87

The article examines the status of midwives in Habsburg Bosnia and Herzegovina, revealing how this professional group came to play an innovative role as mediators between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Bosnian population. Using methods and concepts from social anthropology, it aims to understand the configuration of the different relationships established between the administrators, the midwives and the residents, following the 1898 reform of midwifery. These relationships challenged the existing social order inherited from the Ottoman period, and constituted for the different historical actors both a challenge and an enabling space, as illustrated by the example of the midwife Ivka Ratković in Bosanski Petrovac.