Learning to produce, see, and say the (ab)normal: professional vision in ultrasound scanning during pregnancy
Author
Summary, in English
This paper deals with midwives learning to do ultrasound scans in around week 17 of pregnancy and a central aspect of that learning: seeing and communicating the (ab)normal. It is an investigation into acquiring what Charles Goodwin refers to as a “professional vision” (1994) and into what that vision entails in terms of embodied skills. The focus is on “what we learn how to see” (Haraway 1991:190), or the structuring of embodied seeing in a medical practice.
The paper discusses the different parts of professional vision that Godwin points out: highlighting – in ultrasound that is the way in which deviances in the body of the foetus gets noticed by the midwives; coding – the way deviances are named; and material representations where the normal gets almost unrepresented but where there is a scopic focus on and interest in the deviant.
The paper discusses the different parts of professional vision that Godwin points out: highlighting – in ultrasound that is the way in which deviances in the body of the foetus gets noticed by the midwives; coding – the way deviances are named; and material representations where the normal gets almost unrepresented but where there is a scopic focus on and interest in the deviant.
Department/s
Publishing year
2010
Language
English
Document type
Conference paper
Topic
- Gender Studies
Keywords
- ultrasound
- normal
- pathological
- practice
- medicine
- midwives
Conference name
XVII International Sociological Association (ISA) World Congress of Sociology
Conference date
2010-07-11 - 2010-07-17
Conference place
Gothenburg, Sweden
Status
Published