Short Abstract:

The panel examines the entangling of social and biological reproduction in medical research, practice, and policy, broadly conceived. We invite anthropological works which consider these relations today, especially via the social reproduction of kinship, parenthood, or technologies of relatedness.

Long Abstract:

Biological and social reproduction are deeply entangled (Rapp and Ginsburg 1991) and reproduction is always a concept on the move. ‘Social reproduction’ has been taken up widely in feminist research as both the undervalued labour that sustains human life and the labour that reproduces social systems and relations. What reproduction and kinship are biologically is co-reproduced with their legal, economic, and cultural meanings. As assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) become, though unevenly, more ordinary (Franklin 2013), entwined concepts of social and biological reproduction continue to travel.

In their close attention to human experiences and relations, anthropological approaches, such as bioethnography (Roberts and Sanz 2017), are well-suited to trace these travels today. Population studies such as birth cohorts are invested in the business of biological reproduction alongside the social reproduction of participation that keeps studies alive. The proliferation of ARTs like in vitro gametogenesis will necessitate socially reproduced changes to concepts of relatedness. Reproductive justice is implicated in the above and other examples—how do these social reproductions deny or grant access to personhood or care, especially for those who are marginalized? Can kinship be post-genomic in these contexts, or only elsewhere?

We invite works using ethnographic methods to discuss biological and social reproduction with reference to biomedical discourses and/or institutions, health policies, population research, and/or the worlds of science and medicine, broadly defined. Papers could e.g. focus on:

Studies of conception/birth, maternal/infant health, families, and/or parenting

Genetic or epigenetic research and/or policies

Reproductive health research and/or policies

ARTs

Medicalized fertility and/or infertility

Propose paper