Hiding or hospitalising? On dilemmas of pregnancy management in East Cameroon

Current international debates and policies on safe motherhood mainly propose biomedical interventions to reduce the risks during pregnancy and delivery. Yet, the conceptualisations of risk that underlie this framework may not correspond with local perceptions of reproductive dangers; consequently, hospital services may remain underutilised. Inspired by a growing body of anthropological literature exploring local fertility-related fears, and drawing on 15 months of fieldwork, this paper describes ideas about risky reproduction and practices of pregnancy protection in a Cameroonian village. It shows that social and supernatural threats to fertility are deemed more significant than the physical threats of fertility stressed at the (inter)national level. To protect their pregnancies from those social and supernatural influences, however, women take very physical measures. It is in this respect that biomedical interventions, physical in their very nature, do connect to local methods of pregnancy management. Furthermore, some pregnant women purposefully deploy hospital care in an attempt to reduce relational uncertainties. Explicit attention to the intersections of the social and the physical, and of the supernatural and the biomedical, furthers anthropological knowledge on fertility management and offers a starting point for more culturally sensitive safe motherhood interventions

Strange expectations: Cameroonian migrants and their German healthcare providers debate obstetric choices

When Cameroonian women migrate to Germany, they expect a different obstetric experience than they would have met in Cameroon. They bemoan the loss of family support, but do not yearn for village midwives. These largely urban, educated women expect better and more easily accessible medical care, free of the shortages and corruption plaguing Cameroon’s public health system. Their expectations—that bearing children is medically easier but socially harder than in Cameroon—are shaped by obstetrical stories circulating among their fellow migrants. Most migrant mothers celebrate the medicalisation, thoroughness, and even bureaucratic tracking, of German perinatal health care. In contrast, German healthcare providers draw from two models imagining their African clients’ obstetric concerns and desires. Some combine a Western feminist critique of biomedicine with dehumanising stereotypes of Africans as ‘nature-near.’ Imagining that African women find highly regulated, medicalized German perinatal care alienating, these providers assume that their African clients have witnessed births in rural settings and share broad female knowledge of ‘natural’ childbirth. Other providers differentiate among African clients by nationality and education level to assess their comfort regarding medicalized prenatal and obstetric care. Cameroonian migrant mothers and German medical humanitarians confirm, reconfigure, and transform stereotypes of each other’s obstetric desires

Plundered kitchens and empty wombs: Fear of infertility in the Cameroonian Grassfields

In Bangangté, a Bamiléké kingdom in the Grassfields of Cameroon, local understandings of reproductive illness contrast with standard demographic indicators of high fertility in this region. Bangangté are preoccupied with threats to reproductive health. This article explores the culinary metaphors of building kitchens, choosing, measuring, and mixing ingredients, and slow and skillful cooking in Bangangté notions of procreation and infertility. The violent imagery of plundered kitchens, cannibalistic witchcraft, and theft permeates Bangangté women's accounts of infertility and child loss. The analysis suggests that infertility anxiety in Bangangté reflects women's feelings of vulnerability in the context of rural female poverty and the gender-specific consequences of political change in Cameroon.infertility anxiety food symbolism ethnophysiology female poverty Africa

Mobilités sociales et migrations internationales (7): <br /> Des mobilités sociales saisies par les relations familiales

[00:00:00 - 00:01:57] Présentation par la présidente de séance Amélie GRYSOLE (CNAM, CEET, CMH) [00:01:57 - 00:22:35] Sylvaine CAMELIN (LESC, U. Paris Nanterre) : « Assistantes familiales en région parisienne : un métier porté par la migration » [00:22:35 - 00:46:37] Claire COSQUER (OSC, U. Toulouse-Jean Jaurès) : « Une cage dorée ? Ambivalences des bénéfices migratoires chez les « expatriées » françaises à Abu Dhabi » [00:46:37 - 01:10:26] Pamela FELDMAN-SAVELSBERG (LAS, Carleton College) : « Moving Up and Holding Ground: Ambition and Anxiety in Cameroonian Migrants’ Childhood Celebrations » [01:10:26 - 01:28:26] Discutante : Chelsie YOUNT-ANDRÉ (CIRAD, U. Montpellier) [01:28:26 – fin] DiscussionCe colloque propose d’interroger le phénomène migratoire sous l’angle des mobilités sociales, en mettant la lumière sur la multiplicité́ des positionnements sociaux des migrants d’une société́ à une autre. Penser ensemble les migrations dites « qualifiées » et celles désignées comme « économiques », analyser les changements de position sociale dans les différents espaces nationaux de référence, examiner les statuts sociaux dans la sphère professionnelle mais également la sphère privée, articuler les enjeux de classements sociaux avec les rapports sociaux de sexe et de race : tels étaient les grands enjeux de cette rencontre.Comité d’organisation : Jennifer BIDET (U. Paris Descartes, Cerlis), Hugo BRÉANT (U. Rouen, Dysolab, CESSP), Amélie GRYSOLE (CNAM, CEET, CMH), Anton PERDONCIN (ENS, CMH), Liza TERRAZZONI (EHESS, CEMS), Simeng WANG (CNRS, CERMES3)