Embodied negotiations, practices and experiences interacting with pregnancy care infrastructures in South India

Bagalkot, Naveen, Akbar, Syeda Zainab, Sharma, Swati, Mackintosh, Nicola, Harrington, Deirdre, Griffiths, Paula, Noronha, Judith Angelitta and Verdezoto, Nervo ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5006-4262 2022. Embodied negotiations, practices and experiences interacting with pregnancy care infrastructures in South India. Presented at: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2022, 30 April-6 May 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA. Published in: Bambosa, S., Lampe, C., Appert, C., Shamma, D. A., Drucker, S., WIlliamson, J. and Yatani, K. eds. Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, p. 286. 10.1145/3491102.3501950

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Abstract

Behavior change and improving health literacy based on normative ideals of motherhood is a dominant paradigm to address maternal health challenges. However, these ideals often remove women's control over their bodies overlooking how the bodily experiences of pregnancy are socially and culturally constructed. We report on 27 interviews with pregnant women and nursing mothers in rural and semi-urban areas of South India, and six focus groups with 23 frontline health workers as secondary data. We explore how the embodied pregnancy experiences are influenced and negotiated by the socio-cultural context and existing care infrastructures. Our findings highlight how the ways of seeing, knowing, and caring for a body of a pregnant woman through often conflicting norms, beliefs and practices of medicine, nourishment and care actively shape the experiences of pregnancy. We open up a space for novel opportunities for digital health technologies to enhance women's embodied experiences and pregnancy care infrastructures in the Global South.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Computer Science & Informatics
Publisher:	Association for Computing Machinery
ISBN:	9781450391573
Funders:	MRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	11 February 2022
Date of Acceptance:	11 February 2022
Last Modified:	12 May 2025 13:16
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/147416

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