Assisted Reproduction Across Borders: Feminist Perspectives on Normalizations, Disruptions and Transmissions

by Merete Lie (Editor), Nina Lykke (Editor)

Overview

Today, it often seems as though Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) have reached a stage of normalization, at least in some countries and among certain social groups. Apparently some practices – for example in vitro fertilization (IVF) – have become standard worldwide. The contributors to Assisted Reproduction Across Borders argue against normalization as an uncontested overall trend.

This volume reflects on the state of the art of ARTs. From feminist perspectives, the contributors focus on contemporary political debates triggered by ARTs. They examine the varying ways in which ARTs are interpreted and practised in different contexts, depending on religious, moral and political approaches. Assisted Reproduction Across Borders embeds feminist analysis of ARTs across a wide variety of countries and cultural contexts, discussing controversial practices such as surrogacy from the perspective of the global South as well as the global North as well as inequalities in terms of access to IVF.

This volume will appeal to scholars and students of anthropology, ethnography, philosophy, political science, history, sociology, film studies, media studies, literature, art history, area studies, and interdisciplinary areas such as gender studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781317200673
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/04/2016
Series:	Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	334
File size:	889 KB

About the Author

Merete Lie is Professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture and leader of the Centre for Gender Research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway.

Nina Lykke is Professor of Gender Studies at Linköping University, Sweden, co-director of GEXcel International Collegium for Advanced Transdisciplinary Gender Studies, and director of InterGender International Research School, Sweden.

Table of Contents

Part I: ARTs in a Neoliberal World of Transnational Reproflows

1. Citizen, Subject, Property: Indian Surrogacy and the Global Fertility Market

2. Fair Play in a Dirty Field? The Ethical Work of Commissioning Surrogacy in India

3. "Families Like We’d Always Known"? Spanish Gay Fathers’ Normalization Narratives in Transnational Surrogacy

4. Destination Spain: Negotiating Nationality and Fertility when Traveling for Eggs

5. The South African Economy of Egg Donation: Looking at the BioEconomic Side of Normalization

Part II: Perplexed State Regulations, Legal Inconsistencies and Cultural Tricksters

6. Governing New Reproductive Technologies across Western Europe: The Gender Dimension

7. Norwegian Biopolitics in the First Decade of the 2000s: Family Politics and Assisted Reproduction Understood through the Concept of the Trickster

8. Bringing it All Back Home: Cross-Border Procreative Practices. Examples from Norway

9. Finland as a Late Regulator of Assisted Reproduction: A Permissive Policy under Debate

Part III: Religious Fundamentalism, Humanist Values, and State Dilemmas in an Era of Technological Monsters

10. Reframing Conception, Reproducing Society: Italian Paradoxes

11. The Veto of Moral Politics: The Catholic Church and ARTs in Ireland

12. Desiring Bodies: Problematizing the Matter of ARTs in Poland

13. Germany goes PGD: The Appeal to Women’s and Human Rights Discourse in the Paradigmatic Amendment to the German Embryo Protection Act

14. Matters of Donation and Preserved Relations: Co-Construction of Egg Donation and Family Structures in Iran

Part IV: ARTs as Entangled in Demographic Agendas and Biopolitics

15. Babies from Behind Bars: Stratified Assisted Reproduction in Palestine/Israel

16. From Precarity to Self-Governance: Performing Motherhood through IVF Treatment in Ukraine

17. Russian Legislative Practices and Debates on the Restriction of Wide Access to ARTs

Part V: "New Normals" and their Discontents

18. Lesbian Kinship and ARTs in American Popular Culture: The L Word and The Kids Are All Right

19. Naturalization and Un-Naturalization: ARTs, Childlessness and Choice

20. Sperm Stories: Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Sperm Donation and Sperm Banking in Denmark

21. Cellular Origins: A Visual Analysis of Time-Lapse Embryo Imaging