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Reinterpreting epistemologies: an exploratory study of the ova donation websites in Delhi

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Abstract

The paper is based on the study of the websites of egg donation centres and ART clinics based in Delhi, India. The treatment of infertility with the help of egg donor-IVF has not only birthed offspring for the infertile but also new social phenomena that challenge the existing paradigms and ontologies of social sciences. The binaries of nature-culture that are crucial in the cognition of social reality need to be reinterpreted in the light of unprecedented changes generated by egg donation. Ova donation is perhaps the only context in which the altruistic and commercial motives co-exist, the former promoting the latter, diluting the opposition between gift and commodity. In analysing these developments, sociological concepts need to be refreshed. The conjunction of biology and technology, third party involvement and the intrusion of market forces bring about denaturalization of childbirth on the one hand, and ‘culturing up’ of nature, on the other. Furthermore, relations of family parenthood and kinship that were conventionally premised on shared biogenetic material have to be reconceptualised at intervention of donor-IVF. Sociological study of donor-IVF calls for reconfiguration of nature-culture and gift-commodity in a symbiotic relationship rather than that marked by diametrical opposition.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Janki Devi Memorial College (University of Delhi), New Delhi, India

    Ruby Bhardwaj

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  1. Ruby Bhardwaj
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Correspondence to Ruby Bhardwaj.

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Bhardwaj, R. Reinterpreting epistemologies: an exploratory study of the ova donation websites in Delhi. Soc Theory Health 19, 331–346 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41285-020-00138-w

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