Somebodies or nobody’s patient: The importance of social positioning and informal relations during childbirth in Serbia

Abstract

Anthropological research on post-socialism points to the need for informal relations when navigating social and health care systems, while feminist research on childbirth points out the negative consequences of the dominant medicalized model of childbirth on women’s experience. This paper combines these two types of research and points to the role of informal relations in negotiating childbirth in Serbia and the role of peoples social positioning influencing the possibilities of using these relations. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork on the practices of providing maternal health care in Serbia, the aim of this paper is to show how a woman's social position affects her ability to establish a relationship within the state health care system, and to reconsider the claim that informal relationships can protect women from interventionism during childbirth in Serbia. Using informal relations (veze) in order to have your doctor during childbirth is a key concern for women in Serbia. Informal relations transform women from (no)bodies into somebodies, someone’s patient. Women of poorer economic status, women from rural areas, and often women of Roma ethnic origin have limited opportunities to establish informal relations in state maternity hospitals. Informal relations do not fully protect women from interventions but affect the type and timing of interventions.

Keywords

• childbirth
• serbia
• informal relations
• technocratic model of birth
• social positioning