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
Authors | Davis, Deborah and Walker, Kim |
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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. |
Keywords | midwifery; autonomy; discipline; Foucault; medicalisation; childbirth |
Year | 2013 |
Journal | Gender, Place and Culture |
Journal citation | 20 (5), pp. 597 - 612 |
Publisher | Routledge |
ISSN | 0966-369X |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2012.701199 |
Scopus EID | 2-s2.0-84883383214 |
Page range | 597 - 612 |
Publisher's version | File Access Level Controlled |
Place of publication | United Kingdom |
https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/item/8953v/towards-an-optics-of-power-technologies-of-surveillance-and-discipline-and-case-loading-midwifery-practice-in-new-zealand
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