"Charis Thompson's Making Parents is an extraordinary account of an extraordinary aspect of our world: the technological, legal, and moral complexities of becoming a parent in the twnety-first century. Throughout, Thompson maintains a wonderful double vision: seeing as a remarkably gifted, scientifically informed ethnographer and watching anxious and hopeful doctors, nurses, and would-be parents with compassion and self-reflection. It is, to be sure, a book that draws deeply on science studies and feminism, but it carries that work to new spaces and in new directions. It is an added and unusual bonus that she delivers the scholarship with grace, humor, and sparkle."--Peter Galison, Mallinckrodt Professor of the History of Science and of Physics, Harvard University
"This book is magisterial in its reach. It will be an extremely significant contribution to our understanding of reproductive technologies, and its commanding writing style matches its ambition. It is a sort of dream book: everything one could expect from an early twenty-first-century work of serious scholarship born out of the last thirty years of debates and reconceptualizations of gender relations, new technologies, ethics, and science."--Marilyn Strathern, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
"This is brilliant work! Charis Thompson gives us an innovative masterpiece, rethinking reproduction in an age defined by the promises, processes, and consequences of current and developing technoscientific enmeshments. Standing at the trafficked intersection of brave new technical worlds, anguished individual/familial/gendered yearnings, the odd tensions of consumer responsibility, and the commodification of life itself, Thompson reports back with a stunning range of vision, helping us address the new complexities that constitute reproduction in the West today. This book belongs on "everybody's" shelves."--Adele E. Clarke, University of California, San Francisco
"Thompson's 'ontological choreography' underscores the ways in which parents are 'remade' through the processes of assisted reproductive technology, and shows how the very conception of the human is historically recast as a result of these new technological conditions for the reproduction of life. One of this extraordinary book's chief strengths is that it returns a set of abstract debates about ethics, technology, and personhood to specific institutional settings, showing us how such dilemmas emerge and giving them a much-needed historical specificity. This is a wide-ranging, unprecedented, incisive, and brilliant inquiry, probing and provocative, and bound to change the field for years to come."--Judith Butler, author of "Undoing Gender" and "Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence"
& quot; Charis Thompson's Making Parents is an extraordinary account of an extraordinary aspect of our world: the technological, legal, and moral complexities of becoming a parent in the twnety-first century. Throughout, Thompson maintains a wonderful double vision: seeing as a remarkably gifted, scientifically informed ethnographer and watching anxious and hopeful doctors, nurses, and would-be parents with compassion and self-reflection. It is, to be sure, a book that draws deeply on science studies and feminism, but it carries that work to new spaces and in new directions. It is an added and unusual bonus that she delivers the scholarship with grace, humor, and sparkle.& quot; -- Peter Galison, Mallinckrodt Professor of the History of Science and of Physics, Harvard University
& quot; This book is magisterial in its reach. It will be an extremely significant contribution to our understanding of reproductive technologies, and its commanding writing style matches its ambition. It is a sort of dream book: everything one could expect from an early twenty-first-century work of serious scholarship born out of the last thirty years of debates and reconceptualizations of gender relations, new technologies, ethics, and science.& quot; -- Marilyn Strathern, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
& quot; This is brilliant work! Charis Thompson gives us an innovative masterpiece, rethinking reproduction in an age defined by the promises, processes, and consequences of current and developing technoscientific enmeshments. Standing at the trafficked intersection of brave new technical worlds, anguished individual/familial/gendered yearnings, the odd tensions of consumer responsibility, and the commodification of life itself, Thompson reports back with a stunning range of vision, helping us address the new complexities that constitute reproduction in the West today. This book belongs on everybody's shelves.& quot; -- Adele E. Clarke, University of California, San Francisco
& quot; Thompson's 'ontological choreography' underscores the ways in which parents are 'remade' through the processes of assisted reproductive technology, and shows how the very conception of the human is historically recast as a result of these new technological conditions for the reproduction of life. One of this extraordinary book's chief strengths is that it returns a set of abstract debates about ethics, technology, and personhood to specific institutional settings, showing us how such dilemmas emerge and giving them a much-needed historical specificity. This is a wide-ranging, unprecedented, incisive, and brilliant inquiry, probing and provocative, and bound to change the field for years to come.& quot; -- Judith Butler, author of Undoing Gender and Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence
" Charis Thompson's Making Parents is an extraordinary account of an extraordinary aspect of our world: the technological, legal, and moral complexities of becoming a parent in the twnety-first century. Throughout, Thompson maintains a wonderful double vision: seeing as a remarkably gifted, scientifically informed ethnographer and watching anxious and hopeful doctors, nurses, and would-be parents with compassion and self-reflection. It is, to be sure, a book that draws deeply on science studies and feminism, but it carries that work to new spaces and in new directions. It is an added and unusual bonus that she delivers the scholarship with grace, humor, and sparkle." --Peter Galison, Mallinckrodt Professor of the History of Science and of Physics, Harvard University
" This book is magisterial in its reach. It will be an extremely significant contribution to our understanding of reproductive technologies, and its commanding writing style matches its ambition. It is a sort of dream book: everything one could expect from an early twenty-first-century work of serious scholarship born out of the last thirty years of debates and reconceptualizations of gender relations, new technologies, ethics, and science." --Marilyn Strathern, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
" This is brilliant work! Charis Thompson gives us an innovative masterpiece, rethinking reproduction in an age defined by the promises, processes, and consequences of current and developing technoscientific enmeshments. Standing at the trafficked intersection of brave new technical worlds, anguished individual/familial/gendered yearnings, the odd tensions of consumer responsibility, and the commodification of life itself, Thompson reports back with a stunning range of vision, helping us address the new complexities that constitute reproduction in the West today. This book belongs on "everybody's" shelves." --Adele E. Clarke, University of California, San Francisco
" Thompson's 'ontological choreography' underscores the ways in which parents are 'remade' through the processes of assisted reproductive technology, and shows how the very conception of the human is historically recast as a result of these new technological conditions for the reproduction of life. One of this extraordinary book's chief strengths is that it returns a set of abstract debates about ethics, technology, and personhood to specific institutional settings, showing us how such dilemmas emerge and giving them a much-needed historical specificity. This is a wide-ranging, unprecedented, incisive, and brilliant inquiry, probing and provocative, and bound to change the field for years to come." --Judith Butler, author of "Undoing Gender" and "Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence"
--Adele E. Clarke, University of California, San Francisco
--Judith Butler, author of "Undoing Gender" and "Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence"
--Marilyn Strathern, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
--Peter Galison, Mallinckrodt Professor of the History of Science and of Physics, Harvard University