Mothers and midwives: reproductive practices and politics in the district of sikka in flores island, indonesia
- Autores: Alicia Paramita Rebuelta Cho
- Directores de la Tesis: Diana Marre (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2020
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Aurora González Echevarría (presid.), Dolors Comas d'Argemir (secret.), Hugo Gaggiotti (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Antropología Social y Cultural por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TESEO
- Resumen
Mothers and Midwives: Reproductive Practices and Policies in the Sikka District of Flores Island, Indonesia analyzes how global reproductive politics permeate the Sikka community, generating changes in the local beliefs, rituals, and reproductive practices. This investigation centers principally on interactions among bidan (biomedical midwives), du’a rawin (midwives with local knowledge), and rural mothers, to ascertain if and how reproductive practices in the regency of Sikka may have changed in recent years.
Observing reproductive practices allows access both to a community’s overall social life as well as to the aforementioned female collectives, facilitating the apprehension not only of changes that have already taken place or are in progress, but also of the most valued of a culture’s reproductive practices (Davis-Floyd & Sargent 1997b, Ginsburg & Rapp 1995b). Among such aspects in the Sikka context are the obligation to transmit Adat (local knowledge) in order to express reciprocity and gratitude to the ancestral community for the gift of life (Butterworth 2008). In order to fully understand the context in which this investigation took place, it is necessary to know the history of Indonesia. Since independence in 1945, various governments have attempted to forge a national identity out of the country’s significant cultural diversity through mechanisms such as Pancasila, the philosophical foundation of the state. This philosophy is based on the theme of “Unity in diversity” and the term Gotong Royong, or, “mutual cooperation”, thereby encouraging distinct communities to prioritize the national commonalities over their individual differences (Bowen 1986).
In the 1980s, Indonesia joined with the international community in an effort to reduce their high rate of maternal mortality, attempting to achieve international objectives via a global strategy of increasing the number of bidan and thereby replacing the dukan bayi (Niehof 2014). However, a significant change took place in 1999 with the democratic decentralization of governmental policies, which allowed for a more flexible application of certain policies in accordance with local needs (Hull & Adioetomo 2002, Magrath 2016).
At the same time, since the early 2000s, the importance of the TBAs to various cultures has been recognized and their work alongside SBAs is now universally supported (Sibley et al. 2004). Nevertheless, despite the fact that the Indonesian Health Ministry gives autonomy to each local government, the pressure to achieve international objectives continues to exert heavy influence via the adoption and maintenance of mechanisms of recentralization, in order to exercise greater control over the process (Magrath 2016).
As a result, the imposition of reproductive ideas, policies and practices has had a multidirectional impact not only on reproductive and family relations but also on social relationships and the sociocultural logic of each individual context (Ginsburg & Rapp 1995), such that, although the country’s maternal mortality rate is one of the highest in the world and research shows that women’s reproductive health improves with complementary interventions, not all of the country’s districts understand the situation this way. Why should this be? More specifically, what is the situation in the Sikka District, including the consequences for conception, pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period?
