New reproductive technologies, such as in vitrio fertilization, have been the subject of intense public discussion and debate worldwide. In addition to difficult ethical, moral, personal and political questions, new technologies of assisted conception also raise novel socio-cultural dilemmas. How are parenthood, kinship and procreation being redefined in the context of new reproductive technologies? Has reproductive choice become part of consumer culture? Embodied Progress offers a unique perspective on these and other cultural dimensions of assisted conception techniques. Based on ethnographic research in Britain, this study foregrounds the experiences of women and couples who undergo IVF, whilst also asking how such experiences may be variously understood.

Google Books » https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JUWIAgAAQBAJ

Publisher site » http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415067676/

This indispensable collection brings together feminist theory and cultural studies, looking at issues such as pop culture and the media, science and technology.

Google Books » http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TiApAAAAYAAJ

Publisher site » http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415512565/

The boundaries of life now occupy a place of central concern among biological anthropologists. Because of the centrality of the modern biological definition of life to Euro-American medicine and anthropology, the definition of life itself and its contestation exemplify competing uses of knowledge. On the one hand, “life” and “death” may be redefined as partial or contingent (“brain death”), or reconstituted altogether (“virtual” or “artificial life”). On the other hand, the finality and “reality” of death resists such classifications. This volume reflects a growing international concern about issues such as organ transplantation, new reproductive and genetic technologies and embryo research, and the necessity of cross-cultural comparison. The political economy of body parts, organ and tissue “harvesting,” bio-prospecting, and the patenting of life-forms are explored herein, as well as governance and regulation in cloning, organ transplantation, tissue engineering, and artificial life systems procedures.

Google Books » http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=buraAAAAMAAJ

Publisher site » https://sarweb.org/?sar_press_remaking_life_and_death-p:sar_press_advanced_seminar_series

Understandings of globalization have been little explored in relation to gender or related concerns such as identity, subjectivity and the body. This book contrasts `the natural’ and `the global’ as interpretive strategies, using approaches from feminist cultural theory. The book begins by introducing the central themes: ideas of the natural; questions of scale and context posed by globalization and their relation to forms of cultural production; the transformation of genealogy; and the emergence of interest in definitions of life and life forms. The authors explores these questions through a number of case studies including Benneton advertising, Jurassic Park, The Body Shop, British Airways, Monsanto and Dolly the Sheep. In order to respecify the `nature, culture and gender’ concerns of two decades of feminist theory, this highly original book reflects, hypothesizes and develops new interpretive possibilities within established feminist analytical frames.

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Publisher site » http://www.uk.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book209783

Technologies of Procreation bridges the gap between medical technology and cultural values. It looks at the ways in which the ‘technologies of procreation’ affect society from an anthropological perspective.

Google Books » http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Xt1mietBVhAC

Publisher site » http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415170567/

Focusing on the key themes of power, kinship, and technological innovation, this volume offers a set of carefully argued empirical studies that emphasize the importance of ethnographic method, as well as anthropological theory, to current debates about the reproductive processes of humans, animals, and plants. In chapters on abortion, assisted conception, biodiversity conservation, artificial life sciences, adoption, intellectual property, and prenatal screening, Reproducing Reproduction contends that ideologies of class, nation, health, gender, nature, and kinship have reproductive models at their core.

Google Books » https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=84Xg_Ugi53UC

Publisher site » http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/637.html

Are new reproductive and genetic technologies racing ahead of a society that is unable to establish limits to their use? Have the “new genetics” outpaced our ability to control their future applications? This book examines the case of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), the procedure used to prevent serious genetic disease by embryo selection, and the so-called “designer baby” method. Using detailed empirical evidence, the authors show that far from being a runaway technology, the regulation of PGD over the past fifteen years provides an example of precaution and restraint, as well as continual adaptation to changing social circumstances. Through interviews, media and policy analysis, and participant observation at two PGD centers in the United Kingdom, Born and Made provides an in-depth sociological examination of the competing moral obligations that define the experience of PGD.

Among the many novel findings of this pathbreaking ethnography of reproductive biomedicine is the prominence of uncertainty and ambivalence among PGD patients and professionals–a finding characteristic of the emerging “biosociety,” in which scientific progress is inherently paradoxical and contradictory. In contrast to much of the speculative futurology that defines this field, Born and Madeprovides a timely and revealing case study of the on-the-ground decision-making that shapes technological assistance to human heredity.

