Medical management and giving birth: Responses of coastal women in Tamil Nadu

Abstract

This paper is an ethnographer's attempt to present the experience of maternity among lowcaste Mukkuvar women of the coastal fishing belt of Kanyakumari district in Tamil Nadu in India and the women's responses to modern medical ‘management’ of pregnancy and birth. It argues that women's decisions whether or not to seek medical care during pregnancy, and where to give birth, are based on a finely tuned appreciation of the ways in which class and caste power shape their experience of medical institutions.