Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the case of private cord blood banking this paper shows how a contested field of self- and healthcare is stabilized in practices that thrive on and foster particular uncertain presents instead of relating to shifting futures.

Paper long abstract:

Family banking of umbilical cord blood (UCB) is dedicated to preparing for future medical eventualities. Parents-to-be pay companies for the long-term storage of the stem-cell rich UCB of their newborn/s. This business model has been criticized as an instance of commercializing speculative promises of regenerative medicine and "the neoliberal appeal of investing a part of the body in the future" (Waldby & Mitchell 2006, 29). What is particularly interesting about it, however, is that this practice is not at all shifting but continuous. After more than three decades of unfulfilled promises, family UCB banks worldwide still attract new clients. Against the background of this puzzling continuity, this paper asks how people facing different futures come to treat bodies as projects of future planning in same, allegedly irrational ways. A possible answer, I argue, lies in the fact that it is not primarily uncertain future perspectives that account for the prevalence of private UCB banking. Rather, it is the situated uncertainties as they come to bear in the present, when people are asked to choose to engage in that practice. First, expecting a child comes with embodied experiences of change, medicalization, and anticipation. Second, appeals to future parents to secure their children's bodily well-being systematically create decision-making choreographies that rule out dissonance. The resulting dynamics foster selective trust in scientific expertise. They stabilize UCB as a field of self- and healthcare by isolating it from any broader changes in medical knowledge or society.