Google Books » https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_krN8uUKGbYC

Publisher site » http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8313.html

The essays in Relative Values draw on new work in science studies, gender theory, critical race studies, postmodernism, and anthropology to offer a radical revisioning of kinship and kinship theory. The contributors – a group of eminent and internationally-recognised scholars -chart a new future for kinship studies, addressing topics that range from the commodification of kinship through trans-national adoption to the virtual kinship of artificial life. Ideas about kinship are vital not only to understanding, but to forming, many of the practices and innovations of contemporary society. Through a combination of vivid case studies and trenchant theoretical essays, scholars examine both the history of kinship theory and its future, at once raising questions that occupy a central place within the discipline of anthropology and moving beyond them. Has kinship become more structureless, commodified, and flexible in the global era? Do such representations overlook the “diffuse, enduring ties” that kinship has long signified? What has been the effect of contemporary bio-politics on kinship practices and theories? The contributors assess the implications for kinship of such phenomena as blood transfusions, adoption across national borders, and the new reproductive technologies while ranging from rural China to mid-century Africa to contemporary Norway and the United States. Posing these and other timely questions, Relative Values injects an important interdisciplinary curiosity into one of anthropology’s most important disciplinary traditions. Contributors. Mary Bouquet, Janet Carsten, Charis Thompson Cussins, Carol Delaney, Gillian Feeley-Harnik, Sarah Franklin, Deborah Heath, Stefan Helmreich, Signe Howell, Jonathan Marks, Susan McKinnon, Michael G. Peletz, Rayna Rapp, Martine Segalen, Pauline Turner Strong, Melbourne Tapper, Karen-Sue Taussig, Kath Weston, and Yunxiang Yan.

Google Books » http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FhWo46l220gC

Publisher site » https://www.dukeupress.edu/Relative-Values/

While the creation of Dolly the sheep, the world’s most famous clone, triggered an enormous amount of discussion about human cloning, in “Dolly Mixtures” the anthropologist Sarah Franklin looks beyond that much-rehearsed controversy to some of the other reasons why the iconic animal’s birth and death were significant. Building on the work of historians and anthropologists, Franklin reveals Dolly as the embodiment of agricultural, scientific, social, and commercial histories which are, in turn, bound up with national and imperial aspirations. Dolly was the offspring of a long tradition of animal domestication, as well as the more recent histories of capital accumulation through selective breeding, and enhanced national competitiveness through the control of biocapital. Franklin traces Dolly’s connections to Britain’s centuries-old sheep and wool markets (which were vital to the nation’s industrial revolution) and to Britain’s export of animals to its colonies–particularly Australia–to expand markets and produce wealth. Moving forward in time, she explains the celebrity sheep’s links to the embryonic cell lines and global bioscientific innovation of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first.Franklin combines wide-ranging sources–from historical accounts of sheep-breeding, to scientific representations of cloning by nuclear transfer, to popular media reports of Dolly’s creation and birth–as she draws on gender and kinship theory as well as postcolonial and science studies. She argues that there is an urgent need for more nuanced responses to the complex intersections between the social and the biological, intersections which are literally reshaping reproduction and genealogy. In “Dolly Mixtures,” Franklin uses the renowned sheep as an opportunity to begin developing a critical language to identify and evaluate the reproductive possibilities that post-Dolly biology now faces, and to look back at some of the important historical formations that enabled and prefigured Dolly’s creation.

Google books » http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DK-4KjlKB34C

Publisher site » https://www.dukeupress.edu/Dolly-Mixtures/

Thirty-five years after its initial success as a form of technologically-assisted human reproduction, and five million miracle babies later, in vitro fertilization (IVF) has become a routine procedure worldwide. In Biological Relatives, Sarah Franklin explores how IVF’s normalization has changed how both technology and biology are understood. Drawing on anthropology, feminist theory, and science studies, Franklin charts IVF’s evolution from an experimental research technique into a global technological platform used for a wide variety of applications – from genetic diagnosis and livestock breeding to cloning and stem cell research. She contends that despite its ubiquity, IVF remains a highly paradoxical technology that confirms the relative and contingent nature of biology, while creating new biological relatives. Using IVF as a lens, Franklin presents a bold and lucid thesis linking technologies of gender and sex to reproductive biomedicine, contemporary bio-innovation, and the future of kinship.

Google Books » http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=w04tnAEACAAJ

Publisher site » https://www.dukeupress.edu/Biological-Relatives