Technology, Biopolitics, Rationalities and Choices: Recent Studies of Reproduction

Abstract

New synergies across anthropology, science and technology studies (STS), legal studies and sociology, bring fresh theoretical perspectives to the study of reproduction. Recent works on reproduction trace some of the changing rationalities: from the tactics of feminist self-help health movements in 1970s and 1980s in the US, to the commercialized experience of pregnancy and the various configurations, policies and legalities addressing globalized genetic and assisted reproductive technologies. Reproductive decision-making is deeply entangled with neoliberalism, welfare reforms, racial and geographic disparities, economic stratification and cultural rationalities to produce inequalities. Studies of reproduction remain central to basic anthropological questions: what it means to be human, what constitutes life, how we live our lives, and how societies value particular lives.

Keywords:

• assisted reproduction
• genetic testing
• infertility
• pregnancy
• reproduction

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrea Whittaker

Andrea Whittaker is an associate professor, ARC future fellow and convenor of Anthropology at School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She works primarily in the fields of reproductive health and biotechnologies with a special interest on Thailand and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.