(K)information Gamete Donation and Kinship Knowledge in Germany and Britain |
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Author:
| Klotz, Maren |
Series title: | Eigene und Fremde Welten Ser. |
ISBN: | 978-3-593-50067-6 |
Publication Date: | Aug 2014 |
Publisher: | Campus Verlag GmbH
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $62.00 |
Book Description:
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Openness about gamete (i.e. sperm or egg) donation and the regulation of donor-anonymity or non-anonymity are new phenomena. How do affected families, clinics, and regulators deal with information about the donors and the donation in Germany and Britain? And how does this ‘knowledge-management’ contribute to the making and doing of kinship? Addressing these questions through an ethnographic exploration, this book makes a comparative contribution to the empirical...
More Description
Openness about gamete (i.e. sperm or egg) donation and the regulation of donor-anonymity or non-anonymity are new phenomena. How do affected families, clinics, and regulators deal with information about the donors and the donation in Germany and Britain? And how does this ‘knowledge-management’ contribute to the making and doing of kinship? Addressing these questions through an ethnographic exploration, this book makes a comparative contribution to the empirical and theoretical analysis of kin-formation and social change in plural late-modern societies in Europe.
The research demonstrates a contemporary re-negotiation of the values of privacy, information-sharing, and connectedness – with transparency as moral imperative, not genetics. Instead of an unambiguously discernible ‘geneticisation’ the findings on donor-non-anonymity and parental openness display a pattern of ‘transparentization’. In ensemble a shift of authority becomes evident, more minute in Germany than in Britain, towards concerned groups, parents-by-donation, and policy-makers, away from a sometimes high handed reproductive medical profession.