Chapter 13: The Generative Function of a Healthcare System: Linking Meanings Between Chronic Illness and Motherhood

Can a hospital system be a generative setting? How can the social and cultural connotations of chronic illness be reconciled with those associated with pregnancy and motherhood? In this study we ask ourselves whether dialogue between these different meanings is possible, focusing on individual experience to start with, then moving on to the relationship between the individual and the healthcare system, then that between healthcare system and social system. The framework for our analysis rests on certain premises.

Medicine, as a corpus of scientific and technical doctrine, has undergone radical change during its lifetime, including its epistemological paradigms. Medicine has become a mixed-paradigm, sophisticated knowledge system, and when people have recourse to this system, they demand a level of wellness that goes beyond simple treatment of disease or relief from pain.