Doctoral Dissertation Research: Intimate Sharing: The Enduring Connections of Living Organ Donation in the Contemporary United States

IntroductionThis研究项目是一个民族志研究活器官转移作为一个强有力的网站，美国人与基本的欧洲-美国自由主义假设的身体和人的挑战。它带来了高度关注物质性和物体本体论地位转变的科学和技术研究的视角。由于对器官本身不感兴趣，这项研究强调分享不仅是关注器官和组织在移动和再生时的价值，而且是关注它们的物质性如何通过知识，实践和关系的特定配置来制定和限制。因此，实地工作由两个相互关联的目标驱动。第一个是探索何时以及如何通过分享的分析来理解活体器官转移，同样关注没有表达分享的情况，即当“我的”和“你的”被强调并被理解为相互排斥时。第二个是探索如何使移植器官和移植修饰的身体成为物质和代理人的方式，特别是塑造和被塑造对器官所有权的态度。潜在的更广泛的影响借鉴活体器官捐赠者和接受者之间的持久连接的经验，研究建议振兴共享作为一个分析概念。对这种长期被忽视的占有模式进行详细阐述，可以丰富我们对财产、交换和关系的讨论方式，因为它提供了一个强调联系的术语，而不是假设这种联系必然建立在同一性、平等或快乐的基础上。对分享的关注也有助于活体器官捐赠者、接受者和其他相关方有效地表达与目前主导移植言论的“备件”和“生命礼物”模型相矛盾的经验。

IntroductionThis research project is an ethnographic study of living organ transfer as a potent site where Americans grapple with challenges to fundamental Euro-American liberal assumptions about bodies and persons. It brings perspectives from studies of science and technology that are highly attentive to materiality and the shifting ontological status of objects.Intellectual MeritIn contrast to previous studies? disinterest in organs themselves, this research emphasizes sharing as a way to attend not only to the value of organs and tissues as they move and regenerate, but also to how their very materiality is enacted and circumscribed through particular configurations of knowledge, practices, and relationships. The fieldwork is thus driven by two interrelated objectives. The first is to explore when and how living organ transfer is understood through the analytic of sharing, staying equally attentive to situations in which sharing is not expressed, namely when "mine" and "yours" are emphasized and understood as being mutually exclusive. The second is to explore the ways in which transplanted organs and transplant-modified bodies are rendered material and agentive in particular ways that shape and are shaped by attitudes toward organ ownership.Potential Broader ImpactsDrawing on the experiences of enduring connectivity between living organ donors and recipients, the research proposes to revitalize sharing as an analytical concept. Elaborating this long ignored mode of possession promises to enrich ways of talking about property, exchange, and relationships by providing a term that emphasizes connection without assuming this connection to be necessarily founded in sameness, equality, or joy. The focus on sharing also stands to help living organ donors, recipients, and other interested parties give valid expression to experiences that contradict the "spare parts" and "gift of life" models that currently dominate transplant rhetoric.