Various theories exist for the ways in which social and material disparities are incorporated
within human bodies and then expressed as health outcomes with uneven
distributions. From a political economy perspective, one pathway involves processes
of social exclusion that take place on articulating local and global fields of power.
This study explores such situated processes as they produce and perpetuate embodied
inequality at childbirth in the Kilombero Valley of South–Central Tanzania.
Ethnographic narratives illustrate how these processes differentially affect the kind
of care women seek and receive. Also described are women’s complex yet pragmatic
responses to potential exclusion in the attempt to secure a safe and otherwise positive
outcome. In a culturally constructed world of childbirth, face-to-face claims
on entitlement to biomedical services collide with enactments of discrimination at
multiple levels, creating a space of contestation for social and material positioning
as well as for physical well-being. [embodied inequality; childbirth; Tanzania; social
exclusion; maternal health]