Mobile phones, non-human agents at the service of assisted reproduction

Monitoring and Gendered Dual Allegiance

Bibliographic Data

ID2493519
AuthorsDuchesne (0000-0003-2428-7782, Université Paris Cité, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume27
Issue61
Pages143-162
Publication date2021-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHorizontes Antropológicos (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0104-7183 • E-ISSN: 1806-9983
PublisherFapUNIFESP (SciELO) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1590/s0104-71832021000300005
OpenAlexW4200475247
SCIELO_PIDS0104-71832021000300143
LanguageEN
References cited19

For sub-Saharan women enrolled in a protocol for assisted reproductive technology (ART), the use of mobile phones entails dual allegiance: toward the services of reproductive medicine and toward their transnational family. Indispensable for medically monitoring women's reproductive bodies, the mobile phone enters the process for producing female gametes and contributes to the gender asymmetry typical of biomedicalized procreation. It is also used to maintain contacts with transnational family members who, from a distance, obtrude in the woman's reproductive life. The use of mobile phones extends biomedical power over the woman's body into her everyday life and the normative power of her transnational family into reproduction. Paradoxically, the mobile telephone allows collateral relatives to support the woman seeking reproduction assistance while also "hypermedicalizing" the woman's daily life. Also paradoxically, this everyday companion is conductive to individual autonomy while also being used for new forms of surveillance and control. The data come from fieldwork conducted in the greater Paris area between 2011 and 2013 within a network of ART professionals and their patients

Allegiance · Autonomy · Business · Everyday life · Mobile phone · Political science · Politics · Reproduction · Service (business · Sociology · Telecommunications · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Identity, and Health · Reproductive Health and Technologies

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access