Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Maternity Ward As Mirror: Maternal Death, Biobureaucracy, And Institutional Care In The Tanzanian Health Sector, Adrienne Elizabeth Strong

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As public health policies continue to encourage women to give birth in biomedical care facilities, this research provides insight into the sequences of events leading to deaths in these settings from the unique perspective of the healthcare providers and administrators themselves, in addition to that of women and their communities. While the term maternal mortality implies biological processes and clinical practices, this dissertation focused on sequences of events at the hospital, and on historical, institutional, and political economic structures that shaped maternal risk in this region through 23 months of mixed-methods, ethnographic fieldwork in the Rukwa region of Tanzania and …