The New Reproductive Order - by Sarah Franklin & Marcia C Inhorn

About the Book

"The New Reproductive Order documents the effects of half a century of new reproductive technologies on ideas and practices surrounding fertility, infertility, fertility control, and fertility decline-that is, on reproduction itself-causing profound transformations in family life, national political agendas, global economies, and environmental movements in the twenty-first century"--

Book Synopsis

The transformative impact of new reproductive technologies over the past half century

Both fertility and infertility are commonly depicted as individual, biological, and choice dependent conditions that can be mediated by technology. In contrast, The New Reproductive Order documents the complex material, historical, and political forces that both enable and limit human reproductivity, while also arguing that both fertility and infertility have become condensed symbols of wider changes to family forms, national political agendas, global economies, and local environments.

Combining anthropological, sociological, and intersectional feminist research from across the globe, this landmark volume reveals how changing perceptions of fertility and infertility are altering how people imagine, pursue, and experience reproductivity both individually and collectively. Using a comparative global methodology based on detailed case studies, The New Reproductive Order persuasively argues that changing perceptions of fertility and infertility are giving rise to a distinctive reproductive politics based on new models of reproductive cause and effect. This groundbreaking and sophisticated volume opens new horizons of scholarship on the relationship between fertility, infertility, reproductive technologies, and social change, as well as new thinking on policy, practice, and activism in the twenty-first century's new reproductive order.

Review Quotes

"Compellingly shows how reproductive technology now constitutes an optic for viewing popular culture and governmental policy across the globe. The many national case studies by leading researchers assembled here offer the richest comparative examination of IVF in its global reach to date."--Rayna Rapp, co-author of Disability Worlds

"Under the energizing direction of Franklin and Inhorn, ongoing social and technological innovations in worldwide approaches to infertility are also made manifest in specific trajectories, now mainstream, now divergent. . . . An audacious - and very salutary - project of reconceptualization, this volume works on the kind of scale that redraws whole fields."--Marilyn Strathern, Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge

"Could not be more timely or valuable, coming out as crucial elections are turning on questions about IVF and abortion, fertility and infertility, as assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) are increasingly available, yet politically contested. And once again, feminist activists are mobilizing over the need to control their reproductive lives. Editors and authors Sarah Franklin and Marcia Inhorn have pulled together an extraordinary group of authors, all using what they call a "reprolens" to help readers understand "repronationalisms" regarding the state of assisted reproductive technologies across the globe. This paradigm-changing collection is required reading for scholars and activists across a range of disciplines, providing the ideas and cases we need to understand the range and complexity of contemporary reproductive imaginaries in the age of ARTs."--Faye Ginsburg, author of Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community

About the Author

Sarah Franklin (Editor)
Sarah Franklin is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She has authored and edited fourteen anthologies and monographs, including Biological Relatives: IVF, Stem Cells, and the Future of Kinship and Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception, now in its 25th anniversary edition.

Marcia C. Inhorn (Editor)
Marcia C. Inhorn is the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at Yale University. She is the author or coeditor of twenty-one volumes, including Cosmopolitan Conceptions: IVF Sojourns in Global Dubai and Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs.