This week’s reading is arguably among my favorites so far. One of the issues that concerned me with previous readings is the accessibility of those materials. In other words, despite the valuable insights carried within those texts, the texts’ format and language may hinder relevant key stakeholders from reading and thus, making impacts based on these insights. However, compared to previous readings from Tsing and Debora Thomas, the language used by Dixion is sufficiently clear and easy to follow. Apart from that deviation, Dixion’s writing resembles previous readings in other aspects. For example, there’s frequent reference to theoretical grounds. Additionally, similar to how Deborah Thomas uses “Frontier” to describe the formation and escalation of violence and how Shange uses “Roadblocks” to conceptualize the obstacles within education, Dixion also relied on metaphors to convey her ideas, arguing that midwives serve as the “bridge” between the traditional and modern way of doing healthcare in Mexico.
This argument is also what intrigues me most about the reading for two reasons. Firstly, Dixion exposed how social policies that are meant to do good ended up being useless, or even dangerous as in the case of Irma, to the population it targets. I wonder what had caused this gap between intention and impact. Was it a lack of care among policy-makers that’s to blame? or did this simply reflect how how policy-makers, who probably enjoy greater socio-economic privileges than rural women, are clueless about the actual challenges faced by these women and therefore, end up issuing ineffective programs despite their good intentions? If so, what would it take to move Mexico healthcare leaders toward a more representative decision-making process? Either way, Dixion’s writing reminds me to look at each policy from the perspective of its target group and go beyond its stated mission to analyze its impacts. Additionally, Dixion proves how anthropology can complement policy-making, I learn about the importance of taking a multidisciplinary approach to making social change.
Secondly, Dixion’s suggestion of the role of midwives as a bridge between the old and the new reminds me of my conversation with a Singaporean female, who leads a social enterprise, a few years ago at an ASEAN social impact conference. She talked about the idea of social change as an evolution instead of a revolution. Dixion’s argument seems to align with this idea-instead of abruptly forcing people to switch to a new system that fails to adequately care for them due to capacity constraints, the transition should be gradual and sustainable by providing people with temporary measures until the new system is fully ready.