Delivering Health: Midwifery and Development in Mexico takes a consciously focused approach at examining how in a state of “entrenched social inequalities, structural failures, and legacies of misogyny and colonialism”, (Dixon 2020: 25) midwives take diverse yet interconnected approaches at addressing nation’s maternal healthcare. The opening juxtaposition of the older, biomedically supplied Juana and the younger, herbal remedy expert Elena can both simultaneously be traditional midwives in the same village despite their diversity in practices. Moreover, this tactifully illustrates the liminal and varied positionality of both traditional and professional midwives (in all their contextual definition) in Mexico, lending to Dixon’s overarching argument on how Mexican midwives must “simultaneously act with and push back against the Mexican state and global development initiatives as they push forward their own agendas” (2020: 7). Thus, in her conscious decision to focus on the role of midwives and their schools rather than extend her ethnographic research (and therefore, interviews, IRB reviews, informed consent, etc.) to patients and families, Dixon creates a very clear, well-defined methodological approach. Despite the availability and possibility of extending her interviews and fieldwork to include different perspectives, voices, and narratives, Dixon sticks to her initial agenda to shape her research. What are some of the potential advantages and/or disadvantages of this decision? More specifically, what considerations must be made when making a decision of who and what to exclude in your fieldwork, especially when the opportunities present themselves but they may deviate from your primary objectives or initial methodological plans?
Furthermore, in Chapter 3 “Maternal Conditions”, Dixon (2020) uses the publicly documented story of Irma López Aurelio’s lawn birth to illustrate and far-too-common brutality, marginalization, and abandonment of economically impoverished, rural, and Indigenous women deeply rooted in Mexico’s colonial, racist, classist, and misogynist history. This further sets the stage for her discourse on infrastructural violence. Thus, as anthropologists, what strategies and techniques can we use to provide contemporary and historical contexts that inform our data, theoretical frameworks, and arguments (particularly in the context of published ethnographies)? How does Dixon do this and is it effectively executed for a general audience?