Becoming Donor-Conceived: The Transformation of Anonymity in Gamete Donation

by Amelie Baumann

Overview

While it has been argued that anonymity in gamete donation has been brought to an end by legal changes and technological developments, Amelie Baumann suggests that this is in fact still in transformation. By focusing on the narratives of those who were conceived with anonymously donated gametes in the UK and Germany, she examines this transformative process and the role which donor-conceived persons play in it. This book shows that it is not someone's decision to procreate that turns "being donor-conceived" into a meaningful categorisation. Rather, kinship knowledge gets activated by the donor-conceived in specific ways for "being donor-conceived" to become a powerful identification.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783837657319
Publication date:	11/27/2021
Series:	Body Cultures
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.86(h) x (d)

About the Author

Amelie Baumann is a postdoctoral researcher at Freie Universität Berlin, where she is an associated member of the Collaborative Research Centre "Affective Societies". She completed her doctorate in cultural anthropology at the University of Bremen in 2020 and was part of the interdisciplinary research project "Reconfiguring Anonymity", funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. Her research focuses on medical anthropology, the anthropology of ageing and kinship studies.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter 1
Contents 5
Introduction 9
1. Contextualising donor conception and anonymity 23
2. Research and analysis 57
3. The right to know 79
4. Public stories and new networks 115
5. Micropolitics of not-knowing 147
6. When the cat has been let out of the bag 173
7. Connections you might (not) make 203
8. Infrastructuring DNA 245
9. Conclusion 281
References 297
List of abbreviations 329
List of figures 331
Acknowledgements 333