European Kinship in the Age of Biotechnology

European Kinship in the Age of Biotechnology PDF Author: Jeanette Edwards
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845455736
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Interest in the study of kinship, a key area of anthropological enquiry, has recently reemerged. Dubbed 'the new kinship', this interest was stimulated by the 'new genetics' and revived interest in kinship and family patterns. This volume investigates the impact of biotechnology on contemporary understandings of kinship, of family and 'belonging' in a variety of European settings and reveals similarities and differences in how kinship is conceived. What constitutes kinship for different publics? How significant are biogenetic links? What does family resemblance tell us? Why is genetically modified food an issue? Are 'genes' and 'blood' interchangeable? It has been argued that the recent prominence of genetic science and genetic technologies has resulted in a 'geneticization' of social life; the ethnographic examples presented here do show shifts occurring in notions of 'nature' and of what is 'natural'. But, they also illustrate the complexity of contemporary kinship thinking in Europe and the continued interconnectedness of biological and sociological understandings of relatedness and the relationship between nature and nurture.

European Kinship in the Age of Biotechnology

European Kinship in the Age of Biotechnology PDF Author: Jeanette Edwards
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845455736
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Get Book Here

Book Description
Interest in the study of kinship, a key area of anthropological enquiry, has recently reemerged. Dubbed 'the new kinship', this interest was stimulated by the 'new genetics' and revived interest in kinship and family patterns. This volume investigates the impact of biotechnology on contemporary understandings of kinship, of family and 'belonging' in a variety of European settings and reveals similarities and differences in how kinship is conceived. What constitutes kinship for different publics? How significant are biogenetic links? What does family resemblance tell us? Why is genetically modified food an issue? Are 'genes' and 'blood' interchangeable? It has been argued that the recent prominence of genetic science and genetic technologies has resulted in a 'geneticization' of social life; the ethnographic examples presented here do show shifts occurring in notions of 'nature' and of what is 'natural'. But, they also illustrate the complexity of contemporary kinship thinking in Europe and the continued interconnectedness of biological and sociological understandings of relatedness and the relationship between nature and nurture.

Relations

Relations PDF Author: Marilyn Strathern
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478009349
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
The concept of relation holds a privileged place in how anthropologists think and write about the social and cultural lives they study. In Relations, eminent anthropologist Marilyn Strathern provides a critical account of this key concept and its usage and significance in the English-speaking world. Exploring relation's changing articulations and meanings over the past three centuries, Strathern shows how the historical idiosyncrasy of using an epistemological term for kinspersons (“relatives”) was bound up with evolving ideas about knowledge-making and kin-making. She draws on philosophical debates about relation—such as Leibniz's reaction to Locke—and what became its definitive place in anthropological exposition, elucidating the underlying assumptions and conventions of its use. She also calls for scholars in anthropology and beyond to take up the limitations of Western relational thinking, especially against the background of present ecological crises and interest in multispecies relations. In weaving together analyses of kin-making and knowledge-making, Strathern opens up new ways of thinking about the contours of epistemic and relational possibilities while questioning the limits and potential of ethnographic methods.

(K)information

(K)information PDF Author: Maren Klotz
Publisher: Campus Verlag
ISBN: 3593500671
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Openness about gamete (i.e. sperm or egg) donation and the regulation of donor-anonymity or non-anonymity are new phenomena. How do affected families, clinics, and regulators deal with information about the donors and the donation in Germany and Britain? And how does this ‘knowledge-management’ contribute to the making and doing of kinship? Addressing these questions through an ethnographic exploration, this book makes a comparative contribution to the empirical and theoretical analysis of kin-formation and social change in plural late-modern societies in Europe. The research demonstrates a contemporary re-negotiation of the values of privacy, information-sharing, and connectedness – with transparency as moral imperative, not genetics. Instead of an unambiguously discernible ‘geneticisation’ the findings on donor-non-anonymity and parental openness display a pattern of ‘transparentization’. In ensemble a shift of authority becomes evident, more minute in Germany than in Britain, towards concerned groups, parents-by-donation, and policy-makers, away from a sometimes high handed reproductive medical profession.

Achieving Procreation

Achieving Procreation PDF Author: Merve Demircioğlu Göknar
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782386351
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Managing social relationships for childless couples in pro-natalist societies can be a difficult art to master, and may even become an issue of belonging for both men and women. With ethnographic research gathered from two IVF clinics and in two villages in northwestern Turkey, this book explores infertility and assisted reproductive technologies within a secular Muslim population. Göknar investigates the experience of infertility through various perspectives, such as the importance of having a child for women, the mediating role of religion, the power dynamics in same-gender relationships, and the impact of manhood ideologies on the decision for — or against — having IVF.

