Managing Potential in Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Reflections on Gifts, Kinship, and the Process of Vernacularization

Simpson, Bob

Abstract

Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) offer an ever-widening repertoire of possibilities for how bodies, substances, and relationships might be brought together in the accomplishment of reproduction. This article reflects on the tensions that arise around universalizing and secularizing discourses (e.g., bioethics, regulation, and the law) and those of vernacularization whereby these discourses are rendered into local idioms of kinship, body, and exchange. The examples used to illustrate this are drawn from Sri Lanka (Sinhala Buddhist) and the United Kingdom (Pakistani Muslims). In both instances, United Kingdom–inspired guidance on the delivery of services meets with very particular visions of hope and becoming as they figure in ideas of reproductive potential. This encounter introduces areas of mismatch and dislocation that are made evident through ethnographic inquiry and analysis. The article concludes with a discussion of gift and debt relationships in the context of gamete donation, connecting these with wider processes of cultural transformation in complex plural democracies. Those engaged in this negotiation are characterized not just as moral pioneers but as social pioneers locating their own beliefs and practices within the global diffusion of ARTs and their ethical and clinical governance.

Citation

Simpson, B. (2013). Managing Potential in Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Reflections on Gifts, Kinship, and the Process of Vernacularization. Current Anthropology, 54(Supplement 7), S87-S96. https://doi.org/10.1086/670173

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Oct 7, 2013
• Deposit Date: May 10, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 11, 2013
• Journal: Current Anthropology
• Print ISSN: 0011-3204
• Electronic ISSN: 1537-5382
• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 54
• Issue: Supplement 7
• Pages: S87-S96
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/670173
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1454565