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Kroløkke C. Global Fluids: The Cultural Politics of Reproductive Waste and Value. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2018. 206 pp. $120/£89.00 (cloth), $29.95 (ebk) ISBN: 978‐1‐78533‐892‐2
Sociology of Health & Illness ( IF 2.957 ) Pub Date : 2020-11-20 , DOI: 10.1111/1467-9566.13220
Diane Tober 1
Affiliation  

Scholarship on the commodification of the body investigates how extractable materials – including cells, organs, and other substances – intersect with economic precarity, perceptions of value, and the intersections between scientific and technological advances and shifting cultural ethical and moral systems. Gender, sexuality, race, class and privilege, of course, lie at the root of these debates. Through the lens of feminist bioethics and cultural politics Charlotte Kroløkke’s book, Global Fluids examines how reproductive fluids and matter conjoin in the global marketplace. Here, she examines ‘the reproductive body as a resource within an emergent and globalized tissue economy that seeks to optimize the reproductive body’s potential’ (p. 4).

In four chapters plus an introduction and conclusion, Kroløkke’s book focuses on how urine, oocytes and placentas transitioned from being reproductive ‘waste’ to materials of reproductive (and economic) value. Throughout the book, she conceptualises these materials as ‘global fluids’ – although only urine could technically be described as a fluid – in order to draw upon fluidity, liquidity and flows as organising concepts. She states: ‘…reproductive donations have become liquid and globalized, along with cultural values, laws, exchange systems and ethics. Hence, I stress the need to understand biological matter as material flows rather than merely physical entities’ (p. 2). While placentas and egg cells are not technically fluids, for Kroløkke, ‘liquidity’ is a metaphor for how these substances intersect with the exchange of values between different facets of life, flow across borders, and become ‘liquid’ as when converted into profit.

In the introduction, Kroløkke lays out the theoretical foundations of her analysis. First, she introduces her feminist cultural analytical approach to reproductive donations, then extends her focus on reproductive donations to feminist bioethics and cultural politics. Here, she illuminates how neoliberal ideology and reproduction are intertwined, particularly when individual bodies and bodily products become commodities, and people become entrepreneurs who exchange the products of their bodies for pay. In her analysis – across borders, substances and a body of diverse empirical data – Kroløkke incorporates an approach she refers to as ‘assemblage ethnography’ (p. 8). Here, she draws upon anthropological and sociological frameworks including multi‐sited ethnography, global assemblages, biopolitics and STS studies.

Chapter two examines urine donation in the Netherlands, how pregnant women who provide urine narrate their stories, and how pregnant women’s urine transformed into ‘liquid gold’ once it was discovered to have pharmaceutical – and hence commercial – value. Pregnant women’s urine contains hCG, human chorionic gonadotrophin, which can be used to manufacture fertility pharmaceuticals such as Pregnyl (a drug used in infertility treatments), pregnancy tests, and can also be incorporated into fertilisers for the agricultural industry (p. 53). This case study examines a Dutch programme calling upon women between six to 16 weeks of pregnancy to donate urine for pharmaceutical development. As Kroløkke demonstrates, along with urine’s reframed status from ‘waste’ to ‘value’ comes a concomitant pressure on women to altruistically provide this crucial ingredient to help other women – a call to ‘sister solidarity’ (p. 76).

The chapter on oocytes draws upon fieldwork in Spain, Denmark, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic. Across these different terrains, Kroløkke examines how oocytes (individual cells that can later divide to form an ovum or egg cell) are constructed as valuable commodities in different geographical locations, as well as in different aspects of fertility care, from oocyte ‘donation’ to fertility preservation. When unused, oocytes are constructed as ‘waste’ in egg provider narratives, but waste turns to value – and a precious ‘gift’ – once extracted and transferred to someone who could use them to conceive a child (p. 84). Paid egg providers, in Kroløkke’s analysis, participate in a form of embodied entrepreneurship (p. 105). For women who freeze their eggs, extracting, preserving and banking are the preferable alternatives to wasted potential fertility. She states: ‘In the encounter between freezing technologies, the fertility industry, and a population of women that can afford it, eggs gain speculative and entrepreneurial value as bioassets’ (p. 106). By exploring the connections between this empirical material, Kroløkke demonstrates how ‘economic exchange and somatic work’ of oocyte retrieval creates a shared, globalised femininity (p. 107).

