Robbie Davis-Floyd

Robbie Davis-Floyd (born Robbie Elizabeth Davis; April 26, 1952 in Casper, Wyoming) is a medical and cultural anthropologist, researcher, author, and international speaker primarily known for her research on childbirth, midwifery, and obstetrics. Davis-Floyd's incentive to study women's birth experience was influenced by her own and apprehends the important role that midwives engage in to safeguard positive outcomes for women giving birth. She was the first to analyze obstetric surgical procedures within the American medical system as a ritual. In Davis-Floyd's book, Birth as an American Rite of Passage, she argues that the beliefs and practices associated with birth are driven from a "technocratic model" that was influenced by the Scientific Revolution. The publication of the book furthered her interest to study the anthropology of reproduction. She is an author of over 80 articles, co-authors, and the main editor of 10 collections. Robbie Davis-Floyd's latest collection piece is Birth Models That Work (2009) to present optimal models of birth care around the world. Within the scope of research, Davis-Floyd and other scholars and birth advocates have worked to ensure that people have access to a range of knowledge on birth, childbirth processes, cultural perspectives, birth customs, safety practices, and health resources.

In light of her mission and elaborative study, Davis-Floyd has collaborated with multiple people to explain birth in different contexts and parts of the world. Davis-Floyd and midwife Elizabeth Davis co-authored Intuition as Authoritative Knowledge in Midwifery and Homebirth. Both had examined the interaction between midwives' authoritative knowledge and the intuition of home birth mothers. This form of authoritative knowledge occurs in a context where independent midwives rely on knowledge that they spiritually and personally embody, primarily through expertise and by knowing the women and their communities. Home birth midwives make a conscious and purposeful attempt to provide alternative knowledge that is culturally representative in both midwifery and home birth. New reproductive technologies create a barrier between mother and child, in regards to visualization, conception, and legislation. Reproductive technologies have been critiqued for its merit and fault as it makes advancements in cross-cultural landscapes.

These different models of birth, healthcare, and technological usage exist in all societies and fluctuates according to its surrounding conditions. Davis-Floyd demonstrated this when she revised and edited Birth in Four Cultures: A Cultural Investigation of Childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, Sweden, and the United States (Fourth Edition) in 1993, written by Brigitte Jordan. The book was first published in 1978 and won the Margaret Mead Award in 1980. Jordan and Davis-Floyd had completed a comparative analysis on how culture interacts with the physiology of birth in four different territories. The research investigates the biological process of birth as it relates to cultural concepts that influences childbirth for the mother, newborn, and other people involved. Birth in Four Cultures has demonstrated that birth is socially configured and distinguished by all cultures. Brigitte Jordan's concept of authoritative knowledge has been distributed and utilized by scholars. By her definition, authoritative knowledge subsists as a domain of knowledge systems in which one holds more weight than the other. A system comes to carry more weight when it has superior purpose to explain a state of the world or has stronger power. Both anthropologists have acknowledged the use and spread of high technologies as a cultural factor of authoritative knowledge. The use of technologies have contributed to a relative study between humans and machines, termed as "Cyborg Anthropology." Anthropologist Donna Haraway proposed the new discipline through an anthropological perspective. The idea was presented to the American Anthropological Association by Joseph Dumit of MIT and Robbie Davis-Floyd in 1992. Davis-Floyd's research concerns reproduction and the technologies associated with birthing standards, in which the natural process of birth is intervened with technologies that help women give birth. Robbie Davis-Floyd has observed obstetric procedures in ritual rather than medical practice. The values of American society is driven by technocracy and viewed through a dogmatic perspective since humans are known to advance nature by manipulating it with technology.

Robbie Davis-Floyd is the daughter of Walter Gray (an independent oil operator) and Robbie Davis (a homemaker and genealogist) whose maiden name was Peyton. In June of 1978, she married Robert N. Floyd (an architect) and later became a mother of two children.

Robbie Davis-Floyd was Valedictorian of her high school class. She attended Wellesley College between 1969 to 1970. Davis-Floyd later received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1972 (Summa cum Laude and with Special Honors in Plan II). She earned her Master of Arts degree in Anthropology and Folklore (1974), as well as PhD (1986) from the University of Texas. Robbie Davis-Floyd developed skills in research, science, molecular biology, biochemistry, cell culture, cell biology, and scientific writing.

Robbie Davis-Floyd has currently expanded her professional experience in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas (Austin) since 1996. In 1975-1976, Davis-Floyd was a summer Spanish instructor for Centro de Artes y Lenguas Mexicanas, Cuernavaca in Morelos, Mexico. The following year she was a high school teacher for St. Mary's Hall in San Antonio (1977-1979). Davis-Floyd was an adjunct assistant professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga (1980-1983) and Trinity University, San Antonio (1987-1989). She was a lecturer at the University of Texas (Austin) then became senior lecturer of anthropology and senior research fellow around 1990-1992 and 1998-Current. Davis-Floyd was a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at Rice University in Houston, Texas (1993, 1996, and 1999). In 1997-1999, Robbie Davis-Floyd was a participant of the Council for European studies for the International Research Planning Groups Program. She was a visiting lecturer at Baylor Medical School (1999) and Southern Methodist University (2002). Between 2002 and 2003, Davis-Floyd was the Flora Stone Mather Visiting Professor in the anthropology department at Case Western Reserve University and an adjunct associate professor. In 2013, Robbie Davis Floyd continued to serve in the Department of Anthropology at University of Texas, Austin as Senior Research Fellow.

