Moss-Luffrum, B. J. (Beverley Jane) (1993) Paradigmatic resonance and dysjunction in the development of the human sciences : accountability and expertism in the history of parturial practices. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the function of discursive paradigms in the process of subjectivisation
and the formulation of objects in the development of the human sciences. The history of
childbirth practices exemplifies the operations of paradox and paradigm, and of epistemic
changes and continuities, in relation to medical, ethical, and pedagogic discourses. The recent
past has brought rapid change in the practices and outcomes of parturition with regard to
technologisation, and the improvement in mortality rates.
The achievement of technological childbirth has a complex and paradoxical history, and
should be understood other than as an inevitable and progressive phenomenon of scientific
endeavour, or as a conspiracy of patriarchy which victimises and subjugates women as a
matter of intentionality. The histories of the parturient and of the midwife are only partially
linked. An examination of childbirth history reveals some of the implications of
phallogocentricity for the history of women and for the constitution of gender and gender
relations. Midwifery has its own unique but unmistakeable place in the historical discourse of
pathologisation and professionalisation - and cannot be regarded simply as an arena of
masculine appropriation.
The mechanisms for change in parturial practices have been developing to facilitate the
modifications of recent history since around 1800, but there are discursive resonances which
are linked also to changes in pedagogic organisation which began in the Middle Ages.
Further, in order to analyse and evaluate the history of parturition over the past two hundred
years, it is necessary to examine the paradigmatic structures based upon dialectical reasoning
which have dominated the development of the human sciences since antiquity. Childbirth
provides examples of many historical exigencies which informed a panoply of disparate
effects, but it is also in many respects unique and anomalous. An exploration of the
operations of power, knowledge and influence in this sphere, reveals as much in terms of its
resistances as its susceptibilities, to medical appropriation. The history of childbirth is unusual
insofar as the technologies and innovations that developed in relation to it, were in fact, slow
to be implemented. Evidence of such paradigmatic dysjunction is provided by the examples of
the use of forceps, asepsis and anaesthesia in the nineteenth century. This thesis addresses
aspects and effects of professionalisation, and the increasingly disciplinary implications of
expert discourses for the pregnant and parturient woman in the twentieth century.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	R Medicine > RG Gynecology and obstetrics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Childbirth -- Historiography, Childbirth -- Technological innovations -- History, Midwives -- History
Official Date:	1993
Dates:	Date Event 1993 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Institute of Education
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Hoskin, Keith
Extent:	iv, 276 leaves
Language:	eng

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