Overview

Editors:

Kerreen Reiger
La Trobe University, VIC

Alphia Possamai-Inesedy
University of Western Sydney, NSW

Karen Lane
Deakin University, VIC

The field of childbirth is increasingly contentious in Australia with media reports of escalating staff shortages and conflicts over philosophy of management, service delivery and roles of professional care providers. Released as a course reader, this special issue of Health Sociology Review (volume 15/4 - October 2006) addresses the 'politics of maternity care' and the 'culture of fear' by drawing on contemporary social theory and research in order to clarify practical and policy issues.

Many governmental enquiries, subsequent recommendations and policy proposals have sought to decrease technological intervention in the physiological processes of conception, pregnancy and childbirth (eg Parliament of Australia, Senate, 1999; New South Wales Health, 2000; Victoria, 2004), but 'medicalised birth' still dominates the mainstream health system and can be argued that it is actively sought by an increasing population of women and families.

Childbirth, Politics & the Culture of Risk extends the strong social science critique of the 'medicalisation' of birth - which has been further impacted by the growth of modern consumerism. It critically examines the pervasive cultural construction of reproduction as a medical event laden with risk which is in need of technological management. Designed as a course reader for society and risk, maternity and midwifery and nursing and culture courses, this special issue juxtaposes policy and professional debates about 'risk management' with social theoretical analyses following Ulrich Beck's Risk Society (1992) constructs.

Table of Contents

Childbirth, Politics & the Culture of Risk

Foreword
Barbara Katz Rothman

Editorial
Kerreen Reiger, Alphia Possamai-Inesedy, Karen Lane

A Neoliberal Quickstep: Contradictions in Australian maternity policy
Kerreen Reiger

The Plasticity of Professional Boundaries: A case study of collaborative care in maternity services
Karen Lane

Surveillance, Support and Risk in the Postnatal Period
Maria Zadoroznyj

Performing Birth in a Culture of Fear: An embodied crisis of late modernity
Kerreen Reiger, Rhea Dempsey

Finding a 'Safe' Place on the Risk Continuum: A case study of pregnancy and birthing in Lao PDR
Elizabeth Eckermann

Risky Business: Contested knowledge over safe birthing services for Aboriginal women
Sue Kildea

Inescapable Burden of Choice?: The impact of a culture of prenatal screening on women's experiences of pregnancy
Sarah Donovan

Confining Risk: Choice and responsibility in childbirth in a risk society
Alphia Possamai-Inesedy