Middle Eastern Gender Identity and New Reproductive Technology

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0217299InhornThis project by an anthropologist from the University of Michigan studies how masculine identity in Arab culture is affected by male infertility. The project studies how new reproductive technologies are used (or not used) in the Middle East, where religiously observant Muslim men are prohibited from accepting donor insemination or legal adoption. The project will study the use of reproductive technologies, including intracytoplasmic sperm injection (a technique which allows severely infertile men to father their own biological children) in an urban and a semi-rural infertility clinic in Egypt, as well as among Middle East men in Detroit, a city with the largest such population in the US. The project will interview in Egypt 100 infertile men, as well as a control sample of 100 fertile men, as well as a smaller sample of infertile men's wives, and medical specialists to understand how moral as well as pragmatic decisions are made when fatherhood, marriage, and a sense of manhood itself may be at stake. Several hypotheses will be tested linking male infertility to culturally relevant factors such as smoking, consanguinity, lead exposure, and also to the sense of masculinity, marital relations, medical treatment-seeking, and morality. The "medical migration" of Middle Eastern men to the US for infertility treatment will be studied through a focus on two Arab-American medical centers. The impact of the Western context on religious morality of Middle Eastern men will be studied through in-depth interviews with men, their wives, and medical specialists. This research will advance our understanding of male identity and masculinity in a Middle Eastern cultural context, and should be of wide interest to those concerned with the nature of Middle Eastern culture and society.