Race, Ethnicity and Nation

Race, Ethnicity and Nation PDF Author: Peter Wade
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845453558
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
"Race, ethnicity and nation are all intimately linked to family and kinship, yet these links deserve closer attention than they usually get in social science, above all when family and kinship are changing rapidly in the context of genomic and biotechnical revolutions. Drawing on data from assisted reproduction, transnational adoption, mixed race families, Basque identity politics and post-Soviet nation-building, this volume provides new and challenging ways to understand race, ethnicity and nation."--Back cover

Kin, Gene, Community

Kin, Gene, Community PDF Author: Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1845458362
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
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.

From Transnational Relations to Transnational Laws

From Transnational Relations to Transnational Laws PDF Author: Shaheen Sardar Ali
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317131592
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
This book approaches law as a process embedded in transnational personal, religious, communicative and economic relationships that mediate between international, national and local practices, norms and values. It uses the concept "living law" to describe the multiplicity of norms manifest in transnational moral, social or economic practices that transgress the territorial and legal boundaries of the nation-state. Focusing on transnational legal encounters located in family life, diasporic religious institutions and media events in countries like Norway, Sweden, Britain and Scotland, it demonstrates the multiple challenges that accelerated mobility and increased cultural and normative diversity is posing for Northern European law. For in this part of the world, as elsewhere, national law is challenged by a mixture of expanding human rights obligations and unprecedented cultural and normative pluralism enhanced by expanding global communication and market relations. As a consequence, transnationalization of law appears to create homogeneity, fragmentation and ambiguity, expanding space for some actors while silencing others. Through the lens of a variety of important contemporary subjects, the authors thus engage with the nature of power and how it is accommodated, ignored or resisted by various actors when transnational practices encounter national and local law.

Blood Will Out

Blood Will Out PDF Author: Janet Carsten
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118656261
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Unique in focus and international in scope, this book brings together 10 essays about the material, metaphorical, and symbolic importance of blood. An interdisciplinary study that unites the work of noted historians and anthropologists Incorporates insights from recent work in symbolism, kinship studies, medical anthropology, the anthropology of religion, the sociological study of finance, and textual analysis Covers topics such as Medieval European conceptions of blood; blood and the brain; blood and the cultural study of finance; and blood types, identity, and association in twentieth-century America

Motherhood in Literature and Culture

Motherhood in Literature and Culture PDF Author: Gill Rye
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317235479
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Motherhood remains a complex and contested issue in feminist research as well as public discussion. This interdisciplinary volume explores cultural representations of motherhood in various contemporary European contexts, including France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the UK, and it considers how such representations affect the ways in which different individuals and groups negotiate motherhood as both institution and lived experience. It has a particular focus on literature, but it also includes essays that examine representations of motherhood in philosophy, art, social policy, and film. The book’s driving contention is that, through intersecting with other fields and disciplines, literature and the study of literature have an important role to play in nuancing dialogues around motherhood, by offering challenging insights and imaginative responses to complex problems and experiences. This is demonstrated throughout the volume, which covers a range of topics including: discursive and visual depictions of pregnancy and birth; the impact of new reproductive technologies on changing family configurations; the relationship between mothering and citizenship; the shaping of policy imperatives regarding mothering and disability; and the difficult realities of miscarriage, child death, violence, and infanticide. The collection expands and complicates hegemonic notions of motherhood, as the authors map and analyse shifting conceptions of maternal subjectivity and embodiment, explore some of the constraining and/or enabling contexts in which mothering takes place, and ask searching questions about what it means to be a ‘mother’ in Europe today. It will be of interest not only to those working in gender, women’s and feminist studies, but also to scholars in literary and cultural studies, and those researching in sociology, criminology, politics, psychology, medical ethics, midwifery, and related fields.

Revisiting the Regulation of Human Fertilisation and Embryology

Revisiting the Regulation of Human Fertilisation and Embryology PDF Author: Kirsty Horsey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317664817
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 was a major update to the UK’s laws on the use and regulation of reproductive technology and assisted reproduction. Since the enactment of the new law, the sector’s regulatory body, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), has also consulted on various related topics including barriers to egg and sperm donation in the UK, multiple births/single embryo transfer and using IVF technology to prevent mitochondrial disease. This book critically considers recent developments in human fertilisation legislation, asking whether the 2008 Act has achieved its stated aim of being fit for purpose. Bringing together a range of international experts, the book evaluates the fresh risks and challenges emerging from both established and existing technologies and techniques in the field of human fertilisation and embryology, as well as offering valuable insights into the social and regulatory challenges that lie ahead. Key topics include problems with DIY assisted conception; the lack of reform in respect of the regulation of surrogacy arrangements; and mitochondrial DNA transfer. As a review of the status of assisted reproduction legislation, this book will be of great use and interest to students, researchers and practitioners in medical law, bioethics, medicine and child welfare.