Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Cultural Analysis of Assisted Reproduction Practices in Argentina

辅助生殖做法-使人类遗传生殖成为可能的实验室和临床技术-在拉丁美洲日益突出，成为建立“自己的家庭”的可行和首选选择。“值得注意的是，拉丁美洲并不是生殖技术研究和发展迅速的唯一“第三世界”区域。然而，生物技术通常被认为是文化中立的，将科学现代性的标准形式带到它们出现的任何环境中。本论文项目由查佩尔山的北卡罗来纳州大学的文化人类学学生进行，将重点关注布宜诺斯艾利斯的生殖医学专家社区，以研究指导阿根廷接受和生产辅助生殖实践的社会过程和动机。通过参与者观察，半结构化访谈和档案研究的人种学方法，该项目将调查辅助生殖的当地特点：这些程序如何参与和回应有关科学，现代性和宗教，遗传遗传和父母身份的价值观，以及经济和政治压力的特定想法。由于生殖医学是一个快速发展的领域，具有深远的社会和伦理后果，因此了解生殖技术在当地根据社会，政治和经济情况制定的过程非常重要。该项目将有助于文化上的细微差别的分析，将告知学术和政策讨论的伦理，法律的和社会影响的辅助生殖。

Assisted reproduction practices- laboratory and clinical techniques that enable genetic human reproduction- are becoming increasingly prominent in Latin America as viable and preferred options for creating a "family of one's own." Significantly, Latin America is not the only "Third World" region where the research and development of reproductive technologies are proliferating. Yet biotechnologies are often assumed to be culturally neutral, bringing a standard form of scientific modernity to any setting in which they appear. This dissertation project, conducted by a student of cultural anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will focus on the community of reproductive medicine specialists in Buenos Aires so to examine the social processes and motivations guiding the acceptance and production of assisted reproduction practices in Argentina. Through ethnographic methods of participant observation, semi-structured interviews and archival research, this project will investigate the local specificities of assisted reproduction: how do these procedures engage and respond to particular ideas about science, modernity and religion, values of genetic inheritance and parenthood, and economic and political pressures. Because reproductive medicine is a fast-growing field with far-reaching social and ethical consequences, it is important to understand the processes by which reproductive technologies are enacted locally according to social, political, and economic circumstances. This project will contribute a culturally-nuanced analysis that will inform both academic and policy discussions on the ethical, legal and social implications of assisted reproduction.