The Natural Childbirth Movement in the Czech Republic

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F49777513%3A23330%2F17%3A43932079" target="_blank" >RIV/49777513:23330/17:43932079 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

The Natural Childbirth Movement in the Czech Republic

Original language description

This text discusses parental collective efforts to challenge existing medical and state authorities in the Czech Republic and to change the current birth care system for the better. In the Czech Republic the issue of ‘natural childbirth’ has recently become a headline, covering newspaper pages almost every other day. In this paper I map the trajectory of the natural childbirth movement to examine forces that have shaped a particular course of this social movement. I employ the theory of health related social movements and new social movements to explore birth activists’ strategies and understandtheir perspective in depth. To meet these aims, I have been conducting a long-term ethnography of the movement since spring 2011. In this article I particularly build on participant observations of key public events, five in-depth interviews with birth activists and 19 narrative interviews with women who gave birth naturally; qualitative media analysis of 77 media contributions, and the “netnography” (computer mediated ethnography) of Czech childbirth activism. In my analysis I draw a particular attention to the role of science and medicine in the Czech society,and power dynamics between medical and state authorities, and the birth activists. I argue that in the Czech cultural context a traditionally powerful position of doctors and medicine and the related general scientization of the society are biggest obstacles to the movement’ s success, as these prevent midwives and women-birth care users from becoming equal partners in negotiations with medical and state authorities.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

C - Chapter in a specialist book

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50401 - Sociology

Project

<a href="/en/project/GPP404%2F11%2FP089" target="_blank" >GPP404/11/P089: Natural childbirth movement and feminist approaches to childbirth in the Czech Republic: Systems of social actions and thought</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2017

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Book/collection name

Rebellious Parents: Parental Movements in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia

ISBN

978-0-253-02626-2

Number of pages of the result

31

Pages from-to

277-307

Number of pages of the book

364

Publisher name

Indiana University Press

Place of publication

Bloomington

UT code for WoS chapter

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