CfP: ESSHC 2018 Panel: Midwives and midwifery at the nexus between state interest, women’s health, and the decline in infant mortality
Considering
the instrumental role midwives played during birth, even after the
gradual and piecemeal process of medicalization began to firmly assert
itself in this realm, they have not received the consistent attention of
social historians, demographers, or family historians. Snippets of the
great narrative of birth in pre-twentieth century Europe have sometimes
allowed glimpses into midwives’ activity, their training, and the
expectations that society and couples lay out for them. Historians
dealing with the development of medicine as a state-driven initiative
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have sometimes noted
their existence, generally contrasting them to the increasingly visible
body of formally-trained physicians that spread out from universities
and academies into towns and villages. Midwives increasingly fell victim
to the same historiographic desuetude that surrounded their practice,
relegated to the field of ethnographic observation.
Nevertheless,
the salient point of midwives’ history is their incomparably widespread
area of activity: whether urban or rural, upper-class or part of lower
peasantry, expecting mothers would request their aid, in an overwhelming
majority of cases. They exerted considerable potential in curbing
endogenous infant mortality, and could also undergo formal training in
their field in most European areas, beginning with the late eighteenth
century. They could also potentially transmit information that would
occasion voluntary changes in fertility patterns. During the eighteenth
and nineteenth century, especially in Central and South-Eastern Europe,
their relations to the state was not however always a straightforward
one, as they were living contradictions of appropriate gender roles.
These, if not outright dangerous, certainly suspect groups of women
underwent the surveillance of specially-created departments, concerned
that their practices straddled the line of social and moral
acceptability. This issue was compounded by the cross-confessional and
cross-ethnical activity of midwives in composite states.
The
following panel therefore invites contributions to the history of
midwifery and midwives, which examine their practice at the nexus
between state and family interests, women’s health, and the decline in
infant mortality. Keeping in mind the imposing social capital such women
could amass in the village setting, we would encourage works that
explicitly seek to disentangle (by means of network analysis, for
instance) their influence in the local community. Moreover, quantitative
studies examining the tie between individual midwives (or midwives’
places of education) and the decline in infant mortality for various
European regions or micro-regions are especially welcome. Finally,
papers dealing with midwifery comparatively in various composite states
are also strongly encouraged. Paper proposals need not restrict
themselves to intra-European studies, can span into the interwar period.
If you wish to participate in the panel, please submit a 300 Word abstract of your proposed research, a title, and a very brief CV with a selected publications list to the following emails, before the 25 of April 2017.
Oana Sorescu-Iudean, Centre for Population Studies, UBB Cluj (oana.sorescu@gmail.com)
And Luminița Dumănescu, Centre for Population Studies, UBB Cluj (luminita_dumanescu@yahoo.com )
Contact Info:
Centre for Population Studies, Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Contact Email: oana.sorescu@gmail.com