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Representations of the subject ‘woman’ and the politics of abortion : an analysis of South African newspaper articles from 1978 to 2005
- Macleod, Catriona, Feltham-King, Tracey
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona , Feltham-King, Tracey
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6217 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006273 , http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691058.2012.685760
- Description: A key element in cultural and gender power relations surrounding abortion is how women who undergo an abortion are represented in public talk. We analyse how women were named and positioned, and the attendant constructions of abortion, in South African newspaper articles on abortion from 1978 to 2005, a period during which there were radical political and legislative shifts. The name ‘woman’ was the most frequently used (70% of articles) followed by ‘girl/teenager/child’ (25%), ‘mother’ (25%), ‘patient’ (11%) and ‘minor’ (6%). The subject positionings enabled by these names were dynamic and complex and were interwoven with the localised, historical politics of abortion. The ‘innocent mother’ and the bifurcated ‘patient’ (woman/foetus) positionings were invoked in earlier epochs to promote abortion under medical conditions. The ‘dangerous mother’ and woman as ‘patient’ positionings were used more frequently under liberal abortion legislation to oppose and to advocate for abortion, respectively. The positioning of the ‘girl/teenager/child’ as dependent and vulnerable was used in contradictory ways, both to oppose abortion and to argue for a liberalisation of restrictive legislation, depending on the attendant construction of abortion. The neutral naming of ‘woman’ was, at times, linked to the liberal imaginary of ‘choice’.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona , Feltham-King, Tracey
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6217 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006273 , http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691058.2012.685760
- Description: A key element in cultural and gender power relations surrounding abortion is how women who undergo an abortion are represented in public talk. We analyse how women were named and positioned, and the attendant constructions of abortion, in South African newspaper articles on abortion from 1978 to 2005, a period during which there were radical political and legislative shifts. The name ‘woman’ was the most frequently used (70% of articles) followed by ‘girl/teenager/child’ (25%), ‘mother’ (25%), ‘patient’ (11%) and ‘minor’ (6%). The subject positionings enabled by these names were dynamic and complex and were interwoven with the localised, historical politics of abortion. The ‘innocent mother’ and the bifurcated ‘patient’ (woman/foetus) positionings were invoked in earlier epochs to promote abortion under medical conditions. The ‘dangerous mother’ and woman as ‘patient’ positionings were used more frequently under liberal abortion legislation to oppose and to advocate for abortion, respectively. The positioning of the ‘girl/teenager/child’ as dependent and vulnerable was used in contradictory ways, both to oppose abortion and to argue for a liberalisation of restrictive legislation, depending on the attendant construction of abortion. The neutral naming of ‘woman’ was, at times, linked to the liberal imaginary of ‘choice’.
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Negotiating access to the problematised subject:
- Bomela, Yolisa, Feltham-King, Tracey, Macleod, Catriona
- Authors: Bomela, Yolisa , Feltham-King, Tracey , Macleod, Catriona
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143816 , vital:38285 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Our ethnography at public antenatal and postnatal clinics involved collecting data from a variety of sources constituting the reproductive healthcare nexus, including interviews with teenaged pregnant and mothering women. We discuss the complexities of trying to propose these interviews to the University ethics committee and difficulties in gaining access to the state healthcare facilities. We also consider a recurring disjuncture in our negotiations for access. The teenaged subject we imagined and anticipated in our research proposal contradicted the already problematized subject the gatekeepers assumed we were going to meet. Further, while our intention was to focus on the myriad aspects of the context which contributed to the construction of the reproductive teenaged subject, the enduring assumption was that our focus should and would be on the individual teenaged pregnant or mothering woman. We discuss balancing these contradictory assumptions and strategies to avoid re-inscribing the taken-for-granted existing institutional hierarchical power relations.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Bomela, Yolisa , Feltham-King, Tracey , Macleod, Catriona
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143816 , vital:38285 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Our ethnography at public antenatal and postnatal clinics involved collecting data from a variety of sources constituting the reproductive healthcare nexus, including interviews with teenaged pregnant and mothering women. We discuss the complexities of trying to propose these interviews to the University ethics committee and difficulties in gaining access to the state healthcare facilities. We also consider a recurring disjuncture in our negotiations for access. The teenaged subject we imagined and anticipated in our research proposal contradicted the already problematized subject the gatekeepers assumed we were going to meet. Further, while our intention was to focus on the myriad aspects of the context which contributed to the construction of the reproductive teenaged subject, the enduring assumption was that our focus should and would be on the individual teenaged pregnant or mothering woman. We discuss balancing these contradictory assumptions and strategies to avoid re-inscribing the taken-for-granted existing institutional hierarchical power relations.
