The Birth of the Patient

This book explores the complex ways in which a newborn patient is constructed, perceived, and treated within the medical context. It examines how the patients’ social position is shaped by the institutional settings in which they are situated and how their identity is influenced by various factors, including biomedical, social, economic, political, and bureaucratic processes. By focusing on the newborn as a physical, social, symbolic, and even an abstract statistical unit, highlighting their role in shaping economic and symbolic performance indicators for medical institutions and drawing on prolonged fieldwork and diverse empirical data, this book gives voice to the newborn voiceless and acknowledges the difficult labor of neonatal medical professionals.