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Abstract
Drawing on material from fieldwork conducted on the island of Saint Lucia, I examine how Saint Lucian nurse‐midwives and student midwives negotiate multiple ways of understanding and evaluating their practices and roles in light of contradictory and powerful cultural, historical, and political forces. I argue that, although Saint Lucian nurse‐midwives may not qualify as “postmodern” according to the criteria proposed by Davis‐Floyd and Davis (1996), they are nonetheless struggling with postmodern conditions as they negotiate between competing healing ideologies. I illustrate the significance of these negotiations through analyzing: (1) the ways nurse‐midwives understand and articulate the healing ideologies at play in Saint Lucia, (2) historical and ideological aspects of the Saint Lucian nurse‐midwifery training program, and (3) a classroom discussion during which student reported on “bush‐midwives.”