Frozen Capital |
Despite the mainstream practice of freezing excess IVF embryos in the United States, what to do with the growing surplus of reproductive remainders became the subject of controversy at the turn of the twenty-first century. My current book project--Saved: The Afterlives of Frozen Embryos--examines the fates of frozen human embryos left over from IVF and banked for future use. This study offers a revision to scholarly understandings about "biocapital" from the perspectives of Christian embryo adopters and stem cell researchers in the United States. By focusing on reproductive and cryopreservation technologies, Saved provides new insight into politics of value-making within an increasingly financialized world.
Based on twenty-seven months of field research in California after the 2008 global financial crisis, this multi-sited ethnographic project combines in-depth interviews and document analysis with participant observation in organizations at the vanguard of saving embryos: a Christian embryo adoption program and a stem cell institute tissue bank. I conducted 200 interviews with two main groups: embryo professionals (doctors, nurses, social workers, counselors, embryologists, students, study coordinators, lab managers, lawyers, theologians, bioethicists) and embryo program participants (donors, recipients, fertility patients).
My interest in frozen embryo economies arose from a longstanding interest in reproductive politics, and particularly the ways that in vitro embryos are pressed into service for diverse political agendas. Frozen embryos are mobilized within debates about personhood, fought over in court battles, and coveted as treasures for regenerative medicine. Ethnography provides a method for approaching the remainders of reproductive technologies in ways that suspend our presumptions about often polarizing politics around "life" and reveal unexpected common ground across American efforts to save.
Based on twenty-seven months of field research in California after the 2008 global financial crisis, this multi-sited ethnographic project combines in-depth interviews and document analysis with participant observation in organizations at the vanguard of saving embryos: a Christian embryo adoption program and a stem cell institute tissue bank. I conducted 200 interviews with two main groups: embryo professionals (doctors, nurses, social workers, counselors, embryologists, students, study coordinators, lab managers, lawyers, theologians, bioethicists) and embryo program participants (donors, recipients, fertility patients).
My interest in frozen embryo economies arose from a longstanding interest in reproductive politics, and particularly the ways that in vitro embryos are pressed into service for diverse political agendas. Frozen embryos are mobilized within debates about personhood, fought over in court battles, and coveted as treasures for regenerative medicine. Ethnography provides a method for approaching the remainders of reproductive technologies in ways that suspend our presumptions about often polarizing politics around "life" and reveal unexpected common ground across American efforts to save.
Perspectives from the Field
