Abstract

Following the routinization of assisted reproduction in the industrialized world, technologies such as in vitro fertilization, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and DNA-based paternity testing have traveled globally and are now being offered to couples in numerous non-Western countries. This volume explores the application and impact of these advanced reproductive and genetic technologies in societies across the globe. By highlighting both the cross-cultural similarities and diverse meanings that technologies may assume as they enter multiple contexts, the book aims to foster understanding of both the technologies and the settings. Enhanced by cross-cultural perspectives, the book addresses the challenges that globalization presents to local understandings of science, technology, and medicine.

Co-Winner, Most Notable Recent Collection Book Prize for 2012 - Awarded by Council on Anthropology and Reproduction

“Overall, this book provides good and interesting reading for all who want details of the cultural significances, religious and political impacts of ARTs as experienced by people of different ethnicity and religious background. Most importantly, this volume conveys the complexities of introducing and implementing ARTs in different cultures and political settings. It also brings to forth the meaning of reproduction in societies, the price and value of human life.”  ·  Anthropological Notebooks

Marcia C. Inhorn is William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs in the Department of Anthropology and the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. She is also the past-President of the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association. A specialist on infertility and assisted reproductive technologies in the Muslim Middle East, she is the author or editor of nine books on the subject.

Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli is an Associate Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of Haifa, Israel and has published extensively on the policy and practice of reproductive technologies in Israel.