Birthing modernity: spatial discourses of cesarean birth in São Paulo, Brazil. Issue 8 (2nd August 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Klimpel, Jill; Whitson, Risa
• Is Part Of: Gender, place and culture. Volume 23:Issue 8(2016)
• Page Start: 1207
• Page End: 1220
• Publication Date: 2016-08-02
• Subjects: Birth -- Brazil -- caesarean section -- geographies of reproduction -- modernity; Parto -- Brasil -- cesárea -- geografías de reproducción -- modernidad; 生产 -- 巴西 -- 剖腹产 -- 再生产的地理 -- 现代性; Human geography -- Periodicals; Feminism -- Periodicals; Géographie féministe -- Périodiques; 305.305
• DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2015.1136817
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0966-369X

Abstract

Abstract: In this article, we explore the ways that spatial discourses inform women's birth experiences, focusing in particular on urban Brazilian women's experience of caesarean section. In particular, we draw on interviews conducted in São Paulo with 22 women and five doctors in order to analyse the ways the discourses of modernity, development and nationalism are drawn on and themselves constituted in the way that women narrate their birth experiences. We also explore the meanings that are given to these terms in women's narrations in order to address the cultural specificity of the way that these discourses play out in the Brazilian context. We argue that spatial referents concretize discourses of modernity, and are employed in mothers' and doctors' birth narratives in order to give meaning to birth experiences. In particular, we find that these discourses provide a means of interpreting birth experiences in a positive way and providing spatialized subject positions which confer status and value to both people and places. In exploring these themes, we seek to further understandings of the ways that narratives of place help to frame and give meaning to women's reproductive lives.