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Valued Matter: Anthropological Insights on the (Bio)Political Economy of Organ Exchange

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Bioethics Beyond Altruism

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Abstract

The concept of value provides a critical way of thinking about the costs and benefits associated with medical technologies, and to whom, when and under what conditions these costs and benefits are apportioned. This chapter explicates the concept of value as an anthropological concern to focus attention on the exchange of organs between living-related kidney donors in Mexico and their kin recipients. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the strategies uninsured patients use to access organ transplantation , I examine the ways in which living-related organ donation is situated within and reflective of a political economy. Though the Mexican case can be distinguished by its specificity in many ways, there are broader lessons to be learned for thinking about the changing character of organ exchange elsewhere.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Health and Policy, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, England

    Ciara Kierans

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  1. Ciara Kierans
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Correspondence to Ciara Kierans .

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  1. Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Rhonda M Shaw

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Kierans, C. (2017). Valued Matter: Anthropological Insights on the (Bio)Political Economy of Organ Exchange. In: Shaw, R. (eds) Bioethics Beyond Altruism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55532-4_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55532-4_11

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-55531-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-55532-4

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