2015/03/03 by Maria Fannin, Fannin, Maria
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Emotional Labor in Professions #Global culture #History of Emotions Research #Interdisciplinary Cultural and Social Studies #International Alliance of Midwives #activist organizations #emotion #emotional investment #global network #midwifery #transcendent mobility
paper · doi:10.14288/acme.v5i1.749
openalex publication_date 2015/03/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
This paper examines the emergence of activist organizations promoting midwifery as a “global” practice. New organizations like the International Alliance of Midwives link individual midwives and midwifery advocates through Internetbased chat rooms, websites, and discussion lists. These organizations draw productively on representations of midwives as world citizens to establish new forms of connection, fostered in part by technological developments in communication that posit direct links between local activists through a global network. Yet what kinds of visions are forged through invocations of midwifery’s globality? Differences in the political, cultural, and economic status of midwifery worldwide complicate the efforts of midwives to advocate for a global political midwifery movement. By examining the “global” as a site of emotional investment, I demonstrate how midwives’ attempts to map “tradition” and “technique” reveal attachments to particular ways of imagining the world. The world has become a global village. With this freedom to share information comes the ability to travel and relocate. When midwives move from one country to another, they should, with equivalent education and credentials, be able to practice their profession wherever they live (Verber, 1995:para. 1). Global culture ... is an aspiration, a fantasy, a desire as well as a marketplace and systems of flows and exchanges. Global subjects are constituted through the promise of a transcendent mobility, allowing them to move freely across time and space, joining the transnational flows of other objects (images, information, products) (Stacey, 2000:141).