ABSTRACT
The research on sociocultural implications of the obstetrical “management” of birth in American society has led the author to conclude that both of the questions have the same answer: since the early 1900s, birth in the United States has been increasingly conducted under a set of beliefs, a paradigm, which the author believe is most appropriately called “the technocratic model of birth.” This chapter aims to explicate the basic tenets of this paradigm, to hint at its historical roots, to demonstrate how it is both delineated and enacted through the rituals of hospital birth, and to consider its sociocultural and folkloristic implications. The rising science of obstetrics ultimately accomplished the goal by adopting the model of the assembly-line production of goods—the template by which most of the technological wonders of modern society were being produced—as its base metaphor for hospital birth. Hospital delivery as a whole may be seen as a ritual enactment of this technocratic model of birth.
