Nameless relations
Subtitle: anonymity, Melanesia, and reproductive gift exchange between British ova donors and recipients
By: Monica Konrad.
Series: Fertility, reproduction, and sexuality ;; v. 7
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2005
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 286
Subjects: Artificial insemination, Human -- Social aspects; Artificial insemination, Human -- Great Britain; Kula exchange
Description: "Based on the author's fieldwork at assisted conception clinics in England in the mid-1990s, this is the first ethnographic study of the new procreative practices of anonymous ova and embryo donation. Giving voice to both groups of women participating in the demanding donation experience - the donors on the one side and the ever-hopeful IVF recipients on the other - Monica Konrad shows how one dimension of the new reproductive technologies involves an unfamiliar relatedness between nameless and untraceable procreative strangers. The book challenges some of the basic assumptions underlying conventional biomedical discourse of altruistic donation that clinicians and others promote as "gifts of life." It brings together a wide variety of literatures from social anthropology, social theory, cultural studies of science and technology, and feminist bioethics to discuss the relationship between recent developments in biotechnology and changing conceptions of personal origins, genealogy, kinship, biological ownership and notions of bodily integrity."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.