Midwifery as established sect: an expanded application of the church-sect continuum.

FLORIDA; UNITED States

Based on church-sect theory, this paper asserts that midwifery is much like an established sect in relation to its church equivalent: Western medicine. We find that midwifery can endure in this form - as both protest movement and established institution - because of its ability to maintain its central oppositional values while being accepted as a legitimate, if marginalized, profession. Using interview data from 25 Florida midwives, we draw an analogy between the liminal status of midwifery and three of the most important characteristics of the established sect: limited institutionalization, acceptance and opposition, and a unique value set. This comparison sheds light on both church-sect theory and midwifery, which also leads us to suggest that similar analogies be used for analysis across other sub-fields in sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article se base sur la théorie église–secte pour affirmer que la profession des sages-femmes ressemble à une secte vis-à-vis son équivalent de l'église: la médicine occidentale. On trouve que cette profession peut durer dans sa forme à la fois de mouvement oppositionnel et d'institution etablie grâce à sa capacité de maintenir ses valeurs centraux d'opposition en étant accepté comme une profession légitime, bien que marginalisée. En se servant des informations cueillies de 25 entretiens avec des sages-femmes de la Floride, on développe une analogie entre le statut ambigu des sages-femmes et les trois caractéristiques les plus importantes d'une secte établie: une institutionnalisation limitée, l'acceptation et l'opposition, et un corpus unique de valeurs. Cette comparaison éclaircit et la théorie église–secte et la profession des sages-femmes, ce qui nous mène à suggérer que des analogies similaires pourraient servir à l'analyse d'autres domaines de la sociologie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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