Pragmatic politics and epistemological diversity: The contested and authoritative uses of historical evidence in the Safe Motherhood Initiative

Evidence and Policy

Volumn 9, Issue 1, 2013, Pages 65-85

  Béhague, Dominique ^a,b,c   Storeng, Katerini ^d  

^a VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^c LONDON SCHOOL OF HYGIENE AND TROPICAL MEDICINE   (United Kingdom)

^d UNIVERSITY OF OSLO   (Norway)

Author keywords

Anthropology of science; Epistemology; Evidence based policy; Safe motherhood

Indexed keywords

EID: 84876927139     PISSN: 17442648     EISSN: 17442656     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1332/174426413X663724     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. Abouzahr, C. (2003) 'Safe motherhood: a brief history of the global movement 1947-2002', British Medical Bulletin, 67: 13-25.
2. Adams, V. (2005) 'Saving Tibet? An inquiry into modernity, lies, truths, and beliefs', Medical Anthropology, 24: 71-110.
3. Béhague, D. and Storeng, K. (2007) Final report: An ethnography of evidence-based policy-making in international maternal health, London: Economic and Social Research Council.
4. Béhague, D. and Storeng, K. (2008) 'Collapsing the vertical-horizontal divide in public health: lessons from an ethnographic study of evidence-based policy making in maternal health', American Journal of Public Health, 98 (4): 644-9.
5. Béhague, D., Tawiah, C., Rosato, M., Somed, T. and Morrison, J. (2009) 'Evidence-based policy-making: the implications of globally-applicable research for context-specifc problem-solving in developing countries', Social Science and Medicine, 69: 1539-46.
6. Cetina, K.K. (1999) Epistemic cultures: How the sciences make knowledge, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
7. Chowdhury, M.E., Ahmed, A., Kalim, N. and Koblinsky, M. (2009) 'Causes of maternal mortality decline in Matlab, Bangladesh', Journal of Health, Population, and Nutrition, 27 (2): 108-23.
8. Cueto, M. (2004) 'The orgins of primary health care and selective primary health care', American Journal of Public Health, 94 (11): 1864-74.
9. Daston, L. (1992) 'Objectivity and the escape from perspective', Social Studies of Science, 22 (4): 597-618.
10. Davey Smith, G., Ebrahim, S. and Frankel, S. (2001) 'How policy informs the evidence: evidence based thinking can lead to debased policy making', British Medical Journal, 322 (7280): 184-5.
11. De Brouwere, V., Tonglet, R. and Va n Lerberghe, W. (1998) 'Strategies for reducing maternal mortality in developing countries: what can we learn from the history of the industr ialized West?', Tropical Medicine and International Health, 3 (10): 771-82.
12. Fleck, L. (1979 [1935]) Genesis and development of a scientifc fact, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
13. Foucault, M. (1994 [1970]) The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences, New York, NY: Vintage.
14. Gabrysch, S., Zanger, P., Seneviratne, H., Mbewe, R. and Campbell, O. (2011) 'Tracking progress towards safe motherhood: meeting the benchmark yet missing the goal? An appeal for better use of health-system output indicators with evidence from Zambia and Sri Lanka', Tropical Medicine and International Health, 16 (5): 627-39.
15. Geissler, P. (2001) 'Introduction: studying trial communities: anthropological and historical inquiries into ethos, politics and economy of medical research in Africa', in P. Geissler and C. Molyneux (eds) Evidence, ethos and experiment: The anthropology and history of medical research in Africa, Oxford: Berghahn Books.
16. Goodburn, E. and Campbell, O. (2001) 'Reducing maternal mortality in the developing world: sector-wide approaches may be the key', British Medical Journal, 322: 917-20.
17. Graham, W. and Campbell, O. (1992) 'Maternal health and the measurement trap', Social Science and Medicine, 35 (8): 967-77.
18. Hacking, I. (1990) The taming of chance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
19. Hacking, I. (1992) 'Statistical language, statistical truth, and statistical reason: the self-authentifcation of a style of scientifc reasoning', in E. McMullin (ed) The social dimension of science, Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press.
20. Harding, S. (2008) Sciences from below: Feminisms, postcolonialities, and modernities, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
21. Högberg, U., Wallb, S. and Broströmc, G. (1986) 'The impact of early medical technology on maternal mortality in late 19th century Sweden', International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics, 24: 251-61.
22. Holmes, D. and Marcus, G. (2008) 'Cultures of expertise and the management of globalization: toward the re-functioning of ethnography', in A. Ong and S. Collier (eds) Global assemblages: Technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems, Oxford: Blackwell.
23. Koblinsky, M. and Cambell, O. (2003) 'Factors afecting the reduction of maternal mortality', in M. Koblinsky (ed) Reducing maternal mortality: Learning from Bolivia, China, Egypt, Honduras, Indonesia, Jamaica, and Zimbabwe, Washington, DC: World Bank.
24. Koblinsky, M., Campbell, O. and Heichelheim, J. (1999) 'Organizing delivery care: what works for safe motherhood?', Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 77 (5): 399-406.
25. Lambert, H. (2006) 'Accounting for EBM: contested notions of evidence in medicine', Social Science and Medicine, 62 (11): 2633-45.
26. Lambert, H., Gordon, E. and Bogdan-Lovis, L. (2006) 'Introduction: gift horse or Trojan horse? Social science perspectives on evidence-based health care', Social Science and Medicine, 62 (11): 2613-20.
27. Laurell, A. and Arellanbo, O. (1996) 'Market commodities and poor relief: the World Bank Proposal for health', International Journal of Health Services, 26 (1): 1-18.
