The assisted reproduction of race
by Camisha A. Russell
Language: English
Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2018.
x, 189 pages ; 24 cm.
ISBN: 9780253035820 ; 0253035821
Summary: The use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART)―in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, and gestational surrogacy―challenges contemporary notions of what it means to be parents or families. Camisha A. Russell argues that these technologies also bring new insight into ideas and questions surrounding race. In her view, if we think of ART as medical technology, we might be surprised by the importance that people using them put on race, especially given the scientific evidence that race lacks a genetic basis. However, if we think of ART as an intervention to make babies and parents, as technologies of kinship, the importance placed on race may not be so surprising after all. Thinking about race in terms of technology brings together the common academic insight that race is a social construction with the equally important insight that race is a political tool which has been and continues to be used in different contexts for a variety of ends, including social cohesion, economic exploitation, and political mastery. As Russell explores ideas about race through their role in ART, she brings together social and political views to shift debates from what race is to what race does, how it is used, and what effects it has had in the world.
Available: https://www.amazon.com/Assisted-Reproduction-Race-Camisha-Russell/dp/0253035902
Subjects:
- Medical ethics
- Genetics -- Moral and ethical aspects
- Reproductive techniques, Assisted -- Ethics
- Surrogate mothers
The pursuit of parenthood : reproductive technology from IVF to uterus transplants
by Margaret S. Marsh; Wanda Ronner
Language: English
Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, [2019].
288 p.
ISBN: 9781421429847 ; 1421429845
Summary: Since the 1978 birth of the first IVF baby, Louise Brown, in England, more than eight million children have been born with the help of assisted reproductive technologies. From the start, they have stirred controversy and raised profound questions: Should there be limits to the lengths to which people can go to make their idea of family a reality? Who should pay for treatment? How can we ensure the ethical use of these technologies? And what can be done to address the racial and economic disparities in access to care that enable some to have children while others go without? In The Pursuit of Parenthood, historian Margaret Marsh and gynecologist Wanda Ronner seek to answer these challenging questions. Bringing their unique expertise in gender history and women's health to the subject, Marsh and Ronner examine the unprecedented means―liberating for some and deeply unsettling for others―by which families can now be created. Beginning with the early efforts to create embryos outside a woman's body and ending with such new developments as mitochondrial replacement techniques and uterus transplants, the authors assess the impact of contemporary reproductive technology in the United States. In this volume, we meet the scientists and physicians who have developed these technologies and the women and men who have used them. Along the way, the book dispels a number of fertility myths, offers policy recommendations that are intended to bring clarity and judgment to this complicated medical history, and reveals why the United States is still known as the "Wild West" of reproductive medicine.
Available: https://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Parenthood-Reproductive-Technology-Transplants/dp/1421429845/
Subjects:
- Infertility -- History
- Fertilization in Vitro -- History
- Reproductive techniques, Assisted -- History
Marginalized reproduction : ethnicity, infertility and reproductive technologies
by Lorraine Culley; Nicky Hudson; Floor Van Rooij, editors
Language: English
London ; Sterling, VA : Earthscan, 2009.
xii, 207 pages ; 25 cm.
ISBN: 9781844075768 ; 1844075761
Summary: Worldwide, over 75 million people are involuntarily childless, a devastating experience for many with significant consequences for the social and psychological well-being of women in particular. Despite greater levels of infertility and strong cultural meanings attached to having children, little attention has been paid politically or academically to the needs of minority ethnic women and men. This groundbreaking volume is the first to highlight the ways in which diverse ethnic, cultural and religious identities impact upon understandings of technological solutions for infertility and associated treatment experiences within Western societies. It offers a corrective to the dominance of the narratives of hegemonic groups in infertility research. The collection begins with a discussion of fertility prevalence and access to treatment for minorities in the West and considers some of the key methodological challenges for social research on ethnicity and infertility. Drawing on primary research from the US, the UK, Eire, Germany, the Netherlands and Australia, the book then turns the spotlight onto the ways in which minority status and cultural and religious mores might impact on the experience of infertility and assisted reproductive technologies. It argues that more equitable access to culturally competent assisted conception services should be an essential component of a transformatory politics of infertility.
Available: http://www.amazon.com/Marginalized-Reproduction-Infertility-Reproductive-Technologies/dp/041584942X
Reproduction, globalization, and the state : new theoretical and ethnographic perspectives
by C. H. Browner; Carolyn Fishel Sargent, editors
Language: English
Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2011.
293 pages ; 25 cm.
ISBN: 9780822349419 ; 0822349418
Summary: Reproduction, Globalization, and the State conceptualizes and puts into practice a global anthropology of reproduction and reproductive health. Leading anthropologists offer new perspectives on how transnational migration and global flows of communications, commodities, and biotechnologies affect the reproductive lives of women and men in diverse societies throughout the world. Based on research in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Western Europe, their fascinating ethnographies provide insight into reproduction and reproductive health broadly conceived to encompass population control, HIV/AIDS, assisted reproductive technologies, paternity tests, sex work, and humanitarian assistance. The contributors address the methodological challenges of research on globalization, including ways of combining fine-grained ethnography with analyses of large-scale political, economic, and ideological forces. Their essays reveal complex interactions among global and state population policies and politics; public health, human rights, and feminist movements; diverse medical systems; various religious practices, doctrines, and institutions; and intimate relationships and individual aspirations.
Available: https://www.dukeupress.edu/reproduction-globalization-and-the-state
Kin, gene, community : reproductive technologies among Jewish Israelis
by Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli; Yoram S Carmeli, editors
Language: English
New York : Berghahn Books, 2010.
viii, 372 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
ISBN: 9781845456887 ; 1845456882
Summary: Israel is the only country in the world that offers free fertility treatments to nearly any woman who requires medical assistance. It also has the world's highest per capita usage of in-vitro fertilization. Examining state policies and the application of reproductive technologies among Jewish Israelis, this volume explores the role of tradition and politics in the construction of families within local Jewish populations. The contributors—anthropologists, bioethicists, jurists, physicians and biologists—highlight the complexities surrounding these treatments and show how biological relatedness is being construed as a technology of power; how genetics is woven into the production of identities; how reproductive technologies enhance the policing of boundaries. Donor insemination, IVF and surrogacy, as well as abortion, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and human embryonic stem cell research, are explored within local and global contexts to convey an informed perspective on the wider Jewish Israeli environment.
Available: http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/Birenbaum-CarmeliKin
The clone age : adventures in the new world of reproductive technology
by Lori B. Andrews
Language: English
New York : Henry Holt, ©1999.
264 pages ; 22 cm.
ISBN: 0805060804 ; 9780805060805
Summary: An authority on the legal and ethical ramifications of reproductive technology discusses the history of biotechnology, the future of genetic research, and related moral issues.
Available: http://www.amazon.com/Clone-Age-Adventures-Reproductive-Technology/dp/0805060804
