Assembled knowledges and situated choices: women’s understandings and practices concerning childbirth risks in urban China

Abstract

In this research, I examined the complexities of women’s understandings and practices during childbirth and used the theoretical tool of situated choices and socio-cultural risk theory to explore and conceptualise their limited agency during childbirth. Drawing upon the perspectives of the sociology of childbirth risk and childbirth choice, I analysed data collected through participant observations and in-depth interviews with women in urban parts of Jiangsu Province, China. In illuminating the women’s assembled knowledges and rich understandings of birthing processes, it became apparent how they situated their choices regarding medicalised childbirth, and how they bricolaged multiple perspectives regarding the past and future on the delivery bed. These everyday rationales and knowledges were used actively and in tandem with a mainstream epistemology of biomedicine.