On the diversity of scientific culture and the tradition of postpartum confinement in China

Abstract

This paper observes the practice of postpartum confinement by urban women in China with high educational levels from the perspective of cognitive conception and behavioural practice. It reveals the cognitive conflict and self-adjustment in these women between ‘modern health notions’ and ‘traditional medical practices’, and analyses the rationality of the long-standing presence of and local differences in the practice as a traditional postpartum nursing behaviour for Chinese women. Moreover, this paper emphasizes the important value of postpartum confinement as a kind of local knowledge and holds that adhering to and advocating the locality and diversification of knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is conducive to the long-term coexistence and sustainable development of different knowledge traditions.