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- Convenors:
-
Léa Linconstant
(Aix-Marseille Université)
Anaïs Martin (Chaire de recherche du Canada sur la procréation pour autrui et les liens familiaux, Université du Québec en Outaouais)
Anne-Sophie Giraud (CNRS, LISST-Centre of Social Anthropology)
Hélène Malmanche (EHESS, Paris)
Manon Vialle (Aix-Marseille University)
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- Formats:
- Panels
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 22 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel will question personhood from the margins of kinship. Marginal situations are a particularly rich observatory for understanding the societal dynamics at work in the construction of personhood.
Long Abstract:
In social anthropology, margins have always been the subject of particular attention, in relation to life cycles, rites and kinship practices that punctuate it (transition to adulthood, childbirth, death, etc.). They are privileged places to question personhood in different societies because that is where the constitution or dissolution of persons, their relationships and bodies can be observed (Kaufman, Morgan, 2005). Practices surrounding death and birth, imaginaries related to procreation and childbirth or representations of transmission and similarity are all ways of understanding how a society conceives the constitution and construction of personhood.
Thus, this panel will question personhood from the margins of kinship (Mauss, 1938 ; Porqueres, 2014). Marginal situations constitute a particularly rich observatory for understanding the societal dynamics at work in the construction of personhood. Some situations, such as biotechnologies and new kinship situations induced by these innovations, nevertheless require to rethink the very definition of margin and liminality. Consequently, this panel will also be an opportunity to revisit the notion of margin and its use in the light of contemporary contexts.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 22 July, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
Some of the rare inborn metabolic disorders entail a risk of decompensation leading to death or brain damage. An analysis of parenting and care of children with those conditions renders visible an ontological notion of child's chronical instability.
Paper long abstract:
With the introduction of a novel technique of tandem mass spectrometry to many countries' newborn screening programs, children with a group of rare errors of metabolism (fatty acid oxidation disorders and organic acidemias) can be diagnosed early, often before symptoms appear. Nonetheless those conditions remain incurable and carry the risk of metabolic decompensation leading to death or brain damage.
The care of those conditions consists mostly of relatively well defined dietary regimen. Its main problem is the enactment of a specific notion of vulnerability of the child's condition by medical personel and families. The parents and doctors need to treat as severely sick children that otherwise do not differ from their healthy peers (common infections, teething, etc. require hospitalization).
The paper examines the ways doctors and parents enact that vulnerability in differentiated socio-cultural and healthcare contexts of Poland and Sweden, from instalment of specific diagnostic techniques to assess a child's state of health (glucose level, creatine kinase measurements, arterial blood gas test) to various metaphorical elaborations of child's status (parents living with a "bomb in backpack" or children a transformative superhero - Hulk - inside their bodies, ready to blow/transform at any moment).
Although a notion of vulnerability seems to be a constant component of notions of childhood (Sheper-Hughes 1992, Christensen 2000), the paper raises the question of whether an ontological notion of "chronical instability" (Vilaça 2005) could prove useful for a description of the "version" of bodiliness and personhood that biomedical screening for rare metabolic diseases makes possible.
Paper short abstract:
Situated at the margins of consciousness, patients perceived as unresponsive are in a liminal state, where their personhood is constructed in entanglements of medical technologies, fragments of life history, and through glimpses of contact as assessed by health care professionals and relatives.
Paper long abstract:
The intensive care medical environments of patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and minimally consciousness states (MCS) demarcates a liminal space. Simultaneously it is ensuring and stabilizing the lives of patients with ambiguous states of consciousness and facilitating the assessment of consciousness and its potential progression in such patients.
Based on an extensive anthropological fieldwork in a highly specialized intensive care unit, providing early neuro-rehabilitation treatment, we have followed health care professionals' (HCP) interactions with patients with severe brain injury in ambiguous states of consciousness. Their assessments of patients blend clinical observations, cognitive scores, biomedical test results and responses to medical treatments and continuous technological monitoring of patient vital signs, as well as more subtle sensory valuations. Further, it engages relatives' and HCP's experiences of relevant response or sense of (not) being in contact with the person. Added to this, fragments of life and family history provide context for weighing the potential of a progression of consciousness and rehabilitation, constituting what is understood as the personhood of the patient.
The search for consciousness can result in an experience of response, like a requested movement of an arm. The interpretation of these moments, sometimes named as 'islands of consciousness', draw on all the above mentioned cues for assessment forming particular understandings of 'who' this patient is. Signs of consciousness are in this way both shaped by and shaping the construction of personhood in such patients. This raises discussions of the constitution of personhood as a social practise relating consciousness with intention.
Paper short abstract:
As origins have emerged as a central notion in the definition of personal identity in contemporary Euro-American societies, the use of genetic genealogy websites by donor conceived adults in order to identify donors and donors siblings questions the link between kinship and personhood.
