The swan effect in midwifery talk and practice: a tension between normality and the language of risk

Midwifery activity in the labour room coalesces around routine surveillance practices. When engaging in such practice, midwives have to cope with attempting to instil a sense of confidence in the mother’s embodied ability to give birth to her baby spontaneously while concurrently attending to an arr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociology of health & illness 2011-11, Vol.33 (7), p.987-1001
Main Author: Scamell, Mandie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropology, Cultural
Babies
Birth
Childbirth
Childbirth & labor
Communication
Ethnography
Female
Health - statistics & numerical data
health surveillance
Humans
Infants
Language
Midwifery
Midwifery - methods
Midwives
Mothers
Narration
Normal
Normality
Perception
Population Surveillance
Practice
Practice Patterns, Physicians' - statistics & numerical data
Pregnancy
Professional Competence
Professionalism
Responsibility
Risk
Risk assessment
Risk management
Sociology
Sociology of health and medicine
Sociology of professions
Sociology of work
Sociology of work and sociology of organizations
State Medicine
Surveillance
Threat
United Kingdom
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Summary:Midwifery activity in the labour room coalesces around routine surveillance practices. When engaging in such practice, midwives have to cope with attempting to instil a sense of confidence in the mother’s embodied ability to give birth to her baby spontaneously while concurrently attending to an array of risk‐focused tests and measurements. Midwives are vigilant about the potential harm that may come to mother and baby while at the same time they are responsible for facilitating a normal birth. This article sets out to explore the tension between these two tasks and shows how routine midwifery practice during labour can communicate certain understandings about birth. Using empirical evidence taken from an ethnographic study of midwifery talk and practice, attention is given to how midwives’ activity during labour and birth implicitly introduces a sense of danger, an imagined risk that confines practice and operates to unsettle normality.
ISSN:0141-9889
1467-9566
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9566.2011.01366.x