https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 20 Apr 2020 14:03:46 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/challenges-and-redefinitions-of-birth-in-the-maternity-landscapes-of-volos-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:40 +0000 http://arc.local/items/challenges-and-redefinitions-of-birth-in-the-maternity-landscapes-of-volos-greece/ Continued]]> Childbirth is in recent years regarded as a complex phenomenon, not only as a biological fact but as a social and spatial process that interacts with the physical and symbolic environment in which it takes place. Through its social definition as a pathological event and its positioning in medical institutions, birth and reproduction have been placed under the jurisdiction of medical experts in most of the West in the 20th century. The medicalisation of birth, however, is being challenged actively in the last decades, both by birthing women and health professionals, while less interventionist methods of birth care are becoming more popular together with the creation of more intimate birthing territories. In Greece in particular, in this period of economic recession it is going through, maternity care practices, birth spaces and related conceptualisations of reproduction appear to be undergoing a transformation. The downgrading of medical services caused by the crisis seems to have affected the quality of maternity care. At the same time the universal medicalisation of childbirth is being questioned because of the high rates of interventions and their negative consequences on the health of mother and baby. Hence nowadays less interventionist alternatives have started to emerge, such as ʼnatural’ birth in the maternity hospitals or birth at home. Birth care practices, arrangements and uses of birthing spaces are undergoing changes too. Together with women’s new attitudes, these developments constitute a trend to redefine childbirth as a normal physiological event and mothers as active birth-givers. This essay aims to contribute to the discussion on the present and future of the maternity care system by presenting the interaction of space and maternity practices with new significations of birth and birth care in the maternity landscape of a provincial town in Greece.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/giving-birth-in-volos-greece-medicalisation-ritual-and-emerging-alternatives/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:32 +0000 http://arc.local/items/giving-birth-in-volos-greece-medicalisation-ritual-and-emerging-alternatives/ Continued]]> The paper examines the relationship of space with obstetric practices and its role in the medicalisation of childbirth in a case study of the two maternity clinics of a provincial town in Greece. Typical birth care procedures in Volos were observed to act as rituals to define childbirth as a medical crisis and to transmit the message of superiority and necessity of medicine and technology in childbirth. The arrangements and uses of birth spaces made possible the application of the technomedical model with its high rate of obstetric interventions, while they supported and solidified its symbolic meanings. However, in the current economic and social crisis, these established practices are being challenged and alternative paradigms of birth care are being formed. Their interaction with existing spaces in maternity clinics and at home and the changes they required or caused are offering possibilities for new conceptualisations of birth, birth care and women’s transition to maternity.

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