28. Liljestrand, J. and Pathmanathan, I. (2004) 'Reducing maternal mortality: can we derive policy guidance from developing country experiences?', Journal of Public Health Policy, 25 (3-4): 299-314.
29. Loudon, I. (1986) 'Deaths in childbed from the eighteenth century to 1935', Medical History, 30: 1-41.
30. Loudon, I. (1991) 'On maternal and infant mortality, 1900-1960', Social History of Medicine, 4: 29-73.
31. Loudon, I. (1992a) Death in childbirth: An international study of maternal care and maternal mortality, 1800-1950, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
32. Loudon, I. (1992b) 'The transformation of maternal mortality', British Medical Journal, 305: 1557-60.
33. Loudon, I. (2000) 'Maternal mortality in the past and its relevance to developing countries today', American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 72 (1): 241s-246s.
34. McCoy, D. (2004) 'Pushing the international health research agenda towards equity and efectiveness', The Lancet, 364 (9445): 1630-1.
35. McPake, B. (2006) 'Recognising patterns: health systems research beyond controlled trials', Health Systems Discussion Group, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
36. Mahler, H. (1987) 'The safe motherhood initiative: a call to action', The Lancet, 1 : 668-70.
37. Maine, D. and Rosenfeld, A. (1999) 'The Safe Motherhood Initiative: why has it stalled?', American Journal of Public Health, 89 (4): 480-2.
38. Miller, S., Sloan, N., Winikof, B., Langer, A. and Fikree, F. (2003) 'Where is the "E" in MCH? The need for an evidence-based approach in safe motherhood', Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health, 48 (1): 10-18.
39. Mills, A. (2012) 'Health policy and systems research: defning the terrain; identifying the methods', Health Policy and Planning, 27 (1): 1-7.
40. Morgan, M. (2012) The world in the model: How economists work and think, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
41. Mykhalovskiy, E. and Weir, L. (2004) 'The problem of evidence-based medicine: directions for social science', Social Science and Medicine, 59 (5): 1059-69.
42. Pathmanathan, I., Liljestrand, J., Martins, J., Rajapaksa, L., Lissner, C., Silva, A.D., Selvaraju, S. and Singh, P. (2003) Investing in maternal health: Learning from Malaysia and Sri Lanka, Washington, DC: World Bank.
43. Paxton, A., Maine, D., Freedman, L., Fry, D. and Lobis, S. (2005) 'The evidence for emergency obstetric care', International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, 88 (2): 181-93.
44. Pearce, N. (1996) 'Traditional epidemiology, modern epidemiology, and public health', American Journal of Public Health, 86 (5): 678-83.
45. Pickering, A. (1992) 'From science as knowledge to science as practice', in A. Pickering (ed) Science as culture and practice, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
46. Porter, T. (1992) 'Objectivity as standardization: the rhetoric of impersonality in measurement, statistics and cost-beneft analysis', Annals of Scholarship, 9: 19-59.
47. Rifkin, S.B. and Walt, G. (1986) 'Why health improves: defning the issues concerning "comprehensive primary health care" and "selective primary health care"', Social Science and Medicine, 23 (6): 559-66.
48. Rose, N. (1996) 'Governing "advanced" liberal democracies', in A. Barry, T. Osborne and N. Rose (eds) Foucault and political reason: Liberalism, neo-liberalism, and rationalities, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
49. Rose, N. (2007) The politics of life itself: Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-frst century, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
50. Rosenfeld, A. and Maine, D. (1985) 'Maternal mortality-a neglected tragedy: where is the M in MCH?', The Lancet, 2: 83-5.
51. Shifman, J. (2003) 'Generating political will for safe motherhood in Indonesia', Social Science and Medicine, 56 (6): 1197-207.
52. Starrs, A.M. (2006) 'Safe motherhood initiative: 20 years and counting', The Lancet, 368 (9542): 2-4.
53. Storeng, K. (2010) Safe motherhood: The making of a global health initiative, London: University of London.
54. Storeng, K. and Béhague, D. (2012) 'Playing the "numbers game": evidence-based advocacy for safe motherhood', Medical Anthropology Quarterly, under review.
55. Strathern, M. (ed) (2000) Audit cultures: Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics, and the academy, New York, NY: Routledge.
56. Timmermans, S. and Berg, M. (2003) The gold standard: The challenge of evidence-based medicine and standardization in health care, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
57. Travis, P., Bennett, S., Haines, A., Pang, T., Bhutta, Z., Hyder, A.A., Pielemeier, N.R., Mills, A. and Evans, T. (2004) 'Overcoming health-systems constraints to achieve the Millennium Development Goals', The Lancet, 364 (9437): 900-6.
58. Van Lerberghe, W. and De Brouwere, V. (2001) 'Of blind alleys and things that have worked: history's lessons on reducing maternal mortality', Studies in Health Service Organization and Policy, 17: 7-33.
59. Victora, C., Habicht, J. and Bryce, J. (2004) 'Evidence-based public health: moving beyond randomized trials', American Journal of Public Health, 94 (3): 400-5.
60. White, H. (2009) 'Theory-based impact evaluation: principles and practice', Journal of Development Efectiveness, 1: 271-84.
61. WHO (World Health Organization) (1978) Primary health care: A joint report by the directorate-general of the WHO and the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund on the international conference on primary health care, Alma-Ata, USSR: WHO.
62. WHO (1994) Mother-baby package: Implementing safe motherhood in countries, Geneva: WHO.