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

辅助生殖实践——能够实现人类遗传生殖的实验室和临床技术——在拉丁美洲日益突出，成为创建“自己的家庭”的可行和首选的选择。重要的是，拉丁美洲并不是生殖技术研究和发展正在激增的唯一“第三世界”区域。然而，生物技术通常被认为是文化中立的，给它们出现的任何环境带来一种标准形式的科学现代性。该论文项目由北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校文化人类学专业的一名学生进行，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。通过参与观察、半结构化访谈和档案研究等民族志方法，该项目将调查辅助生殖的地方特殊性：这些程序如何参与并回应有关科学、现代性和宗教、基因遗传和亲子关系价值观以及经济和政治压力的特定观念。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影响，因此了解生殖技术在当地根据社会、政治和经济环境制定的过程非常重要。该项目将提供文化上细致入微的分析，为有关辅助生殖的伦理、法律和社会影响的学术和政策讨论提供信息。

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.