Jan 20/22

Reading 2

The rituals of American hospital birth

David McCurdy

The vast majority of American women are hooked up to an electronic fetal monitor

and an IV. They are encouraged to use pain-relieving drugs, receive an episiotomy

Anthropologist regularly describe other, less technological ways to give birth. For

example the Mayan Indians of highland ciapas hold onto a rope while squatting for

birth, a position that is far more physiologically efficacious than the flat-on-your-

back-with-your-feet-in-stirrups position.

Early in this century, Arnold van Gennep noticed that in many societies around the

world, major life transitions are ritualized. These cultural rites of passage make it

appear that society itself effects the transformation of the individual.

RITES OF PASSAGE:

A ritual is a patterned, repetitive, and symbolic enactment of a cultural belief or

value; its primary purpose is alignment of their belief system of the individual with

that of society. A rite of passage is a series of rituals that move individuals from one

social state or status to another for example moving from girlhood to womanhood

Rites of passages are usually consist of three stages

o1. Separation of the individuals from their preceding social state

o2. A period of transition in which they are neither one thing nor the other

o3. An integration phase, in which, through various rites of incorporation, they

are absorbed into their new social state.

In a yearlong pregnancy/childbirth rite of passage in American society, the

separation phase begins with the woman’s first awareness of pregnancy; the

transition stage lasts until several days after the birth; and the integration phase

ends gradually in the newborn’s first few months of life

Victor Turner stated that they place their participants in a transition realm that has

few of the attributes of the past or coming state

Birth is an ideal candidate for ritualization of this sort and is in fact used in many

societies as a model for structuring other rites of passage. A society can ensure that

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its basic values will be transmitted to the three new members born out of the birth

process: the new baby, the woman reborn into the new social role of mother and the

man reborn as father

SYMBOLISM:

Ritual works by sending message in the form of symbols to those who perform and

those who observe it. A symbol is an object, idea, or action that is loaded with

cultural meaning

The left hemisphere decodes straightforward message

The right hemisphere decodes more complex messages

Routine obstetric procedures are highly symbolic. For example, to be seated in a

wheelchair upon entering the hospital, as many labouring women are, is to receive

through their bodies the symbolic message.

The intravenous drips commonly attached to the hands or arms of birthing women

make a powerful symbolic statement

By making her dependent on the institution for her life, the IV conveys to her one of

the most profound messages of her initiation experience: In American society, we are

all dependent on institutions for our lives.

Society and its institutions cannot exist unless women give birth, yet the birthing

woman in the hospital is shown, not that she gives life, but rather that the

institution does.

A COGNITIVE MATRIX:

A matrix, like a womb is something from within which something else comes. Rituals

are not arbitrary; they come from within the belief system of a group

Analysis of the rituals of hospital birth reveals their cognitive matrix to be the

techno graphic model of reality which forms the philosophical basis of both western

biomedicine and American society.

A technocracy is a hierarchical, bureaucratic society driven by an ideology of

technological progress.

The technocratic model is the paradigm that charters such behaviour.

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