In this episode of Yoga | Birth | Babies, I speak with world-renowned medical anthropologist, international speaker and researcher in transformational models in childbirth, midwifery and obstetric, Robbie Davis-Floyd PhD. She and I dive into a lively conversation about her work and what she defines technocratic birth and the three paradigms of care in childbirth.
Topics covered in this episode:
- What brought Robbie to this work
- Defining the three paradigms of care and technocratic birth
- Discussing Robbie’s article The Technocratic Body; American Childbirth as Cultural Expression, and offering an explanation of what Robbie calls the “One- Two Punch” and how it relates to childbirth in the US.
- Does the current US medical module supporting birth
- When a women is thinking about her birth, considerations to help her make an educated choice about the care she needs and where she should birth
- Ways to an expectant woman may find a care providers who has a more humanistic approach and signs that she is in a practice that doesn’t support physiological births
- Idea a laboring person can adjust if she is in a scenario were she wants a more humanistic birth but feels bombarded by technology, rules and restrictions
- How the energy around birthing mother and environment may effect the mother’s ability to labor
- As an anthropologist, where are we seeing the best birth results and what can we learn or take from that culture? What are we seeing in cultures that you deem are driving birth into a technocratic state that we should be wary of?
- A bit about Robbie’s upcoming books!
About Robbie Davis-Floyd:
Robbie Davis-Floyd PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Texas Austin and Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology, is a world-renowned medical anthropologist, international speaker and researcher in transformational models in childbirth, midwifery and obstetrics. She is author of over 80 articles and many many books including Birth as an American Rite of Passage (1992, 2004), the Power of Ritual
Robbie serves as Editor for the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative (www.imbci.org) and Senior Advisor to the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction. Most of her published articles are freely available on her website www.davis-floyd.com.
To read the article Deb mentions, visit Robbie’s website, here the link: The Technocratic Body; American Childbirth as Cultural Expression
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