Practitioners, postnatal depression, and translation: An investigation into the representation of Bangladeshi mothers in the East End

Abstract

This paper is based on research that investigated the personal, localised and institutional representations of the emotional experiences of Bangladeshi mothers in Tower Hamlets, London. The research was conducted during 2003 and 2004. Whilst the London borough of Tower Hamlets is not deprived by global standards, within the UK the borough ranks very low on certain socio-economic indicators. Simultaneously, the ‘East End’ can still conjure up images of heart-warming kinship and of a place that welcomes migrants. These, and other contradictory depictions, are used by the people who both live and work in the borough. Through the investigation of the narratives of those who work with Bangladeshi mothers, this paper explores the role of culture as presented in both self-conscious and implicit terms. Further to this, it examines what claims are based on these conceptions. This analysis demonstrates that institutions are not neutral spaces in which identities and representations of experience are produced, but in fact shape the very nature of these identities and representations. As focal points this paper chooses health and motherhood as loci where personal experience, social institutions and notions of ‘culture’ all intersect. To stress only that the experience of motherhood is undeniably a feature of shared humanity would be to ignore the fact that reproduction is also culturally mediated and reconstructed. Through discussions such as those concerning the nature of ‘postnatal depression’, depicted as having both universal and culturally specific elements, debates around ethnicity and class are also brought into sharper focus.

Keywords:

• UK
• Bangladeshi
• migration
• motherhood
• health services

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a Seed Corn fellowship, and received approval from the East London and the City Local Research Ethics Committee.

Conflict of Interest: none.

Notes

Notes

1. The London Borough of Tower Hamlets emphasises both the history and the ‘vibrant and diverse’ community making it ‘unique in culture and character’. http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/data/discover/index.cfm Accessed on 5 May 2005.

2. Nozor, known in India as najar, is commonly referred to as the ‘evil eye’; it can just mean gaze (Callan 2007).