Birth models in and between Italy and Senegal: a cross-cultural inquiry on the risks related to childbirth and birth technologies

Abstract

In Western societies, such as Italy, a positive representation of birth technologies as the main remedy to fight against the uncertainties of physiology and biological risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth has prevailed since the eighteenth century. This process has experienced a strengthening and an acceleration in the last fifty years. Although the (bio)medical discourse has replaced previous representations of childbirth-related risks, other risk categorizations, and search for remedies, have emerged and persist. Relying on the findings of a multi-sited ethnographic work focused on Italy, Senegal and the migratory experience from Senegal to Italy, this article investigates how the representation of childbirth-related risks changes in these three contexts. Working in a risk perception framework, I argue that birth technologies and medical interventions are understood by some groups of Italian women as a risk to be avoided compared to the possibility of experiencing a natural birth. At the same time, through an anthropological perspective, the article investigates how the relatively low level of medicalization in Senegal shapes a discourse on birth based on a very different understanding of health and risk. Unlike the biomedical discourse, childbirth-related risks in Senegal are only partially explained by the physical materiality of the birth process. Finally, stressing the strong interconnection between risk logics and material culture, the article analyses the multiple challenges connected to both the ‘fascination’ for technological births and the transfer of non-biomedical risk models from Senegal to Italy through the migratory process.

Keywords:

• risk cultures
• risk prevention
• medical technology
• Italy
• Senegal

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In this article I will I will use the general category of ‘migrants women’ to indicate women of migrant background who were not born Italy and who migrate from their native country to Italy as adults.

2. In the article I will speak of Senegal and Senegalese women, but I am referring exclusively to a Wolof population. This is the largest ethnic group in Senegal and the one prevailing among Senegalese immigrants that live in Tuscany and in Italy.

3. The maternity wards I studied in Dakar were located in the neighbourhood of Medina, in the neighbourhood of Patte d’Oie and in the neighbourhood of Parcelles Assainies.

4. As these figures suggest, Italy has one of the highest rates of caesarean in Western Europe, where the average rate of such surgical operations was around 25 per cent.

5. I will use the category of ‘de-technicalised’ instead of ‘de-medicalised’ since births take place within the hospital space where women are assisted by medical staff (obstetricians and midwifes).

6. On the use of this category, see note 1.

7. Gestion active de la troisieme pèriode de l’accouchement [Active management of the third period of childbirth].