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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:
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:
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