Paper long abstract:
A few months after doing a DNA test, Amy, who was conceived thanks to an anonymous sperm donation in the 1990s in the United Kingdom (UK), was matched with a "half-sibling" on a genetic genealogy website. She expresses how strange she feels about being related to a stranger: "I find it quite hard to understand in the sense of I think it's really strange how you're half of the person genetically".
Origins have emerged as a central notion in the definition of personal identity in contemporary Euro-American societies. In new kinship forms such as donor conception, where procreation and kinship do not overlap, the connection to donors and donor siblings questions the link between kinship and personhood. What does it mean to be genetically related to a donor and/or a donor sibling? What impact does the knowledge of such connections have on the way donor offspring define themselves? This paper will explore how origins in donor conception question personhood and the notion of identity from the point of view of donor offspring. I will focus more specifically on searches for origins through DNA testing and genetic genealogy websites.
The paper relies on a social anthropology qualitative study conducted between October 2017 and December 2019 through in-depths interviews with 52 sperm donor conceived adults in the UK (27) and in France (25). Among them, 30 have searched for origins through DNA testing and 20 have found the donor, a member of his family, and/or a donor sibling.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines establishes the messaging and rhetorical strategies used in establishing fetal personhood by supporters of "heartbeat" bans in state legislative debates in the Southern U.S., a process which marginalizes already vulnerable groups and co-opts the language of inclusivity.
Paper long abstract:
Introduction: Fetal 'heartbeat' bans strive to end abortions after detection of possible cardiac activity. In legislative debates of 'heartbeat' bans supporters stressed protection of fetal life. Although debates impact public discourse on abortion and considerations of personhood in US state law, they remain an understudied form of data. The purpose of this study is to elucidate the arguments and evidence used to establish fetal personhood in legislative debate and testimony of supporters of "heartbeat" bills within the southern United States.
Methods: Publicly available video archives of testimonies and debates from 2018-2020 from seven state legislatures in the South were transcribed verbatim and coded in MAXQDA 18. We conducted a narrative analysis, grouping excerpts by themes. "Thick descriptions", a memo creation technique, was used to analyze arguments, messaging, rhetorical strategies, and evidence to provide comparison between states.
Results: Supporters' preliminary themes across states included: the detection of "heartbeat" as demonstrating personhood; argument for a new class of persons -- fetuses in utero -- entitled to legal protection; and calls to expand state protections for fetuses. The misrepresentation of medical science, the appropriation of progressive legal successes were the tactics of choice. Messaging primarily served to further marginalize already vulnerable groups, drawing on historical legal successes of enslaved Africans, and contemporary victories for LGBTQ persons.
Conclusions: This first of its kind study focuses on legislative testimonies and debate as tools in shaping public discourse on abortion and provides insights towards fetal personhood arguments and their role in marginalization of vulnerable populations.
Paper short abstract:
Fertility preservation as part of cancer treatment is a practice struggling to spread in France. The aim will be to analyse the plurality of medical discourses and practices around this situation, their receptions and their impacts on post-cancer experiences.
Paper long abstract:
Based on qualitative research by interviewing French men and women who had cancer when they were "adolescents or young adults" (13-30 years old), I studied the effects of cancer and/or its treatments, in particular on fertility. I questioned the experiences of its preservation - natural or via gamete cryoconservation - after cancer. The purpose of this communication will be to question the representations of post-cancer kinship as a social event considered as "necessary" or "anecdotal" in the quest for "self-reconstruction" expected by relatives, doctors, as well as people directly concerned. These elements will be questioned at the intersection of age and gender issues. What are the specificities in the medical discourses and representations of the fact that they are "young" men or women without children?
We will see that the question of post-cancer kinship access is apprehended and experienced in a plural way. Some respondents deplore the lack of consideration from oncologists of the importance of this possibility and the role it plays in distancing the disease experience. Others, do not link the "experience of kinship" and the "healing process", find it difficult to live with the medical and widely social injunction to this "necessary self-reconstruction". We will see that all social norms are questioned by these post-cancer experiences, reconfiguring the thresholds and categories of "illness" and "normality".
Paper short abstract:
Transformation of understanding personhood in traditional societies, especially among female part, reflects a shifted paradigm of the image of womanhood and relationships between generations as a consequence of media influence, migration and basic education.
Paper long abstract:
Transformation of understanding personhood in traditional societies, especially among the female part, reflects a shifted paradigm of the image of womanhood and relationships between generations as a consequence of media influence, migration, and basic education. The definition of "child" in Avatime language still remains as "that one, who knows, what is good for the community". The word is used but the sense is not widely relevant in Avatime society anymore. Youth is focused on the images, which are transmitted via media and school books or brought from the vividly changing capital. Mothers frequently leave homeplaces in order to find work in the cities, when grandmothers take care of the children (Brydon, 2008). During our fieldwork in Ghana, we managed to observe how the margins of personhood were formed in children from early childhood as "collective values holders" but contemporaneous context adds its smell of attractive individualism - youth are trying to be "in pursue of own vocation" instead of following the traditional way.