Mehinako birth stories: present problematics and future perspectives

• Grant number: 22/15300-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: June 15, 2023
• End date: June 14, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Indigenous Ethnology
• Principal Investigator: Marina Vanzolini Figueiredo
• Grantee: Aline de Paula Regitano
• Supervisor: Christine McCourt
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: City University London, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 19/26364-5 - Tsukuyalu Iaiacapíri (pregnant talk): Corporeality and gender relations from Mehinako childbirth, BP.DR

Abstract

This project aims to systematize and analyse fieldwork data gathered during a PhD research about childbirth and gender relations among Mehinako women. It intends to explore Mehinako birth stories, interviews, observations and informal conversations, in dialogue with Christine McCourt work about concepts of time and the historical process of medicalization of the maternal care. It is expected to examine problematics of hospital childbirth among Mehinako people, understanding how pregnancy, birth and post-partum is handled by the medical team and the birthing women. Seeking to verify how the medicalization of childbirth transformed the means of being a Mehinako person, with a Mehinako body, and so how ontologies and epistemologies of corporeality are mixed with outer ones. And, finally, analysing how the city experience shapes gender relations inside and also outside the medical institutions, at the villages. (AU)