Good Quality

The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China

AvAyo Wahlberg

Häftad, Engelska, 2018

Del i serien University of California Press

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Beskrivning

From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproductive complex. Today, there are sperm banks in each of China’s twenty-two provinces, the biggest of which screen some three thousand to four thousand potential donors each year. Given the estimated one to two million azoospermic men--those who are unable to produce their own sperm--the demand remains insatiable. China’s twenty-two sperm banks cannot keep up, spurring sperm bank directors to publicly lament chronic shortages and even warn of a national ‘sperm crisis’ (jingzi weiji). Good Quality explores the issues behind the crisis, including declining sperm quality in the country due to environmental pollution, as well as a chronic national shortage of donors. In doing so, Wahlberg outlines the specific style of Chinese sperm banking that has emerged, shaped by the particular cultural, juridical, economic and social configurations that make up China’s restrictive reproductive complex. Good Quality shows how this high-throughput style shapes the ways in which men experience donation and how sperm is made available to couples who can afford it.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2018-04-03
Mått:152 x 229 x 18 mm
Vikt:363 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Serie:University of California Press
Antal sidor:248
Förlag:University of California Press
ISBN:9780520297784

Utforska kategorier

Antropologi inom Samhälle och politik
Reproduktionsmedicin inom Medicin

Mer om författaren

Ayo Wahlberg is Professor MSO in the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. He is coeditor of Selective Reproduction in the Twenty-First Century and Southern Medicine for Southern People: Vietnamese Medicine in the Making.

Recensioner i media

"...Ayo Wahlberg provides a rich and fine-grained ethnographic account of assisted reproduction in China, focusing on how state population politics and sociocultural configurations have shaped the practice of sperm banking. . . . Good Quality makes a significant contribution to anthropological studies of assisted reproduction, science and technology studies, and studies of China’s reproductive politics. While Wahlberg emphasizes that his focus is on the making of sperm banking, this important book should encourage further studies on various aspects of assisted reproduction in China, such as the experience of infertile couples and the complex decision making leading to the practice of assisted reproduction."

Innehållsförteckning

List of Illustrations ixAcknowledgments xiList of Abbreviations xvIntroduction: Sperm Crisis 11. The Birth of Assisted Reproductive Technology in China 292. Improving Population Quality 583. Exposed Biologies 774. Mobilizing Sperm Donors 1005. Making Quality Auditable 1316. Borrowing Sperm 157Conclusion: Routinization 188Coda 192Notes 195References 205