ANTH/WMNS 326 Cross cultural families and households
10 Mar.: The impact of new reproductive technologies
Required readings: Ragoné, Helena (1996) "Chasing the Blood Tie: Surrogate Mothers, Adoptive Mothers and Fathers." American Ethnologist 23(2); 352-365 JSTOR http://www.jstor.org/view/00940496/ap020090/02a00090/0
Inhorn, Marcia (2004) "Middle Eastern Masculinities in the Age of New Reproductive Technologies: Male Infertility and Stigma in Egypt and Lebanon." Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 18(2):162–182. Anthrosource http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/pdfplus/10.1525/maq.2004.18.2.162
How does culture affect whether and what kinds of infertility/fertility medical procedures are used?
Another look at Schneider’s argument that European and Euro-American kinship is based on the symbolic importance of biogenetic ties:
Why do people in different cultures want children?
- what societal or personal purpose is met by having children?
- think about your own experience, that discussed in tonight’s readings and from other class readings (especially Weismantel and Carsten)
- which of these reasons imply the child must be biogenetically related to the "parents"?
- what other reasons are there for some societies’ insistence on biogenetic relatedness?
- are any of these reasons essential such that human survival depends on the existence of biologically related family units?
- are other arrangements for fulfilling the purposes for having children (or recognizing other kin) possible at a societal level?
Ragoné: follows Schneider’s theoretical perspective
- explores cultural understandings of surrogacy by focussing on how surrogates and adoptive parents conceptualize reproduction
- what are the conceptual shifts in conception, reproduction and parenthood that Americans have gone through?
- why is there an industry in new reproductive technologies in Western countries?
- how do traditional and gestational surrogacy work?
- how do surrogates (she mostly discusses traditional surrogates) frame their role and that of the adoptive parents (especially the mother)?
- why is it so important for the surrogate to deny she is doing this for the money?
- how do adoptive parents frame their own role and that of the surrogate?
Inhorn: a slightly different approach, deriving from Goffman
- a focus on social stigma
- why is male infertility stigmatized in Lebanon and Egypt?
- why does this make couples seek treatment but feel shameful about it?
- what are the probable reasons for high levels of male infertility in the Middle East?
- which NRTs are acceptable and which are not to Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims of this region?
- why?
Is it more important to examine cultural conceptions of reproduction (as Ragoné does) or the social stigma others in the society may attach to infertile men/women?
Are there other issues which may be as or more important?