birth Entails Economic Damage: Financial Incentives for the Performance of Cesareans in Chile
Michelle Sadler and Gonzalo Leiva

Chapter 5. The Introduction of “Natural Cesareans” in Swiss Hospitals: A Conversation with One of Its Pioneers
Caroline Chautems, Irene Maffi, and Alexandre Farin

Chapter 6. Scoring Women, Calculating Risk: The MFMU VBAC Calculator
Nicholas Rubashkin

Chapter 7. On Risk and Responsibility: Contextualizing Practice among Mexican Obstetricians
Vania Smith-Oka and Lydia Z. Dixon

Chapter 8. Crossing Bodily, Social, and Intimate Boundaries: How Class, Ethnic, and Gender Differences Are Reproduced in Medical Training in Mexico
Vania Smith-Oka and Megan K. Marshalla

Chapter 9. The Limitations of Understanding Structural Inequality: Obstetricians’ Accounts of Caring for Substance-Using Patients in the US
Katharine McCabe

Chapter 10. Contraceptive Provision by Obstetricians/Gynecologists in the US: Biases, Misperceptions, and Barriers to an Essential Reproductive Health Service
Melissa Goldin Evans

Chapter 11. Cognition, Risk, and Responsibility: Home Birth and Why Obstetricians Fear It
Amali U. Lokugamage and Claire Feeley

Conclusions: Concepts, Conceptual Frameworks, and Lessons Learned
Robbie Davis-Floyd and Ashish Premkumar

Index

Cognition, Risk, and Responsibility in Obstetrics

Anthropological Analyses and Critiques of Obstetricians’ Practices

Edited by Robbie Davis-Floyd and Ashish Premkumar

334 pages, 7 illus., bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-80073-831-7 Hb Published (June 2023)

eISBN 978-1-80073-832-4 eBook

Details

Volume 2 in this landmark 3-volume series The Anthropology of Obstetrics and Obstetricians: The Practice, Maintenance, and Reproduction of a Biomedical Profession looks at cognition, risk, and responsibility in obstetrics.

This volume contains social science analyses of Swiss, Chilean, Mexican, US, Greek, and Irish obstetrics and obstetricians, particularly around their reasons for the overuse of cesareans; a chapter on "4 Stages of Cognition" and a condition called "Substage," which describes how these concepts apply to obstetricians; and a chapter on why obstetricians fear home birth.

This book is a must-read for students, social scientists, and all maternity care practitioners who seek to understand obstetricians' differing ideologies and motives for practicing as they do.

An excerpt from Vania Smith-Oka and Lydia Dixon's chapter:
For systemic changes to occur, we must understand doctors’ decision-making rationales and take their fear-based perspectives about risk and responsibility into account, while also paying attention to the concerns raised by scholars and activists.

Robbie Davis-Floyd PhD, Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, Rice University, Houston, Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology, and Senior Advisor to the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction, is a well-known medical/reproductive anthropologist and international speaker and researcher in transformational models in childbirth, midwifery, obstetrics, and reproduction.

Ashish Premkumar MD is an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, as well as a maternal-fetal medicine subspecialist practicing at the John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, Illinois. He is also a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at The Graduate School at Northwestern University.

Series: Volume 2, The Anthropology of Obstetrics and Obstetricians: The Practice, Maintenance, and Reproduction of a Biomedical Profession

Subject: Medical Anthropology Gender Studies and Sexuality

Area:

LC: RG525

BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; MED033000 MEDICAL/Gynecology & Obstetrics; SOC032000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Gender Studies

berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

Cognition, Risk, and Responsibility in Obstetrics

Anthropological Analyses and Critiques of Obstetricians’ Practices

Edited by Robbie Davis-Floyd and Ashish Premkumar

Series: Volume 2, The Anthropology of Obstetrics and Obstetricians: The Practice, Maintenance, and Reproduction of a Biomedical Profession

Subject: Medical Anthropology Gender Studies and Sexuality

Area:

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Contents

Cognition, Risk, and Responsibility in Obstetrics

Anthropological Analyses and Critiques of Obstetricians’ Practices

Edited by Robbie Davis-Floyd and Ashish Premkumar

Series: Volume 2, The Anthropology of Obstetrics and Obstetricians: The Practice, Maintenance, and Reproduction of a Biomedical Profession

Subject: Medical Anthropology Gender Studies and Sexuality

Area: