"Development assumes a teleology to the extent that it proposes that the 'natives' will sooner or later be reformed; at the same time, however, it reproduces endlessly the separation between reformers and those to be reformed by keeping alive the premise of the Third World as different and inferior"
- Arturo Escobar, The Problematization of Poverty
One of the most important lessons of ethnography is to value difference and seek to understand it by putting aside one’s own cultural and personal biases. It means not “othering” the other, and not trying to reform their beliefs or being. Keeping this mind, I hope to execute an oral history/ mini ethnography in the community we will be in Nicaragua to understand the postpartum maternal mental health situation for women because there is no literature that I found on it. It would be wrong for me to go with the goal of convincing women who I thought fit the symptom description that they were depressed and needed medical attention. Instead, I believe it will be interesting for me and Dr. Brack to hear what women say themselves about their situation after giving birth and how they are feeling. I also believe that by doing so, I will encourage women to talk about how they are feeling and reflect, which I believe can only do good. In order to leave my impact at that, I will need to make sure I keep in mind many of the lessons from the readings this week. I will need to frame my questions openly and without judgement.
As writer Natasha Mauthner states,
“I was seeking to understand how the women experienced, understood, and constructed motherhood and postpartum depression. I was not aiming to test any predefined theories, nor did I wish to impose any externally derived categories onto the women’s accounts. Rather, I attempted to understand the women’s meanings, subjectivities, and sense-making processes and use these as a basis for constructing my own theory and understanding of postpartum depression.” (pg. 212)
Chelsey Hauge’s insight into feminist ethnography particularly gave me a lot to think about: “As a researcher drawing on feminist ethnography, this gets even more complex as I am invested in a research practice that critically engages with the power dynamics in relationships, friendships, communities, between researchers and researched.” This comment is particularly relevant for my hope to collect oral histories from women about both the blessings and difficulties of childbirth to understand much more accurately the position Nicaraguan mothers are in. An observation of one of my favorite medical anthropologists, Brigitte Jordan, who has written a lot on maternal health comes to mind. In her ethnography Birth in Four Cultures, she praises motherhood as a time when women are particularly reflective and willing to talk. Hopefully I’ll find this to be true!