Paper short abstract:

In the context of an ethnography of Reproductive Technologies in Barcelona I’ll analyse the difference between what is said and represented and what is done and is unrepresented. This distinction applies to see differences between the dogmatic discourse of religion and what is done by a community of believers or non-believers in relation to what it can be done or not in relation to the manipulation of human life. How are assembled norms and facts of nature in the context of moralities of kinship and religion?

Paper long abstract:

Nature has had a changing meaning though history and across cultures. A minimal definition of nature is what is exterior to human conscience - from human nature itself to physical nature. From this perspective nature has been a good tool to assemble different moralities to a minimum of basic norms. Nature had a basic rationality to be described by scientific laws or to be applied to human behaviour through norms. However, this perspective on nature is pre-Darwinian. Nature nowadays is not rational and it stops being an order. Is bio-ethics a good tool to assemble biology and ethics? How can be assembled norms and facts of nature? Is kinship a tool to assemble facts of "nature" with facts of "culture"? How are religious moralities assembled with artefacts of nature? In this paper I'll examine how moralities of kinship and moralities of religion are related or opposed in the context of reproductive technologies. In the context of an ethnography of Reproductive Technologies in Barcelona I'll analyse the difference between what is said and represented and what is done and is unrepresented. This distinction applies to see differences between the dogmatic discourse of religion and what is done by a community of believers or non-believers in relation to what it can be done or not in relation to the manipulation of human life. How are assembled norms and facts of nature in the context of moralities of kinship and religion?