Doctoral Dissertation Research: Legal and Regulatory Inconsistency at the Community Level

摘要：在美国，许多专业存在于不同司法管辖区监管不一致的法律背景下，导致这些专业的合法性缺乏稳定性。一个主要的例子是美国的分娩方式，因为越来越多的家庭寻求替代标准的医院分娩，产科医生参加的药物分娩，如在家分娩。注册专业助产士是经过专门培训的专业提供者，为越来越多选择在家分娩的家庭提供护理，他们受到各种各样的法律和政策的监管。该项目将调查不同实践社区背景下家庭助产的法律环境及其对不同监管框架的反应。该项目将采用混合方法分析家庭生育的不一致法律环境，并采用人种学方法，包括深入访谈和分析在不同司法管辖背景下收集的档案数据。该研究将调查对缺乏稳定性的国家治疗专家的反应，这是家庭分娩的监管背景的特征。研究设计包括参与观察，围绕几个现场的家庭分娩专业人员的做法。人种学研究将通过采访负责管理家庭助产实践的官员和家庭助产专业网络的其他成员来补充。调查结果将有助于了解法律意识、管理安排与专门知识和专业化政治之间的关系。此外，该项目将通过阐明从业人员如何应对目前在全国范围内使用的各种许可证模式，提供现有监管策略的影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Title: Doctoral Dissertation Research: Legal and Regulatory Inconsistency at the Community LevelAbstract: Many professions in the U.S exist in a legal context of regulatory inconsistency across the various jurisdictions in which the practice operates, leading to a lack of stability regarding the legality of those professions. A prime example concerns how childbirth occurs in the U.S, as more families seek alternatives to standard hospital-based, obstetrician-attended medicated birth, such as home birth. Certified Professional Midwives, the professional providers specifically trained to provide care to the growing community of families choosing home birth, are regulated by enormously varied laws and policies. This project will investigate the legal setting of home birth midwifery in the context of varied communities of practice and their responses to differing regulatory frameworks.Using mixed-methods to analyze the inconsistent legal environment of home birth, the project will employ an ethnographic approach, including in-depth interviews and analysis of archival data collected across varied jurisdictional contexts. The study will investigate responses to a lack of stability about state treatment of expertise that characterizes the regulatory context of home birth. The research design includes participant observation centered around the practices of home birth professionals in several field sites. Ethnographic research will be supplemented by interviews with officials charged with regulating the practice of home birth midwifery and with other members of the professional networks of home birth midwives. Findings will contribute to an understanding of the relationship between legal consciousness, regulatory arrangements, and the politics of expertise and professionalization. Additionally, the project will provide implications of existing regulatory strategies by illuminating how practitioners respond to the various models of licensure currently in use across the country.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.