Robbie Davis-Floyd is a member of the American Anthropological Association, American Holistic Medical Association, Association for Feminist Anthropology, and has relations with the American College of Nurse-Midwives. Davis-Floyd was a board member for the Midwifery Certification Task Force in 1994-1997. Around 1998, she was a member of the advisory board for BirthWorks, Inc. and became a member of the national advisory council for the Maternity Center Association Institute for Family-Centered Maternity Care until 2000. Davis-Floyd was an editorial committee member of the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services and member of council (1995 and 1999). Currently, Davis-Floyd is a member of the Board of the International MotherBaby Childbirth Organization (IMBCO) and an editor for the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative. Furthermore, she is a board director and public member of the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM). Davis-Floyd serves as an advisor and consultant for the organization. She has served as an executive board member of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology (2003-2005) and as the Retired Board and Ex-Officio Member of the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA), from 2004 to 2007. At Antioch College, Davis-Floyd was a member of the research faculty in 2004. Robbie Davis-Floyd has been a member of the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction, Council on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing, Society for the Social Study of Science, as well as a board member of the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health.

• Davis-Floyd, Robbie. Birth As An American Rite Of Passage. Berkeley : University Of California Press, 1992. Print.
• Jordan, Brigitte. Birth in Four Cultures: A Crosscultural Investigation of Childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, Sweden, and the United States, Fourth Edition. Waveland Press, 1992. Print. Revised, expanded, and updated by Robbie Davis-Floyd in 1993.
• Davis-Floyd, Robbie E., and Carolyn Sargent. Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. University of California Press, 1997. Print.
• Davis-Floyd, Robbie, and Joseph Dumit, eds. Ebrary, Inc. Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots. Routledge, New York, 1998. Print.
• Davis-Floyd, Robbie, and John G. St. From Doctor to Healer: The Transformative Journey. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998. Print.
• Bourgeault, Ivy Lynn, et al., editors. Reconceiving Midwifery. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004.
• Robbie Davis-Floyd and Christine Barbara Johnson, eds. Mainstreaming Midwives: The Politics of Change. New York: Routledge, 2006.
• Davis-Floyd, Robbie, et al., editors. Birth Models That Work. 1st ed., University of California Press, 2009.

Robbie Davis-Floyd attended the GOLD Midwifery Conference (2015), which is hosted by GOLD Conferences International. As a keynote speaker, Davis-Floyd presented The Daughter of Time: The Postmodern Midwife. She has defined "the postmodern wife" as an individual who takes a relativistic and informative approach to various approaches to birth. The midwife creates a complementary connection between traditional and professional midwives and the biomedical system. Robbie Davis-Floyd also presented the topic for the keynote address during The Midwifery Way: A National Forum Reflecting on the State of Midwifery Regulation in Canada (2004). Davis-Floyd and Debra Pescalli Bonaro contributed a "Joint Letter to Participants in the Human Rights in Childbirth Conference" that was organized by the Bynkershoek Research Center on Reproductive Rights in The Hague, Netherlands. Both panelists presented information on decision-making in childbirth, including safety, risk, costs, and benefits.

Robbie Davis-Floyd is a fellow recipient of the Society for Applied Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. She was a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1980. Davis-Floyd was awarded a faculty development grant from Trinity University around 1988 and 1989. She was recognized as a research fellow from the University of Texas in 1994. In the same year, Robbie Davis-Floyd was an Academy of Consciousness Studies fellow at Princeton University. She received the Institute of Noetic Sciences grant (1995-1997). Davis-Floyd was honored with the American Society for Psychoprophylaxis in Obstetrics & Lamaze Research Award in 1996. In 1996-1998 and 1999-2000, Robbie Davis-Floyd received the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research grant. She also received multiple research grants from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics between 1996 and 1998. One of the research grants was provided by the Honeywell Corporation in 1998. The research grants were awarded for Space Stories: Oral Histories from the Pioneers of the American Space Program, Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots, and Village Voice (1998). In 2005, she received the Transforming Birth Fund Grant Award for Research & Best Practice Dissemination to support Birth Models that Work, via Foundation for the Advancement of Midwifery. Davis-Floyd received the Transforming Birth Fund Grant Award for Changemakers in 2006, which was supported by Waterbirth International. During 2007 Davis-Floyd received an award for the Transforming Birth Fund Grant Award (for Research & Best Practice Dissemination) to translate key articles and chapters into Spanish and Portuguese in 2007 by the Foundation for the Advancement of Midwifery. Robbie Davis-Floyd was recognized for 15 years of service to North American Registry of Midwives (NARM) and to American midwifery in 2009.

Robbie Davis-Floyd speaks at international conferences about childbirth, midwifery, and obstetrics. She is presently studying shifts in Brazilian and Mexican midwifery and obstetrics. Similar to Davis-Floyd's support for midwife organizations, such as Friends of Michigan Midwives (FoMM), her motive to study childbirth continues in order to ensure that women have access to alternative knowledge on childbirth, especially for those who choose out-of-hospital birth. Robbie Davis-Floyd explained, "The work that FoMM is doing is vital to ensure that the women of Michigan will continue to have the option of midwifery care available to them." Robbie Davis-Floyd has researched on the principles of empowered birth and continues to work on the area of study to help women enrich their birthing experience.