Abstract
This chapter outlines the main ideas and concepts of feminist technoscience, a term that includes an epistemology of the interweaving of science, technology, and cultural processes. Thematically, feminist anthropologists have been at the forefront in studies of the biomedical sciences and emerging biotechnologies. In this chapter, assisted reproductive technologies represent an exemplary case of the intertwining of gender and technoscience, in the sense of resting on a basic gender difference in reproduction while at the same time challenging this very fact. This is followed by a study of medical imaging, whereby human cells reappear as autonomous, material entities. This transformation serves as one precondition for making gametes commodities for research laboratories and a global fertility industry, reproducing them as private property that one can freeze for later use or donate to a global market. The thread running through these sections is the scrutiny of the basic cultural distinction of nature and culture. Feminist anthropology of the biosciences has studied the implosion of nature and culture, uncovering the basic ideas that keep them apart, and revealing ways in which we are living in and with new naturecultures.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Historian of technology, David Noble, presented technology as ‘frozen fragments of human and social endeavour’ in Noble 1986, Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation. New York: Oxford University Press.
- 2.
- 3.
The reference is to the editorial of a special issue of the journal Catalyst. Since 2014 the field of feminist technoscience has an academic journal: Catalyst. Feminism, Theory, Technoscience.
- 4.
Of her many books, for example, the edited volume, with Helen Longino, Feminism and Science (Keller and Longino 1996).
- 5.
See also Anna Tsing et al. (2017). Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet.
- 6.
Cyborg is a short term for cybernetic and organism, launched in 1960.
- 7.
Barad’s radical ontoepistemology, based in examples from physics, has been embraced as well as criticised by feminist scholars. For critique, see, for example, a summing up in Braunmühl (2018).
- 8.
The point of departure is the ‘virgin birth debate’ following Malinowski’s claim that Australian aborigines as well as Trobriand Islanders were ignorant of biological paternity. This laid the ground for a dual model of kinship with, on the one hand, kinship as social organisation and, on the other, kinship as biological facts, with the two not necessarily overlapping.
- 9.
A different anthropological approach is Teman’s (2010) study from Israel of the bodily and relational experience of being a surrogate.
- 10.
https://aihasegawa.info/i-wanna-deliver-a-dolphin. Accessed 20 September 2020.
References
Akrich, M. (1992). The de-scription of technical objects. In W. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping technology/building society: Studies in sociotechnical change (pp. 205–244). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Almeling, R. (2011). Sex cells: The medical market for eggs and sperm. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
Barth, F. (1978). Scale and social organization. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press
Benjamin, R. (2016). Catching our breath: Critical race STS and the carceral imagination. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 2, 145–156.
Berg, A-J., & Lie, M. (1995). Feminism and constructivism: Do artifacts have gender? Science, Technology & Human Values, 20(3), 332–351.
Braunmühl, C. (2018). Beyond hierarchical oppositions: A feminist critique of Karen Barad’s agential realism. Feminist Theory, 19(2), 223–240.
Carsten, J. (2004). After kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
da Costa, B., & Kavita, P. (2008). Tactical biopolitics: Art, activism, and technoscience. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Cowan, R. S. (1983). More work for mother: The ironies of household technology from the open hearth to the microwave. London: Free Association Books.
Deleuze, G. (1993). Rhizome versus trees. In C. V. Boundas (Ed.), The Deleuze reader (pp. 27–36). New York: Columbia University Press.
Deomampo, D. (2019) Racialized commodities: Race and value in human egg donation. Medical Anthropology, 38(7), 620–633.
Downey, G. L., & Dumit, J. (1997). Cyborgs and citadels. Anthropological interventions in emerging sciences and technologies. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Duden, B. (1993). Disembodying women. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
Dumit, J. (2004). Picturing personhood: Brain scans and biomedical identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Franklin, S. (1997). Embodied progress. A cultural account of assisted conception. London and New York: Routledge.
Franklin, S. (2013). Biological relatives. IVF, stem cells, and the future of kinship. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Franklin, S., & Lock, M. (2003). Remaking life and death. Toward an anthropology of the biosciences. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.
Franklin, S., Lury, C., & Stacey, J. (2000). Global nature, global culture. London: Sage.
Ginsburg, F. D., & Rapp, R. (Eds.) (1995). Conceiving the new world order. The global politics of reproduction. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Golombok, S. (2018). Research on assisted reproduction families: A historical perspective. In G. Kovacs, P. Brinsden & A. DeCherney (Eds.), In vitro fertilization and assisted reproduction: A history (pp. 240–247). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haraway, D. (1991 [1985]). A cyborg manifesto. In Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature (pp. 149–182). London: Free Association Books.
Haraway, D. (1994). A game of cat’s cradle: Science studies, feminist theory, cultural studies. Configurations, 2(1), 59–71.
Haraway, D. (1997). Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. Feminism and technoscience. New York and London: Routledge.
Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble. Making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Harding, S. (1986). The science question in feminism. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Inhorn, M. C. (2003). Local babies, global science: Gender, religion, and In Vitro fertilization in Egypt. New York and London: Routledge.
Inhorn, M. (2012) Islam and assisted reproductive technologies: Sunni and Shia perspectives. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
Jones, C. A., & Galison, P. (1998). Picturing science. Producing art. New York and London: Routledge.
Keller, E. F. (1983). A feeling for the organism. The life and work of Barbara McClintock. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.
