A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Writing birthing bodies: exploring the entanglements between flesh and materiality in childbirth
Authors: Astrid Huopalainen, Suvi Satama
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Publication year: 2019
Journal: Culture and Organization
Volume: 26
Issue: 4
First page : 333
Last page: 354
Number of pages: 22
ISSN: 1475-9551
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14759551.2019.1618854
Web address : https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14759551.2019.1618854
This article enquires into the lived experiences of childbirth as a site of ‘fleshy becomings’ that disrupts the dominantly cleaned-up approaches to organising. Theoretically, we approach childbirth as a primitively humane experience in which birthing bodies become entangled with the materiality by which they are surrounded. The empirical material of the article consists of 12 in-depth interviews with first-time mothers in Finland as well as of photographs and autoethnographic research notes taken by the two authors of this article. By empirically highlighting the interplay between flesh and materiality in the ‘making’ of birthing bodies, this article offers novel viewpoints on the discussion of embodied experiences as well as on the entangled relations between flesh and materiality in the field of organisation studies. It also makes an empirical contribution using a unique contextual example of ‘birthing’ to illustrate how vulnerable topics can be researched, offering critical viewpoints on this subject.