Abstract
The New Reproductive Order: Technology, Fertility, and Social Change around the Globe, edited by Sarah Franklin and Marcia C. Inhorn, presents an excellent collection of writings from a diverse group of reproductive scholars. Evidenced in a wide range of largely ethnographic research spanning numerous national contexts, the volume offers a coherent argument that we have entered a new bio-socio-political reproductive order. As Franklin and Inhorn articulate in the introduction to the book, this new reproductive order is characterized by particular logics, industries, ideas, and political economies encompassing an important shift from national and global concerns about overpopulation to current anxieties regarding fertility decline.
A concept used throughout the book embedded in the new reproductive order is “in-fertility,” referring to “the complicated and dialectical relationship between fertility and infertility.” In-fertility uncertainties—doubts about how to study, capture, and understand fertility behavior—also characterize the new reproductive order. Congruent with these reproductive anxieties is the marketization of fertility services and products (think anticipatory oocyte cryopreservation and in vitro fertilization (IVF) add-ons like pre-implantation genetic screening). These new technologies and this new reproductive order, the volume emphasizes, are reciprocal; they are not only a response to but also are themselves changing the ways infertility and fertility (and in-fertility) are practiced, perceived, and experienced. The new reproductive order no longer centers on only childbearing, but on the aspirations of reproductive-aged people and the changing socio-political landscape of families, markets, nations, and environments. As such, the volume highlights the current uncertainty and the complexity of reproduction and the new challenges and uncertainties of studying reproductive causality. The editors call for “bold new models” for studying in-fertility and the new reproductive order, and they then, delightfully and in exciting ways, present us with such a volume.
The book begins with an introduction by Franklin and Inhorn in which they skillfully situate The New Reproductive Order and elucidate the central tenets and origins of the collective work within it. They share how the volume originated in the work of a global network of scholars they brought together to examine newer reproductive technologies and reproductive decision-making. The collaborative efforts and exchange of ideas among the authors is evident in the cohesiveness of the volume as seen in the common purpose of each chapter, the common theories and concepts that run throughout the volume, and the frequent reference to the work of fellow contributors in the book.
The central ideas and the overarching argument of a new reproductive order are strongly evidenced throughout the volume in specific, situated examples. There are 19 substantive chapters in the book, and all, save one, focus on in-fertility and reproduction in specific countries or regions, primarily via situated ethnography. Some chapters provide historical overviews of specific countries and would, therefore, be appropriate for course sections on reproduction in country-specific history or anthropology courses.
The volume is best read in its entirety and the chapters read in order, as the work builds upon itself. Having said that, while the totality of the book forwards a strong and complex argument about the new reproductive order articulated in the volume’s introduction and the afterword and evidenced in the 19 chapters, there are some excellent pieces in the collection that could be read and/or assigned for graduate or advanced undergraduate anthropology or sociology of reproduction courses independently. These stand-out chapters are numerous, with the most exciting providing not only situated evidence of the new reproductive order but themselves introducing novel theoretical concepts that propel the field of assisted reproduction studies forward. For those inspired by conceptual work, the volume is replete with such articles. Additional chapters, while not forwarding novel concepts, articulate existing theories or concepts in new situated contexts. As such, the volume is theoretically and conceptually rich.
The book is divided into four sections, each preceded by a brief introduction. The first section examines changing patterns and practices within the intimate arena of family formation via assisted reproduction. The “In-fertile Families” section examines the “IVF turn” in four regional/national contexts: the Arab world (Marcia C. Inhorn), Japan (Nana Okura Gagné), Greece (Venetta Kantsa), and Britain (Robert Pralat; Marcin Smietana). The second section, “In-fertile Nations,” focuses on national reproductive agendas and state practices in China (Ayo Wahlberg), Israel (Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli), Mexico (Sandra P. González-Santos), and Iran (Soraya Tremayne). Also included in this section is a methodological article by Nitzan Peri-Rotem rethinking the demographic concept of “proximate determinants of fertility.”
The articles in the third section, “In-fertile Economies,” examine IVF and ART-related markets in the United States/United Kingdom/Netherlands (Lucy van de Wiel), sub-Saharan Africa (Andrea Whittaker and Trudie Gerrits), Georgia (Sigrid Vertommen), and Finland (Mwenza Blell and Riikka Homanen). The fourth section of the book introduces a more rarely studied dimension in the anthropology and sociology of reproduction: concerns about the environment and its degradation exacerbated by or directly connected to in-fertility. The articles in this section examine Peru (Julieta Chaparro-Buitrago), Japan (Tsipy Ivry), India (Sharmila Rudrappa), and England (Katherine Dow; Sarah Franklin). As can be seen in this list, Franklin and Inhorn have ensembled leading ART researchers whose work examines a large swath of the globe. While understandably not all nations or regions are covered, the volume does encourage the reader to compare the reproductive histories and transitions of the nations and regions represented and also to understand these situated histories as examples of a larger, complex, connected, and mutually reinforcing new global reproductive order.
This volume is a must-read for social scientists studying infertility, fertility, or assisted reproduction. Those working on areas of the globe not represented in the book will still find the book edifying as it articulates a reconceptualization of the field through the use of rich theory and conceptual development. I anticipate the concepts articulated in The New Reproductive Order will become widely utilized in the social scientific study of assisted reproduction.