Natural Birth as a Commons

Dear Xavier, the email works fine but we're not always able to answer straight away. We will respond via email, thanks.

Dear Stacco,

Thanks very much for your answer.

I am a Commons partisan and great admirer and supporter of your excellent initiative of Commons Transition, and being presently involved in many different projects.

In one of my activities, I am assisting a group of women in The Netherlands who have developed an organization and are struggling since 30 years ago for the defense and the healthy practice of Natural Birth. They are today involved in trying to decrease the influence of the official medical and pharmaceutical companies which tend to manage it as an industry, and engaged in extending and improving the natural birth practice. While they have developed important technical, administrative and scientific infrastructure and published considerable works on the subject, they lack of organized community support for their cause.

Since Natural Birth is one of the most vital human activities which should be considered as a “Commons” ownership and, therefore, be managed freely and directly by the community, I am seeking from CT assistance and recommendation of how they could get in touch and build a “Commons” based support who could provide them of the theoretical framework and the network strength to carry out their social and health work into a successful venture.

Any suggestion, recommendations and contacts would be welcome.

Kind regards,

Xavier Veciana

De: Stacco Troncoso (Loomio) [mailto:notifications@loomio.org]
Enviada em: segunda-feira, 26 de fevereiro de 2018 08:57
Para: xavier.veciana@sensia.com.br
Assunto: [Commons Transition] Email - Commons Transition - P2P Foundation

Dear Xavier,

Commons thrive on their specificity: the myriad cultural and material circumstances that incite social processes. The people best equipped to determine what needs should be met by your particular commons are, of course, those directly affected, while also reaching out to similar initiative and seeing whether a shared commons framework can interweave these. In my opinion though, trying Commons to "ownership" is an economistic and resource/centered view of the Commons while we prefer to see them as complex relational processes

For general P2P/Commons materials see our Commons Transition Primer, which is structured both as a concrete introduction to our philosophy and as a "first stop" for our abundant knowledge resources. We don't have anything specific on natality or natural child birth, so we'd encourage you to contribute, whether through our wikis or blog to reflect this. We do have resources on health both in the P2PF Wiki and P2PF blog.

PS: I've edited the thread title to attract more content-specific contributions.

Right, thanks

Xavier

De: Stacco Troncoso (Loomio) [mailto:notifications@loomio.org]
Enviada em: terça-feira, 27 de fevereiro de 2018 12:39
Para: xavier.veciana@sensia.com.br
Assunto: [Commons Transition] Natural Birth as a Commons

Stacco,

Agree with you. By using “ownership” I meant the common control of the process by the actors.

I have read all CT theoretical documentation and don´t have any doubts on that level of resources. What I need to find is other “commons” in similar fields or regions in order to create a critical mass which can support and encourage our existing “Natural Birth” group.

Do you know any other “Commons” group in the Netherlands (Amsterdam?) or any working in Health issues?

Thanks very much for your contributions which are a great assistance to our projects.

Rgds,

Xavier

De: Stacco Troncoso (Loomio) [mailto:notifications@loomio.org]
Enviada em: terça-feira, 27 de fevereiro de 2018 12:38
Para: xavier.veciana@sensia.com.br
Assunto: [Commons Transition] Natural Birth as a Commons

@xavy Our friends in Commons Network are due to publish a paper on health as a common, focused on the EU situation. See also this article they wrote Health Care Is Not A Business, But A Fundamental Right.

I'm tagging @thomasdegroot from CN to see if he can help you. The European Commons Assembly also has a health working group. Perhaps the best way would be to embed Natural Birth within a wider health-commons alliance. Another thing that comes to mind is midwifery, as I believe there are progressive movements in that field.

Stacco,

Yes, excellent. Let´s see if @thomasdegroot can assist.

Do you know of any midwifery groups in the “Commons”?

Rgds,

Xavier

De: Stacco Troncoso (Loomio) [mailto:notifications@loomio.org]
Enviada em: terça-feira, 27 de fevereiro de 2018 13:33
Para: xavier.veciana@sensia.com.br
Assunto: Stacco Troncoso mentioned you in: Natural Birth as a Commons

I am looking forward to integrate a group of interested persons working and promoting the natural birth, both in scientific and medical research and in the practice of midwifery or obstetrics. A group of activist women is struggling in this field in Amsterdam and is looking for a wider and deeper communication and support in the commons environment and social process development. We would appreciate anyone interested in this field or in the more general of "Health as Commons" to contact us and let us know their initiatives to study synergies and debates.

