The color photo shows an old woman with grey hair wearing a white sari and white blouse, with a stick, seated in a chair at a table, smiling at the camera.
The photo shows one participant, Kochikka, of Kilimanoor district.
Photo: Aparna Nair and the AvaBhai Archives, 2010
Documenting the Vayattati: A Digitised Oral History Project
In 2011, I spent eight months working in the archives and in the field, collecting oral histories, archive materials, photographs and other research materials from traditional birth attendants and post-birth attendants across the southern Indian state of Kerala. The project had the following goals:
To develop and conduct an oral history project which will preserve and protect the body of indigenous knowledge brought to bear during childbirth in Kerala.
To provide a diverse, integrated and easy-to-use body of sources for the use of interested scholars, students and the interested public.
This digital and publicly available oral history project examines the work, role and consequences of the labour of traditional birth attendants in a state where birth is extensively medicalised. I also examine the powerful roles of caste and income in driving the forms of this labour, and the ways in which it has re-emerged in a post-medicalisation Kerala. The project seeks to center the voices of the women who shared so much of their working life with me, and to assign them a respectful place in both the history of medicine and the history of post-natal nursing in the state.
You can access the entire project here: http://www.rcwssndt.org/awa/collection/awa%20Collection%20aparna.html