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Risk and responsibility: the management of teenaged pregnant women within the antenatal healthcare nexus
- Authors: Feltham-King, Tracey
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/1173 , vital:20029
- Description: The disjuncture in the provision of antenatal healthcare for teenaged pregnant women within post-apartheid South Africa is exemplified by the stated commitment to a rights-based policy approach and the lack of reliable access to quality antenatal services in practice. Teenage pregnancy continues to be extensively researched and is most often problematized within mainstream research. An alternative critical approach is employed here in an attempt to pay attention to the contingent shifts in the construction of teenage pregnancy within the antenatal reproductive healthcare nexus. Therefore the circulation of discourses within two antenatal clinics and the ways in which positions for both the teenager and the health service provider, are variably constructed, occupied or resisted, was examined. The data sources included a range of documents (such as training manuals, policy guidelines, textbooks, posters and mission statements); observations of activities within the clinic and interviews with teenaged pregnant women and health service providers. A governmental analysis of the network of power revealed how teenaged pregnancy was constructed and how teenaged pregnant women and health service providers were managed without coercion. The teenager was constructed as a risky gendered, raced and classed subject by competing discourses. Furthermore, the amelioration of these risks was constructed as contingent on the taking up of particular positions and the adoption of practices recommended by the health service provider. The management of these risks was achieved through the governmental technologies of agency, performance and (unofficial) authoritarian practices of health service providers. Health service providers were surveyed, audited and managed to conform to best practices so as to deflect the blame for the risks implied by the risky teenaged pregnant woman. Mitigation of risk was also achieved through the incitement of the teenaged pregnant woman to become empowered through responsibilisation and negotiating the contradictions within her environment. The rights of teenaged pregnant women to antenatal services were thus revealed as contingent on being particular kinds of responsible, rational, autonomous, rights-bearing and consuming subjects.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Feltham-King, Tracey
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/1173 , vital:20029
- Description: The disjuncture in the provision of antenatal healthcare for teenaged pregnant women within post-apartheid South Africa is exemplified by the stated commitment to a rights-based policy approach and the lack of reliable access to quality antenatal services in practice. Teenage pregnancy continues to be extensively researched and is most often problematized within mainstream research. An alternative critical approach is employed here in an attempt to pay attention to the contingent shifts in the construction of teenage pregnancy within the antenatal reproductive healthcare nexus. Therefore the circulation of discourses within two antenatal clinics and the ways in which positions for both the teenager and the health service provider, are variably constructed, occupied or resisted, was examined. The data sources included a range of documents (such as training manuals, policy guidelines, textbooks, posters and mission statements); observations of activities within the clinic and interviews with teenaged pregnant women and health service providers. A governmental analysis of the network of power revealed how teenaged pregnancy was constructed and how teenaged pregnant women and health service providers were managed without coercion. The teenager was constructed as a risky gendered, raced and classed subject by competing discourses. Furthermore, the amelioration of these risks was constructed as contingent on the taking up of particular positions and the adoption of practices recommended by the health service provider. The management of these risks was achieved through the governmental technologies of agency, performance and (unofficial) authoritarian practices of health service providers. Health service providers were surveyed, audited and managed to conform to best practices so as to deflect the blame for the risks implied by the risky teenaged pregnant woman. Mitigation of risk was also achieved through the incitement of the teenaged pregnant woman to become empowered through responsibilisation and negotiating the contradictions within her environment. The rights of teenaged pregnant women to antenatal services were thus revealed as contingent on being particular kinds of responsible, rational, autonomous, rights-bearing and consuming subjects.
- Full Text:
Representations of the subject ‘woman’ and the politics of abortion: an analysis of South African newspaper articles from 1978 to 2005
- Macleod, Catriona, Feltham-King, Tracey
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona , Feltham-King, Tracey
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6218 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006275
- Description: A key element in cultural and gender power relations surrounding abortion is how women who undergo an abortion are represented in public talk. We analyse how women were named and positioned, and the attendant constructions of abortion, in South African newspaper articles on abortion from 1978 to 2005, a period during which there were radical political and legislative shifts. The name ‘woman’ was the most frequently used (70% of articles) followed by ‘girl/teenager/child’ (25%), ‘mother’ (25%), ‘patient’ (11%) and ‘minor’ (6%). The subject positionings enabled by these names were dynamic and complex, and were interweaved with the localised, historical politics of abortion. The ‘innocent mother’ and the bifurcated ‘patient’ (woman/foetus) positionings were invoked in earlier epochs to promote abortion under medical conditions. The ‘dangerous mother’ and woman as ‘patient’ positionings were used more frequently under liberal abortion legislation to oppose and to advocate for abortion respectively. The positioning of the ‘girl/teenager/child’ as dependent and vulnerable was used in contradictory ways, both to oppose abortion and to argue for a liberalisation of restrictive legislation, depending on the attendant construction of abortion. The neutral naming of ‘woman’ was, at times, linked to the liberal imaginary of ‘choice’.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona , Feltham-King, Tracey
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6218 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006275
- Description: A key element in cultural and gender power relations surrounding abortion is how women who undergo an abortion are represented in public talk. We analyse how women were named and positioned, and the attendant constructions of abortion, in South African newspaper articles on abortion from 1978 to 2005, a period during which there were radical political and legislative shifts. The name ‘woman’ was the most frequently used (70% of articles) followed by ‘girl/teenager/child’ (25%), ‘mother’ (25%), ‘patient’ (11%) and ‘minor’ (6%). The subject positionings enabled by these names were dynamic and complex, and were interweaved with the localised, historical politics of abortion. The ‘innocent mother’ and the bifurcated ‘patient’ (woman/foetus) positionings were invoked in earlier epochs to promote abortion under medical conditions. The ‘dangerous mother’ and woman as ‘patient’ positionings were used more frequently under liberal abortion legislation to oppose and to advocate for abortion respectively. The positioning of the ‘girl/teenager/child’ as dependent and vulnerable was used in contradictory ways, both to oppose abortion and to argue for a liberalisation of restrictive legislation, depending on the attendant construction of abortion. The neutral naming of ‘woman’ was, at times, linked to the liberal imaginary of ‘choice’.
