Ethnography in Progress - Anna Wynfield

October 23rd 11 am: PhD Candidate Anna Wynfield, Cultural Anthropology

Hale 450 or Zoom

Discussant: PhD Student Kelsey Armeni, Cultural Anthropology

Affective Labor and the Social Reproduction of Certified Nurse-Midwifery Practice

In this chapter, I explore how certified nurse-midwives integrate historically driven midwifery philosophies within gendered landscapes of care today. In its professional guidance, the certified nurse-midwifery profession seeks to alleviate medicalized and patriarchal obstetrical models by prioritizing patient autonomy, shared decision-making, and holistic forms of care during pregnancy. Even as certified nurse-midwives attempt to resist these trends in practice, however, they must do so within the constraints of a hierarchical healthcare system that consistently displaces the value of relational forms of care. As an advanced nursing profession subsumed within biomedical models, certified nurse-midwifery must also contend with gendered and racialized reverberations from its history of professionalization. I document how midwifery care emerges and is reconfigured within these systems and histories. By examining how midwives contend with enduring personal and professional dilemmas of care within and beyond the clinic, I argue that midwifery practice necessitates individualized forms of affective labor to sustain its historically driven ideals and show how those deemed responsible for resolving equity gaps, mostly women, are bound by inequities produced in the process of care. Through this analysis, I demonstrate how contemporary labor expectations displace the value of care work while relying on its biopolitical capital to hold together a fracturing (health)care system.

Cultural anthropology students and faculty: EIPs are an important opportunity to support our students in their ethnographic writing as well as practice giving constructive and helpful feedback to elevate the scholarship in our department. We would love to see you there.

Please join EIP next Friday October 23rd at 11 am in zoom and in person in Hale 450 for an EIP with Anna Wynfield and Kelsey Armeni as the discussant.

Please RSVP by Monday October 19th to receive the paper and the zoom link for the event.