Keller, E. F., & Longino, H. (Eds.) (1996). Feminism and science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kelly, J. (2008). Magnetic appeal: MRI and the myth of transparency. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Kemp, M. (2006). Seen/unseen: Art, science and intuition from Leonardo to the Hubble telescope. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Larsen, T. (2010). Acts of entification. The emergence of thinghood in social life. In N. Rapport (Ed.), Human nature as capacity. Transcending discourse and classification (pp. 154–178). New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
Latour, B. (1987) Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Lie, M. (2010). Tingenes kjønn. En utstilling av gjenstander og teknologi (The gender of things. An exhibition of objects and technologies). In A. B. Amundsen & B. Rogan (Eds.), Samling og museum. Kapitler av museenes historie, praksis og ideologi (pp. 151–166). Oslo: Novus.
Lie, M. (2015). Reproduction inside/outside. Medical imaging and the domestication of assisted reproductive technologies. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 22(1), 53–69.
Lie, M., & Lykke, N. (2017). Assisted reproduction across borders. Feminist perspectives on normalizations, disruptions and transmissions. London and New York: Routledge.
Lie, M., & Sørensen, K. H. (Eds.) (1996). Making technology our own? Domesticating technology into everyday life. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.
Lock, M. (2013). The epigenome and nature/nurture reunification: A challenge for anthropology. Medical Anthropology, 32(4), 291–308.
Lock, M., & Nguyen, V-K. (2010). An anthropology of biomedicine. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Majumdar, A. (2017). Transnational commercial surrogacy and the (un)making of kin in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Martin, E. (1987). The woman in the body. A cultural analysis of reproduction. Boston: Beacon Press.
Martin, E. (1991). The egg and the sperm. How science has constructed a romance based on stereotypical male-female roles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 16(3), 485–501.
Martin, E. (1994). Flexible bodies: Tracking immunity in American culture from the days of polio to the age of AIDS. Boston: Beacon Press.
Martin, E. (1998). Anthropology and the cultural study of science. Science, Technology & Human Values, 23(1), 24–44.
Melhuus, M. (2012). Problems of conception. Issues of law, biotechnology, individuals and kinship. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
Myers, N. (2015). Rendering life molecular: Models, modelers, and excitable matter. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Myers, W. (2015). Bio art. Altered realities. New York: Thames & Hudson.
Nilsson, L., & Hamberger, L. (1990 [1965]). A child is born (4th edition). London: Faber & Faber.
Oudshoorn, N., & Pinch, T. (2003). How users matter. The co-construction of users and technology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Oudshoorn, N., Sætnan, A. R., & Lie, M. (2002). On gender and things. Reflections on an exhibition of gendered artifacts. Womens’ Studies International Forum, 25(4), 471–483.
Pande, A. (2010). Commercial surrogacy in India: Manufacturing a perfect mother-worker. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 35(4), 969–992.
Reardon, J., & TallBear, K. (2012). “Your DNA is our history”. Genomics, anthropology, and the construction of whiteness as property. Current Anthropology, 53(Supplement 5), 233–245.
Scheper-Hughes, N., & Wacquant, L.J.D. (Eds.) (2002). Commodifying bodies. London: Sage.
Schneider, D. (1968). American kinship. A cultural account. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Smietana, M. (2017). “Families like we’d always known”? Spanish gay fathers’ normalization narratives in transnational surrogacy. In M. Lie & N. Lykke (Eds.), Assisted reproduction across borders. Feminist perspectives on normalizations, disruptions and transmissions (pp. 49–60). London and New York: Routledge.
Spilker, K., & Lie, M. (2007). Gender and bioethics intertwined—Egg donation within the context of equal opportunities. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 14(4), 327–340.
Strathern, M. (1992a). Reproducing the future: Essays on anthropology, kinship and the new reproductive technologies. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Strathern, M. (1992b). After nature: English kinship in the late twentieth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Subramaniam, B., & Wiley, A. (2017). Introduction: Feminism’s sciences. Catalyst. Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 3(1), 1–23.
Teman, E. (2010). Birthing a mother. The surrogate body and the pregnant self. University of California Press.
Thompson, C. (2005). Making parents: The ontological choreography of reproductive technologies. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Traweek, S. (1988). Beamtimes and lifetimes. The world of high energy physicists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tsing, A. L., Swanson, H. A., Gan, E., & Bubandt, N. (Eds.) (2017). Arts of living on a damaged planet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Vora, K. (2013). Potential, risk, and return in transnational Indian gestational surrogacy. Current Anthropology, 54(S7), 97–106.
Vora, K., & Iyengar, M. M. (2017). Citizen, subject, property: Indian surrogacy and the global fertility market. In M. Lie & N. Lykke (Eds.), Assisted reproduction across borders. Feminist perspectives on normalizations, disruptions and transmissions (pp. 25–36). London and New York: Routledge.
Winner, L. (1985). Do artifacts have politics? In D. MacKenzie & J. Wajcman (Eds.), The social shaping of technology (pp. 26–38). Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Yanagisako, S., & Delaney, C. (1995). Naturalizing power: Essays in feminist cultural analysis. New York: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lie, M. (2022). Feminist Technoscience and New Imaginaries of Human Reproduction. In: Bruun, M.H., et al. The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7084-8_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7084-8_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-16-7083-1
Online ISBN: 978-981-16-7084-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)