Dissertation Research: "Workin It:" An Ethnography of Transgender Body-Making Technologies in the San Francisco Bay Area

这项科学和社会社会科学科学、工程和技术论文改进赠款将帮助资助人种学数据收集，以支持一项研究，研究在旧金山以移民为主的跨性别女性群体中构建身体生物医学转变的实践、关系和伦理。根据这里的定义，变性女性指的是出生时被赋予男性身份，但通过第三性别类别自我认同为女性，或超出传统的男性/男性和女性/女性的二元性/性别体系的人。对于变性女性来说，为了培育出理想的身体形态，她们通常会使用荷尔蒙疗法、硅胶植入物以及整容和性别矫正手术。在这样做的过程中，他们不仅与医生、心理学家和社会工作者建立了各种关系，还与非人类代理人建立了各种关系，例如药品和医疗技术。NSF学位论文改进基金将用于支持旧金山湾区的多地点人种学，包括变性人女性、她们的医疗保健提供者以及其他社区领导人和政策制定者，他们组成的关系网络使今天的变性人身材实践成为可能。将进行参与者观察活动、访谈和文件收集的实地地点包括两个医疗诊所、一个社区资源中心、变性人妇女聚集的社交空间，以及四个强调与变性人妇女及其医疗保健提供者有关的主题的全国医疗和健康会议。组织这次调查有三个中心目标：(1)日常生活的生物医学实践：从人种学的角度研究变性妇女的日常生物医学实践和经历；指导这些实践的逻辑；以及与变性人身体的生物医学培养相关的意义。(2)跨性别化身的生物社会学：从民族志角度研究跨性别女性、她们的医生和医疗保健提供者、政治领袖和其他利益相关者之间的关系；这些关系所采取的形式；组织其结构的规范；指导成员之间关系的价值观；以及在这些关系中出现的伦理困境和争议点。(3)其他生物创新企业的技术：探索跨性别女性及其医疗保健提供者的实践、关系和道德如何提供在生物医学重塑人类生活已成为知识、实践和政治的主导社会领域的世界中生活、思考和行动所需的知识和技能。将研究活动与三个核心目标协调起来，将使该项目能够经验性地调查变性人身体制造技术在日常实践、社交网络方面的特点，以及这些实践和关系可能更普遍地表明与人类生活的生物医学重塑相关的利害关系。该项目将促进STS、人类学和性别研究，这是对与性别身体的生物医学转变相关的行为者、做法、关系和伦理进行的仅有的基于人种学的调查之一。该项目还将开发一个以经验为基础的理论概念工具包，以促进对社会生活其他领域的进一步探索，在这些领域，身体的生物医学再造成为人类生活的中心实践。此外，这项研究将通过调查各种不同的定位行为者如何面对与改变身体的生物医学技术相关的可能性和伦理困境，来促进对科学、医学和技术在日常生活中的作用的理解。

This Science and Society Social Studies of Science, Engineering, and Technology Dissertation Improvement Grant will help fund ethnographic data collection in support of a study of the practices, relationships, and ethics that structure biomedical transformations of the body among a largely immigrant population of transgender women in San Francisco. As defined here, transgender woman refers to a person who wasassigned the identity of male at birth but who self-identifies as a woman, through a third gender category, or outside the traditional binary sex/gender system of male/man and female/woman. It is common for transgender women to use hormonal therapy, silicone implants, as well as cosmetic and gender corrective surgeries in order to cultivate desired forms of the body. In so doing, they enter into a variety of relationships not only with physicians, psychologists, and social workers but non-human agents as well, such as pharmaceutical products and medical technologies. NSF dissertation improvement funds will be used to support a multi-sited ethnography based in the San Francisco Bay Area with transgender women, their medical and healthcare providers, and other community leaders and policy-makers who combined form the network of relationships that make transgender body-making practices possible today. Fieldsites, where participant-observation activities, interviews, and document collection will be conducted, include two medical clinics, a community resource center, social spaces where transgender women gather, as well as four national medical and health conferences where topics related to transgender women and their healthcare providers are emphasized. Organizing this inquiry are three central aims: (1)The biomedical practices of everyday life: To study ethnographically the everyday biomedical practices and experiences of transgender women; the logics that guide these practices; and the meanings associated with biomedical cultivation of transgender bodies. (2) The biosociality of transgender embodiment: To study ethnographically the relationships between transgender women, their physicians and healthcare providers, political leaders, and other stake holders; the forms that these relationships assume; the norms that organize their structure; the values that guide the members' relationships with one another; and the ethical dilemmas and points of contestation that arise within these relationships. (3) Techniques for other biocreative enterprises:To explore how the practices, relations, and ethics of transgender women and their healthcare providers provide knowledge and skills that are necessary for living, thinking, and acting in a world where the biomedical remaking of human life has become a dominant social field of knowledge, practice, and politics. Coordinating research activities with the three central aims will enable this project to empirically investigate how transgender body-making technologies are characterized in terms of everyday practices, social networks, as well as what these practices and relations may say more generally about the stakes associated with the biomedical remaking of human life. The project will contribute to STS, anthropology and gender studies, one of the only ethnographically based investigations of the actors, practices, relations, and ethics associated with the biomedical transformation of the gendered body. This project will also develop a tool-kit of empirically based theoretical concepts that can advance further inquiry into other areas of social life where the biomedical remaking of body becomes a central practice of human life. In addition this study will advance understandings of the role of science, medicine, and technology in everyday life by investigating how a variety of differentiated positioned actors confront the possibilities and ethical dilemmas associated with body altering biomedical technologies.