Towards an 'optics of power': Technologies of surveillance and discipline and case-loading midwifery practice in New Zealand

Journal article

Davis, Deborah and Walker, Kim. (2013). Towards an 'optics of power': Technologies of surveillance and discipline and case-loading midwifery practice in New Zealand. Gender, Place and Culture. 20(5), pp. 597 - 612. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2012.701199
AuthorsDavis, Deborah and Walker, Kim
Abstract

Midwives in New Zealand achieved professional autonomy in 1990 with an amendment to the Nurses Act 1977. Predicated on a natural approach to childbirth it was envisaged that midwifery would counter the trend of increasing medicalisation of childbirth. Some 20 years later, we continue to be concerned by increasing rates of intervention in childbirth including caesarean section operations. Midwifery practice is no longer supervised in a hierarchical arrangement with the obstetrician at its peak, however, we suggest that new and more subtle disciplinary mechanisms have come to the fore post-1990. Drawing on Foucault's concepts of the ‘medical gaze’ and the ‘panopticon’ we describe the ways in which midwifery practice (and through them the bodies of childbearing women) continues to be disciplined to conform to obstetric norms.

Keywordsmidwifery; autonomy; discipline; Foucault; medicalisation; childbirth
Year2013
JournalGender, Place and Culture
Journal citation20 (5), pp. 597 - 612
PublisherRoutledge
ISSN0966-369X
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2012.701199
Scopus EID2-s2.0-84883383214
Page range597 - 612
Publisher's version
File Access Level
Controlled
Place of publicationUnited Kingdom
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