Productive Paradoxes of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the Context of the New Kinship Studies

Abstract

This article argues that the paradoxical, domain-crossing qualities of the assisted reproductive technologies have made them exceptionally productive in the “new kinship studies” in a number of different ways. First, the assisted reproductive technologies have collapsed the separations—between nature and culture, home and work, love and money, the domestic and the economic—that have been foundational to the conception of “modernity.” Second, they have been used creatively to generate a diverse array of new forms of kinship and kin-making around the globe. Third, their domain-crossing proclivities have made them a model and “platform” for “enterprising up” reproduction in the new bioindustrial complex. Finally, cross-cultural differences in religious, cultural, and national regulations concerning the reproductive technologies have generated complex and shifting global patterns in the commercialization and stratification of reproduction that reflect tensions between the reproductive liberties and opportunities these technologies support and the reproductive injustices they so often entail.