My three oldest children were born at home, following natural practices.
If I could give my personal view on this, I would see it as the knowledge, skills and competences surrounding natural birth as a socio-intellectual commons, used by and maintained by those experiencing natural birth, as well as natural birth assistants ("midwives"). It would be really interesting in many ways to think through how natural birth assistants could be accredited by a commons-based system in a commons-oriented process. It would be a great starting point to extending this approach to other areas of healthcare.

I would be happy to help you write an entry in the P2PF wiki if that would help.

Interesting to know your experience and agree on the interesting innovation of empowering a commons-oriented process in this field. I have never written an entry in P2PF Wiki and I would like to know how to do it. I would appreciate if you can give me a hint and later our team would complete the rest of scientific and technical stuff.

Xavier there is quite a bit of this going on in New Zealand, especially via the Home Birth Association: https://homebirth.org.nz/ Perhaps try nextworking via them?

Thanks very much Briar for the contact. We will contact them and study their practices. We believe that Natural Birth is part of the Health and Care processes which we think should be produced and managed directly by the local communities of women without the interference from biochemical TNCs and the present male preponderant medical institutions.

I am not entirely sure about the definition of commons here.

We have had a thread about Roma dance festival, solidarity to refugees and now natural birth as commons. Not saying these things aren't interesting or important, but I joined under an impression that commons would refer to stuff like taking care of shared water resources and embracing open source tech.

I would personally like a more strict definition and more narrow scope of goals.

Hi Leo @leosammallahti -- the Commons writers I have read all seem content with an intellectual or information commons, as well as physical resource commons. So how would you scope the definition more strictly?

Nice that you give the example of embracing open source tech -- very much an intellectual commons. To me, natural childbirth -- the knowledge, skills, practices and community around it -- are more like open source tech than a rather vague concept like "solidarity to refugees".

Let me have a go at spelling out a little better what I was trying to say above. The common resource that I see here is the totality of the knowledge, skills, and competences involved with natural childbirth. The community involves people who could be called midwives, long-term, and mothers as users but also as contributors to the knowledge commons. And anyone else involved in natural childbirth, as I was.

There is a clear need for something like accreditation, regulation, or other reputation system so that mothers and others concerned can have confidence in the skills of a midwife. Clearly that can be done (as it is at present) in a hierarchical, top-down way; but equally it could be done in a peer-to-peer way, by constituting the users and practitioners as members of the community that self-regulates. The establishment would be quick to point out the dangers of having births unattended by suitably knowledgeable and experienced helpers. And they have a good point. But surely we should be able, as a community, to have a training, assessment and reputation system just as effective, if not more so, than the current official one?

Not sure if this was exactly what Xavier @xavy had in mind, but worth saying maybe?

Thanks for your reply, it's well thought, I hope I didn't come across as dismissive of the importance of these things.

Point taken, I now understand the relevance to commons!

If you are not aware of them, for a community developed approach to childbirth its got to be worth checking out http://thefarmmidwives.org/

There is a fascinating story behind them going back decades.

Thanks very much, Darren. We will contact. That´s our objective: to develop the networking and cooperation in this field. Anyone having engaged contacts, please send.

Yes of course I had read about them and forgotten. Very good, as I recall

For anybody interested in this field, a debate has been organized on May 26th in Barcelona by the women´s organization "Dona Llum" and the support of the city council, in the scope of the activities planned for the "Week of Respected Birth", under the topic "LESS INTERVENTIONS, MORE CARE", with speaches by several experts of our team, among which Beatrijs Smulders, who has already published several books defending the freedom of women to choose a natural birth and the need of a commons infrastructure adapted to this choice.

If anyone is interested in what our network is doing defending the mutualization of birth giving among the mothers themselves and against the “medicalization” of this practice by the pharmacological multinational companies who dominate the health industry, you can read the following article by a google-translate:

www.ara.cat/dossier/Beatrijs-Smulders-Donar-llum-amor_0_2039196078.html

Any questions, welcome.

Xavier

Great article, thank you Xavier. My views from my experience (as a participating father) are closely aligned.

I am glad you liked it. Our idea is to be able to joint forces with the similar groups from several countries as we are now only represented in Netherlands and Spain