In thinking about ‘global fluids’ and reproductive materials I, at first, thought the placenta was out of place in this book, compared to other more ‘fluid’ alternatives such as breast milk or sperm. Placentas have a unique position in these case studies as substance, which is simultaneously waste and resource and, for some, consumable. Here, Kroløkke coalesces empirical material from the United Kingdom, Denmark, the United States and Japan. Her material includes interviews with both midwives and women who had consumed the placenta after birth, as well as other types of data such as documentaries, marketing campaigns, photographic material and other media. She further extends her analysis to compare how human and porcine placentas – some of which are collected by Danish pig farmers and sold to pharmaceutical companies throughout Asia – are used to develop pharmaceuticals and anti‐ageing and skin whitening cosmetics. Depending upon its use, Kroløkke examines how the placenta moves into different ‘biopolitical regimes’ and analytical terrains, or ‘incisions’: biomedical evidence and reproductive waste; consumable nutrients and maternal love; pharmaceutical and anti‐ageing cosmetics products; and moves from ‘bioart to biological investment’ in the context of stem cell banking (pp. 113–115).

While not all of the substances Kroløkke discusses in her book would technically be classified as ‘fluids’, she demonstrates their fluid movement through different economic, corporate, personal, familial and social spheres around the globe. Drawing upon Annemarie Mol and John Law’s analysis of fluid spaces, not fluids in the literal sense (p. 161), these case studies provide a fascinating demonstration of how the body and its substances are commodified and gifted in different ways, and how the meaning and value of these substances shift according to use, place, species and circumstance. In addition to being a fascinating read, Global Fluids provides an excellent example of how to methodologically craft, conduct and analyse multi‐sited global assemblage ethnography.



中文翻译:

KroløkkeC.全球流体:生殖废物和价值的文化政治。纽约/牛津:Berghahn图书。2018. 206 pp。$ 120 /£89.00(布料),$ 29.95(ebk)ISBN:978-1-78533-892-2

关于人体商品化的奖学金研究了可提取物质(包括细胞,器官和其他物质)如何与经济不稳定,价值观念以及科学技术进步与文化伦理道德体系的转变相交。性别,性,种族,阶级和特权当然是这些辩论的根源。通过女性主义生物伦理学和文化政治学的镜头,夏洛特·克罗勒克(CharlotteKroløkke)的书,《全球流体》研究了生殖流体和物质在全球市场中如何结合。在这里,她研究了“生殖体作为新兴的全球化组织经济中的一种资源,它试图优化生殖体的潜力”(第4页)。

在四章以及引言和结论中,Kroløkke的书着重介绍尿液,卵母细胞和胎盘是如何从生殖“废物”转变为具有生殖(和经济)价值的物质的。在整本书中,她将这些材料概念化为“整体液体”,尽管从技术上讲只能将尿液描述为液体,以便将流动性,流动性和流动性作为组织概念。她说:“……生殖捐赠已随着文化价值,法律,交换制度和道德观念而变得流动性和全球化。因此,我强调有必要将生物物质理解为物质流,而不仅仅是物质实体(第2页)。虽然胎盘和卵细胞在技术上不是液体,但对于Kroløkke,

在介绍中,Kroløkke奠定了她分析的理论基础。首先,她介绍了对生殖捐赠的女性主义文化分析方法,然后将重点放在了对女性主义生物伦理学和文化政治的生殖捐赠上。在这里,她阐明了新自由主义的意识形态和生殖是如何交织在一起的,特别是当个体的身体和身体的产品成为商品,而人们成为了以报酬交换其身体的产品的企业家时。在她的分析中(跨越国界,物质和大量不同的经验数据),Kroløkke运用了她称之为“集合民族志”的方法(第8页)。在这里,她借鉴了人类学和社会学框架,包括多地点民族志,全球人群,生物政治学和STS研究。

