The Assisted Reproduction of Race

Russell, Camisha

doi:10.2307/j.ctv9hvrrv

Cited by 21 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…Race and religion, I maintain, function as mutually reinforcing technologies within the selective practices of some 'embryo adoption' participants. This argument contributes to a growing body of scholarship on assisted reproduction that conceptualizes race as a technology (Cromer, 2019a;Deomampo, 2016Deomampo, , 2019Moll, 2019;Russell, 2018). It also encourages greater consideration of religious ideologies and convictions as SRT.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…In developing this argument, I encourage greater attention to religion within scholarship on race and reproductive technologies in order to deepen analyses of what legal scholar Dorothy Roberts (1997) describes as the inextricable ties between reproductive and racial politics in the USA. In so doing, I contribute to a growing literature on race, racialization and racism in studies of Christianity (Schneider and Bjork-James, 2020), reproduction (Bridges, 2011; Davis, 2019;Roberts, 1997;Valdez and Deomampo, 2019;Weinbaum, 2004Weinbaum, , 2019 and assisted reproduction (Deomampo, 2016(Deomampo, , 2019Fox, 2009;Moll, 2019;Quiroga, 2007;Russell, 2018;Thompson, 2009). This research also contributes a new array of techniques, sites, people and policies for considering how selective reproduction operates within the underexamined practice of embryo donation for procreation (Wahlberg and Gammeltoft, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘Our family picture is a little hint of heaven’: race, religion and selective reproduction in US ‘embryo adoption’

Cromer¹

2020

Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online

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People use selective reproductive technologies (SRT) in various family-making practices to assist with decisions about which children should be born. The practice of 'embryo adoption', a form of embryo donation developed by white American evangelical Christians in the late 1990s, is a novel site for reconceptualizing SRT and examining how they function among users. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2008 and 2018 on US 'embryo adoption', this study provides an anthropological analysis of media produced by and about one white evangelical couple's race-specific preferences for embryos from donors of colour. This article shows how racializing processes and religious beliefs function as mutually reinforcing SRT for some 'embryo adoption' participants. Evangelical convictions justify racialized preferences, and racializing processes within and beyond the church reinforce religious acts. Race-specific preferences for embryos among white evangelicals promote selective decision-making not for particular kinds of children, a current focus in studies of SRT, but for particular kinds of families. This study expands the framework of SRT to include selection for wanted family forms and technologies beyond biomedical techniques, such as social technologies like racial constructs and religious convictions. Broadly, this article encourages greater attention to religion within analyses about race and reproduction by revealing how they are deeply entwined with Christianity, especially in the USA. Wherever constructions of race and religious convictions co-exist with selective reproductive decision-making, scholars should consider race, reproduction and religion as inextricable, rather than distinct, domains of analysis.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Our family picture is a little hint of heaven’: race, religion and selective reproduction in US ‘embryo adoption’

Cromer¹

2020

Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online

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“…Plato's application to humans of breeding a stock of animals is coherent with one account of the origin of the term race (in the contemporary sense of describing human groups or lineages). Under this account, the term race emerged in the Spanish term raza , which referred to the “caste or quality of authentic horses” (Russell, , p. 84). Under this view, human beings' fates are determined by their breeding or “race.” Plato's views on how eugenics determine human becoming examples what the biologist Johannes Jäger calls “our love affair” with the idea of genetic inheritance, which is in turn, a “prime example” of the “substance fixation in biology” (Jäger, , p. xi).…”

Section: Eugenics Determines Becomingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why the Confucians had no concept of race (Part II): Cultural difference, environment, and achievement

Xiang

2019

Philosophy Compass

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This paper argues that Confucianism had an anti‐essentialist conception of selfhood. This understanding of self means that they did not have, and could not have had, a concept of “race” in the sense that one's essence determines one's becoming. In the Confucian canon, the embodiment of cultural norms/performance of culturally appropriate actions defines one's humanness. This account of human agency in becoming human can be seen in the Confucian explanation of moral failure. This assumption of human agency also means that the Confucian understanding of hierarchy is social as opposed to ontological and that differences between people are understood to be a result of culture–custom variation.

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“… 4. These stark and crude race-based labels for reproductive matter reflect the norm in the fertility industry, wherein gametes are often stored in color-coded vials: white for oocytes from providers who identify as white, black for oocytes from African American providers, and so on (Russell 2018). …”

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confidence: 99%

Visa Stamps for Injections: Traveling Biolabor and South African Egg Provision

Pande

2020

Gender & Society

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In this article, I discuss cross-border egg provision by young South African women as a form of traveling biolabor that is critically about embodiment, and aspirations for mobility and cosmopolitanism. The frame of biolabor challenges the frames of altruism/commodification, and choice/coercion, and instead highlights the desires of egg providers, fundamental to the creation and maintenance of the global fertility market. When biolabor crosses borders as traveling biolabor, the analysis can focus on the specificities of inequalities embedded within such reproductive mobility. Traveling or mobility is often a privileged decision and connotes freedom and cultural capital. Yet, when applied to young white egg providers from South Africa, this traveling biolabor relies on a particular kind of biopolitics wherein the reproductive potential of ova/egg is fundamental in facilitating women’s cross-border mobility. I divide the findings sections into three key themes—“cosmopolitan competency,” “alternatives to maternity,” and “productive pain”—to argue that, on the one hand, from recruitment of traveling egg providers to their (self) management, this biolabor is built on the young women’s aspirations for cosmopolitanism. Traveling biolabor becomes a way to escape the normative expectations of their (primarily rural, conservative) families and the (Afrikaner) national project of the volksmoeder (mother of the nation). On the other hand, the pursuit of these aspirations is critically contingent on management successfully reframing the embodied pain of egg provision as well as the biolaborer’s own maternity. Laborers’ desires and management disciplining tactics converge to sustain the global fertility market.

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The Assisted Reproduction of Race

Cited by 21 publications

References 0 publications

‘Our family picture is a little hint of heaven’: race, religion and selective reproduction in US ‘embryo adoption’

‘Our family picture is a little hint of heaven’: race, religion and selective reproduction in US ‘embryo adoption’

Why the Confucians had no concept of race (Part II): Cultural difference, environment, and achievement

Visa Stamps for Injections: Traveling Biolabor and South African Egg Provision

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