A Portrait of Assisted Reproduction in Mexico: Scientific, Political, and Cultural Interactions

by Sandra P. González-Santos

Overview

This book paints a comprehensive portrait of Mexico’s system of assisted reproduction first from a historical perspective, then from a more contemporary viewpoint. Based on a detailed analysis of books and articles published between the 1950s and 1980s, the first section tells the story of how the epistemic, normative, and material infrastructure of the assisted reproduction system was built. It traces the professionalization process of assisted reproduction as a medical field and the establishment of its professional association. Drawing on ethnographic material, the second part looks at how this system developed and flourished from the 1980s up to 2010, its commercialization process, how the expansion of reproductive services took place, and the messages regarding reproductive technologies that circulated within a wide discursive landscape. Given its scope and methods, this book will appeal to scholars interested in science and technology studies, reproduction studies, history of medicine, medical anthropology, and sociology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030230418
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	07/23/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	624 KB

About the Author

Sandra P. González Santos, PhD is a part-time researcher at the Bioethics Faculty at the Universidad Anáhuac in Mexico City and a member of Changing (In)Fertilities (Cambridge University). She has been researching the field of assisted reproduction in Mexico from a science and technology studies perspective since 2006.

Table of Contents

An apology and a long thank you.- A National Portrait.- Part 1: Origin.- The power of stories.- Chapter 1: Interest in Sterility.- Chapter 2: Managing Reproduction.- Shifting.- Chapter 3: Interest in Assisting Reproduction.- Part 2 Reproducing Assisted Reproduction.- ARTs as Technological Innovation&Cultural Novelty.- Chapter 4: The Universe is Expanding.- Chapter 5: The Discursive Landscape.- Chapter 6: Contemplating a Repronational Portrait.- Appendix.- Glossary.- References.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A Portrait of Assisted Reproduction in Mexico is a terrific book that examines how assisted reproduction gradually became economically, technically, and socially acceptable in Mexico from the post-revolutionary pro-natalist eugenic period through to the present. Where other scholars have tended to focus on the biomedical, patient-consumer, third-party, or cross-border aspects of assisted reproductive technologies, Dr. Sandra González Santos focuses instead on the building of a new professionalized assisted reproduction sector and on its methods of communication in popular culture within a nation situated between the USA, Latin America, Spain, Catholicism, and the emergence of a modern nation state that controls reproduction. I highly recommend this beautifully written book.” (Professor Charis Thompson, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)

Editorial Reviews

The book is an outstanding contribution to the field of Science and Technology Studies in Latin America … . The book is of great value to both postcolonial and feminist scholars with an interest on the complex relation between science and reproduction, between a global governance of health and the distinctively local hierarchies to which modernity so easily accommodates.” (Abril Saldaña-Tejeda, Tapuya, January 31, 2020)

“A Portrait of Assisted Reproduction in Mexico is appropriate for undergraduates and advanced readers interested in reproduction, gender, class inequality, Mexico, discourse analysis, commodification, and Science and Technology Studies. A Portrait is beautifully written and offers many layers of methodological and theoretical insights to its readers.” (Rosalynn Vega, Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online, Vol. 9, 2019)

From the Publisher