Risk and safety in context: Medical pluralism and agency in childbirth in an eastern Moroccan oasis

This article aims to improve the understandings of safety and risk in childbirth in Morocco from a critical medical anthropological perspective. It is based upon nine weeks' of fieldwork undertaken in the town of Ifli,1 an oasis in Eastern Morocco, on the border with Algeria. Ethnographic material stemmed mainly from participant observation and semi-structured interviews conducted between April and July 2009. This research sheds light on the interplay between the socio-cultural context and the broader political economy of health in shaping the knowledge and practices of childbirth. The core issues emerging from the fieldwork are the local concepts of risk in the birthing process through mothers' and birth attendants' experiences within medical pluralistic frames of reference. This article shall argue that ethnographic insights can play a crucial role not only in understanding socio-cultural dimensions of childbirth, but also in implementing novel approaches to reproductive health care in this area, such as the exchange of experiences between trained and local, non-trained midwives.2