- Full Text:
How content analysis may complement and extend the insights of discourse analysis: an example of research on constructions of abortion in South African newspapers 1978–2005
- Feltham-King, Tracey, Macleod, Catriona
- Authors: Feltham-King, Tracey , Macleod, Catriona
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6317 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021159 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1609406915624575 , http://ijq.sagepub.com/content/15/1/1609406915624575.abstract
- Description: Although discourse analysis is a well-established qualitative research methodology, little attention has been paid to how discourse analysis may be enhanced through careful supplementation with the quantification allowed in content analysis. In this article, we report on a research study that involved the use of both Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) and directed content analysis based on social constructionist theory and our qualitative research findings. The research focused on the discourses deployed, and the ways in which women were discursively positioned, in relation to abortion in 300 newspaper articles, published in 25 national and regional South African newspapers over 28 years, from 1978 to 2005. While the FDA was able to illuminate the constitutive network of power relations constructing women as subjects of a particular kind, questions emerged that were beyond the scope of the FDA. These questions concerned understanding the relative weightings of various discourses and tracing historical changes in the deployment of these discourses. In this article, we show how the decision to combine FDA and content analysis affected our sampling methodology. Using specific examples, we illustrate the contribution of the FDA to the study. Then, we indicate how subject positioning formed the link between the FDA and the content analysis. Drawing on the same examples, we demonstrate how the content analysis supplemented the FDA through tracking changes over time and providing empirical evidence of the extent to which subject positionings were deployed.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Feltham-King, Tracey , Macleod, Catriona
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6317 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021159 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1609406915624575 , http://ijq.sagepub.com/content/15/1/1609406915624575.abstract
- Description: Although discourse analysis is a well-established qualitative research methodology, little attention has been paid to how discourse analysis may be enhanced through careful supplementation with the quantification allowed in content analysis. In this article, we report on a research study that involved the use of both Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) and directed content analysis based on social constructionist theory and our qualitative research findings. The research focused on the discourses deployed, and the ways in which women were discursively positioned, in relation to abortion in 300 newspaper articles, published in 25 national and regional South African newspapers over 28 years, from 1978 to 2005. While the FDA was able to illuminate the constitutive network of power relations constructing women as subjects of a particular kind, questions emerged that were beyond the scope of the FDA. These questions concerned understanding the relative weightings of various discourses and tracing historical changes in the deployment of these discourses. In this article, we show how the decision to combine FDA and content analysis affected our sampling methodology. Using specific examples, we illustrate the contribution of the FDA to the study. Then, we indicate how subject positioning formed the link between the FDA and the content analysis. Drawing on the same examples, we demonstrate how the content analysis supplemented the FDA through tracking changes over time and providing empirical evidence of the extent to which subject positionings were deployed.
- Full Text:
Pecha Kucha 4: The right to buy antenatal healthcare
- Authors: Feltham-King, Tracey
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143948 , vital:38297 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: While conducting an ethnographic study of the antenatal healthcare nexus I observed the public/ private partnerships at work within state healthcare facilities. The presence of sales representatives and promotional product placement within these spaces allowed the antenatal clinic to function simultaneously as a market place. This commodification of pregnancy and parenting has implications for the ways in which pregnant women are constructed as reproductive subjects. This presentation shows how the images in an advertorial booklet distributed in the clinic draw on intersecting discourses which construct idealized representations of pregnant women, parenting couples and families. These images present a textual ideal that: stands in contrast to the lived experiences of the women accessing antenatal healthcare in these clinics; ignores the multiple and varied contexts in which decisions about antenatal healthcare are made; and shifts the responsibility for the costs of antenatal care onto the individual pregnant woman.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Feltham-King, Tracey
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143948 , vital:38297 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: While conducting an ethnographic study of the antenatal healthcare nexus I observed the public/ private partnerships at work within state healthcare facilities. The presence of sales representatives and promotional product placement within these spaces allowed the antenatal clinic to function simultaneously as a market place. This commodification of pregnancy and parenting has implications for the ways in which pregnant women are constructed as reproductive subjects. This presentation shows how the images in an advertorial booklet distributed in the clinic draw on intersecting discourses which construct idealized representations of pregnant women, parenting couples and families. These images present a textual ideal that: stands in contrast to the lived experiences of the women accessing antenatal healthcare in these clinics; ignores the multiple and varied contexts in which decisions about antenatal healthcare are made; and shifts the responsibility for the costs of antenatal care onto the individual pregnant woman.
- Full Text:
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