"We Aren't All the Same": The Singularity of Reproductive Experiences amidst Institutional Objectification in Argentina's Public Maternal Health Services

Abstract

Reproductive health services in Argentina are organized in ways that depersonalize, standardize, and fragment women's bodies and lives. Alternatively, women's accounts of their pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experiences reveal many nuances and moments of dislocation between experience and language: their immersion in social and material conditions; traces of ambivalence and contradiction; moves between continuity and fragmentation; density of lived time and space; and profound corporeal awareness. Guided by the methodological and conceptual premises of institutional ethnography, this article is a critical effort to explore experiential narratives as a means for apprehending what women perceive, need, and want during their reproductive processes.