ESSHC Belfast 2018
Call for paper for a session in the “Family/Demography” network.
Title: “Fetus and stillborn. Handling corpses, registration practices and family experience”
Call for paper for a session in the “Family/Demography” network.
Title: “Fetus and stillborn. Handling corpses, registration practices and family experience”
Organizers:
Vincent Gourdon (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France) [email protected]
Ólöf Garðarsdóttir (University of Iceland) [email protected]
What is the position of a fetus and stillborn baby in the public space and in individual families? Losing a baby during pregnancy or at birth has always been an event creating distress in the family and among relatives but also in the local community. Are stillborn babies regarded as human beings in their own right? Do they obtain the status of person and do their corpses deserve to be taken care of with same prescribed rituals as babies born alive? Do they get some kind of social visibility or recognition, for instance from the vital events registration system?
Earlier researches indicate that there were vast differences in the definition of stillbirths, in the registration of stillbirths and in funeral ceremonies of stillborn babies across time and space. This session therefore calls for papers on various aspects of stillbirths and stillbirth registration in past and present.
Three main themes will be considered:
Vincent Gourdon (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France) [email protected]
Ólöf Garðarsdóttir (University of Iceland) [email protected]
What is the position of a fetus and stillborn baby in the public space and in individual families? Losing a baby during pregnancy or at birth has always been an event creating distress in the family and among relatives but also in the local community. Are stillborn babies regarded as human beings in their own right? Do they obtain the status of person and do their corpses deserve to be taken care of with same prescribed rituals as babies born alive? Do they get some kind of social visibility or recognition, for instance from the vital events registration system?
Earlier researches indicate that there were vast differences in the definition of stillbirths, in the registration of stillbirths and in funeral ceremonies of stillborn babies across time and space. This session therefore calls for papers on various aspects of stillbirths and stillbirth registration in past and present.
Three main themes will be considered:
- Handling of corpses: What were the views towards babies who died before birth? How were the corpses treated? Were they buried or incinerated? Were they buried in the domestic sphere or in a special place in the community cemetery? Were they accompanied by some kind of rituals? How did medicalization of death affect the views towards stillborn babies? Was there a difference in the handling of the corpses between hospital births and births at home? How did modernization processes and changing views towards hygiene affect views towards stillborn babies?
- Registration practices: When did religious and/or civil authorities begin to request registration of miscarriages and stillbirths and at what point was the collection of statistics on stillbirths made mandatory? What were the motives behind those decisions? What were the conceptions of different Christian denominations about the registration of babies that died before baptism?
- Family experiences: Little is known about the ways families, mothers in particular, experienced these unachieved pregnancies, miscarriages or stillbirths? Are there testimonies or even biographical documentations about those events: were they traumatic or maybe considered as banal or inevitable? What were the consequences in the conjugal life, in the individual life-course or in the perception from the others (kin, social environment)? How were these experiences met by medical professions or the clergy?
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