第二章研究了荷兰的尿液捐赠,提供尿液的孕妇如何叙述自己的故事,以及一旦发现孕妇的尿液具有药物价值和商业价值,便如何将其转变为“液态金”。孕妇的尿液中含有人绒毛膜促性腺激素hCG,可用于制造生育药,例如Pregnyl(用于不育症治疗的药物),妊娠试验,也可用于农业肥料中(第53页)。本案例研究考察了一项荷兰计划,该计划呼吁怀孕6至16周的妇女捐献尿液用于药物开发。正如Kroløkke所展示的,

关于卵母细胞的章节借鉴了西班牙,丹麦,美国,英国和捷克共和国的田野调查。在这些不同的地形上,Kroløkke研究了卵母细胞(以后分裂成卵子或卵细胞的单个细胞)如何在不同的地理位置以及从生育卵子的捐赠到生育的不同方面被构造成有价值的商品。保持生育能力。如果不使用卵母细胞,卵子提供者的叙述会将卵母细胞视为“废物”,但是一旦被提取并转移给可以用它们怀胎的人,废物就变成了价值和宝贵的“礼物”(第84页)。根据Kroløkke的分析,有偿卵子提供者以一种具体化的企业家精神参与(第105页)。对于冷冻卵子,提取卵子的妇女,保存和储备银行是浪费潜在生育力的最佳选择。她指出:“在冷冻技术,生育产业和负担得起的妇女人群之间的相遇中,鸡蛋作为生物资产获得了投机和企业家价值”(第106页)。通过探索这种经验材料之间的联系,Kroløkke证明了卵母细胞回收的“经济交流和体细胞工作”如何创造出一种共享的全球化女性气质(第107页)。

首先,在考虑“全球体液”和生殖材料时,我认为与其他更“流体”的替代品(如母乳或精子)相比,胎盘在本书中不合适。胎盘素在这些案例研究中作为物质具有独特的地位,它同时是浪费和资源,在某些情况下是消耗品。在这里,Kroløkke融合了来自英国,丹麦,美国和日本的经验材料。她的资料包括对助产士和出生后食用了胎盘的妇女的采访,以及其他类型的数据,例如纪录片,市场营销活动,照相材料和其他媒体。她进一步扩展了她的分析,以比较人类和猪的胎盘素(其中一些是由丹麦养猪户收集并出售给整个亚洲的制药公司)如何用于开发药物以及抗衰老和皮肤美白化妆品。根据其用途,Kroløkke研究了胎盘如何进入不同的“生物政治制度”和分析地形或“切口”:生物医学证据和生殖废物;食用营养和母爱;药品和抗衰老化妆品;并且在干细胞银行业务的背景下从“生物艺术转向生物投资”(第113-115页)。生物医学证据和生殖废物;食用营养和母爱;药品和抗衰老化妆品;并且在干细胞银行业务的背景下从“生物艺术转向生物投资”(第113-115页)。生物医学证据和生殖废物;食用营养和母爱;药品和抗衰老化妆品;并且在干细胞银行业务的背景下从“生物艺术转向生物投资”(第113-115页)。

虽然Kroløkke在书中讨论的并非所有物质都从技术上被归类为“流体”,但她证明了它们在全球不同经济,公司,个人,家庭和社会领域的流动性。这些案例研究借鉴了Annemarie Mol和John Law对流体空间的分析,而不是对字面意义上的流体的分析(第161页),这些有趣的案例很好地展示了人体及其物质如何以不同的方式被修饰和赋予礼物,以及其含义这些物质的价值会根据用途,地点,种类和情况而变化。除了是一本引人入胜的读物,《全球流体》还提供了一个很好的例子,说明了如何在方法上制定,实施和分析多地点的全球民族志。

更新日期:2020-11-20
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