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- Convenors:
-
Lisa Wynn
(Macquarie University)
Andrea Whittaker (Monash University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 1 December, -
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Short Abstract:
This panel investigates how biomedical advances in biomedicine such as genomic science, new reproductive technologies, vitrification and the microbiome challenge and rupture assumptions of personhood and the individual, family and kin, the status of a foetus, biology and gender.
Long Abstract:
As rich scholarship from ethnographic and science and technology studies scholars attest, advances in biological science and biomedicine such as genomic science, new reproductive technologies, vitrification and the microbiome challenge and rupture assumptions of personhood and the individual, family and kin, the status of a foetus, biology and gender. Biological understandings of the body as an assemblage of ecologies or ‘holobiont’ challenge our theories of the individual body, embodiment, or ‘nature’. New technologies such as the ‘bio-bag’ designed for use by pre-term babies raise questions about the legal and social status of a foetus, gestation and birth. Uterine transplants, gametogenesis and bio-engineered wombs likewise potentially afford men or transwomen the possibility of gestating and birthing children, finally de-linking and disrupting biology and gender. In this panel these fundamental socio-technical transformations form the basis of dialogue.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 1 December, 2021, -Andrea Whittaker (Monash University) Anna Molas (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Paper short abstract:
Reproductive futurism permeates clinicians' visions of the future of assisted reproduction in a study on private fertility clinics in Spain and a study on uterus transplants. Current practices with third-party participants are posited as obsolete and waiting for technoscientific innovations.
Paper long abstract:
A range of procedures in assisted reproduction currently rely upon third-party assistors such as gamete donors and surrogates to enable successful reproduction or gestation. In this paper we consider the reproductive futurism in interviews, media statements and writings by IVF professionals gathered as part of two studies: one an ethnographic study on private fertility clinics in Spain; another on Uterus transplants. Clinicians describe their hopes for a future where third-party participants are removed from the scheme of assisted conception. In Spain clinicians express that having to deal with third party assistors is a tiresome burden that, according to them, will soon come to an end thanks to technoscientific innovations. The improvements of the vitrification techniques leading to the routinization of social egg freezing, the development of the artificial wombs, and specially, the advances in techniques to derive gametes from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), are usually pictured as much desired and awaited techniques that will change Spanish fertility clinics for the best. Within the scientific literature work on uterus transplantation is undertaken with a vision of the bio-engineered womb, again removing the problematic surrogate, or even uterus donor from gestation. Through the lens of Marina Garcés’ concept of ‘the posthumous condition’ (2017), we contend that the perceived liminality of the use of third-party participants, that is, the idea that these practices are an obsolete “botched job” only waiting for technoscientific innovations, prevents important debates on the current problems related to them to take place.
Srishti Hukku (University of Ottawa, Macquarie University) Angel M. Foster (University of Ottawa) Lisa Wynn (Macquarie University)
Paper short abstract:
Artificial womb technology (AWT) makes durable the perspectives of Australian participants on reproductive rights and the accessibility of emerging technologies. Simultaneously, AWT radically challenges implicit hierarchies of deservedness with respect to bionormativity, kinship and parenting worth.
Paper long abstract:
Recent advancements in artificial womb technology (AWT) suggest that human clinical trials may be possible within the next decade. The previous introduction of other new reproductive health technologies suggest that implicit cultural biases underpin legislation, regulation and subsidization (Wynn and Foster, 2017). Further, Colen (1995) defined “stratified reproduction” to demonstrate that only some categories of people are empowered to reproduce. As such, our multi-methods study (conducted entirely online during COVID-19 pandemic) aimed to explore Australian perspectives on AWT. From November 2020 to March 2021, we conducted a community-based survey with 183 Australian citizens and 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews with a subset of survey respondents. Our study finds that implicit ideologies about who deserves to reproduce and who deserves state assistance in order to reproduce underpin attitudes towards AWT. Participants were strongly in favour of using AWT in instances of physical infertility and premature childbirth. In contrast, participants expressed reticence at AWT being used in instances of social infertility, for cosmetic reasons or in instances that deviated from bionormative models of family. Our findings suggest that even with the advent of technologies that can disrupt existing models of kinship and increase accessibility of reproduction to non-traditional actors, participants have a tendency to perpetuate stratified models of reproduction. Making these biases explicit and analysing the assumptions about kinship, sexuality and reproduction that underpin them is the first step toward informing new policy, legislation, funding models, and activism to ensure both patient-centered care and that AWT does not simply reinforce existing social hierarchies.
Laura Burke (University of Sussex)
Paper short abstract:
In the aftermath of conflict and independence, reproduction in Timor-Leste is shaped by both technoscientific logic of population and prosperity, and customary ways of replenishing kin. This paper considers how reproduction is transformed by socio-technical relationships in the absence of ART/NRTs.
Paper long abstract:
Reproduction in Timor-Leste is disrupted and transformed by both technoscientific logic and local ways of kin-making. Approximately a third of Timor-Leste’s total population died as a result of the Indonesian occupation (1975-99). 20 years after independence, in the central mountain town of Maubisse, families are remaking kinship groups by rebuilding ancestral houses, having children, and replacing lives lost during the conflict. Limited access to biomedical health care enables some lives to be saved, but customary practices of kin-making replenish the ‘empty land’ with a lively form of prosperity. Simultaneously in Timor-Leste’s post-conflict development landscape, demographics calculate are used to forecast the future economy. This often includes recommendations to lower fertility rates for better health outcomes and national prosperity. This technoscientific practice ties reproduction to economic outcomes (Murphy 2017), which clashes and converges with local ways of counting, calculating and remaking kin. How is reproduction shaped by both local calculations about balancing people and nature, as well as demographic technoscience and global health tools? Whilst a large body of scholarly work on reproduction focuses on ARTs/NRTs and the possibilities they hold for transforming reproduction via biomedical innovations and technology, there are huge inequalities in who has access to them. How are reproductive futures reconstructed in spaces where such technologies aren’t easily accessible? What other socio-technical relationships are being formed? This paper considers the strategies and mechanisms people use to make future kin in the absence of ARTs/NRTs and challenges what we consider to be transformative of reproduction.
Jenny Munro (University of Queensland) Els Tieneke Rieke Katmo (University of Papua) Meki Wetipo (Honai Center)
Paper short abstract:
The absence of new reproductive technologies in West Papua raises questions about what counts as ART and what if anything is being disrupted. This paper looks to ‘old’ sociotechnical interventions that mediate Papuan experiences but fail to transform the racialized hierarchies of reproduction.
Paper long abstract:
In West Papua, medical technologies that could facilitate life, birth, and reproduction are largely absent. Fertility treatments are nonexistent, and technologies, laws, and mobilities are generally not providing new opportunities and options for reproduction. Ethnographic research and interviews with Papuan parents about hospital births shows that ‘old’ technologies like ultrasounds and c-sections are all that is on offer in this context. These sociotechnical interventions are centred in contentious hierarchies and advance racialized inequalities. Looking at the absence of new reproductive technologies, and what, therefore, counts as ART, can reinvigorate questions about the transformative potential of biomedicine and what if anything is being disrupted. In West Papua it is not specialists nor high tech skills and equipment that are required to advance reproduction – it is conditions that permit dignity and respect. Staying at home to birth, avoiding a big baby, arriving late in labour, or seeking a remote village birth are some of the transformations Papuans take up in the face of reproductive abandonment.