Katharine Dow – författare

How we dispose of our rubbish, choose the foods we buy, enjoy art, relate to our families, and think about ourselves are just a few of the ways that ideas about nature shape our everyday ethical decisions. Nature and ‘natural facts’ have long been used to make sense of why we act a certain way. Nature is a concept with great power: when we describe something as ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’, it has a moral force and political consequences. We see this in moral panics about genetically modified foods, the spread of government-enforced waste recycling schemes, concerns about assisted reproductive technologies. Our ideas about what is natural shape our ethical thinking, in terms of how people live (or want to live) their lives, but also in guiding our sense of morality, justice and truth.

The idea of naturalness is essential to grasping Anglo-American cultures. Throughout history and in different places, nature has had different forms, meanings, and moral valences. It is a knowable fact, but at the same time almost a divine principle that is ultimately unfathomable. Yet with the rise of new technologies, there is increasing uncertainty about what we claim to be natural, who we are, how we are related to each other, and how we should live.

This book examines the how ideas about nature and ethics overlap and separate across cultural, species, geographic, and moral boundaries. It compares the varied ways in which nature and ideas of naturalness pervade all aspects of people’s lives, from family relationships, to the production and consumption of food, to ideas about scientific truth. In a world of increasing uncertainty, nature remains a powerful concept: the ultimate reference point, invested with profound moral authority to guide our ethical behaviour. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnos.

How we dispose of our rubbish, choose the foods we buy, enjoy art, relate to our families, and think about ourselves are just a few of the ways that ideas about nature shape our everyday ethical decisions. Nature and ‘natural facts’ have long been used to make sense of why we act a certain way. Nature is a concept with great power: when we describe something as ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’, it has a moral force and political consequences. We see this in moral panics about genetically modified foods, the spread of government-enforced waste recycling schemes, concerns about assisted reproductive technologies. Our ideas about what is natural shape our ethical thinking, in terms of how people live (or want to live) their lives, but also in guiding our sense of morality, justice and truth.

The idea of naturalness is essential to grasping Anglo-American cultures. Throughout history and in different places, nature has had different forms, meanings, and moral valences. It is a knowable fact, but at the same time almost a divine principle that is ultimately unfathomable. Yet with the rise of new technologies, there is increasing uncertainty about what we claim to be natural, who we are, how we are related to each other, and how we should live.

This book examines the how ideas about nature and ethics overlap and separate across cultural, species, geographic, and moral boundaries. It compares the varied ways in which nature and ideas of naturalness pervade all aspects of people’s lives, from family relationships, to the production and consumption of food, to ideas about scientific truth. In a world of increasing uncertainty, nature remains a powerful concept: the ultimate reference point, invested with profound moral authority to guide our ethical behaviour. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnos.

Making a Good Life takes a timely look at the ideas and values that inform how people think about reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies. In an era of heightened scrutiny about parenting and reproduction, fears about environmental degradation, and the rise of the biotechnology industry, Katharine Dow delves into the reproductive ethics of those who do not have a personal stake in assisted reproductive technologies, but who are building lives inspired and influenced by environmentalism and concerns about the natural world''s future.Moving away from experiences of infertility treatments tied to the clinic and laboratory, Dow instead explores reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies as topics of public concern and debate, and she examines how people living in a coastal village in rural Scotland make ethical decisions and judgments about these matters. In particular, Dow engages with people''s ideas about nature and naturalness, and how these relate to views about parenting and building stable environments for future generations. Taking into account the ways daily responsibilities and commitments are balanced with moral values, Dow suggests there is still much to uncover about reproductive ethics.Analyzing how ideas about reproduction intersect with wider ethical struggles, Making a Good Life offers a new approach to researching, thinking, and writing about nature, ethics, and reproduction.

>Human reproduction is mediated through many technologies, both high- and low-tech. These technologies of reproduction are not experienced in isolation by most of the people who use them. However clinical, public health and social scientific research often reflects a parcelling out of reproduction into specialist areas of biomedical intervention. Studies tend to be bound to specific physiological events, technologies (particularly those that are more obviously technical or ‘modern’) and people – namely cis, heterosexual, white, middle-class women. Yet, with the ever-expanding horizon of reproductive technologies and the rapid development of the fertility industry, the reality is that many individuals will engage with more than one such technology at some point in their life.

>Technologies of Reproduction Across the Lifecourse presents dialogue between scholars on different reproductive technologies not only from a comparative empirical perspective, arguing that operating in disciplinary silos and working from narrow ideas about RTs and their meanings can put reproductive studies in danger of missing, and thereby reproducing, the kinds of power structures that shape reproductive life.

>Human reproduction is mediated through many technologies, both high- and low-tech. These technologies of reproduction are not experienced in isolation by most of the people who use them. However clinical, public health and social scientific research often reflects a parcelling out of reproduction into specialist areas of biomedical intervention. Studies tend to be bound to specific physiological events, technologies (particularly those that are more obviously technical or ‘modern’) and people – namely cis, heterosexual, white, middle-class women. Yet, with the ever-expanding horizon of reproductive technologies and the rapid development of the fertility industry, the reality is that many individuals will engage with more than one such technology at some point in their life.

>Technologies of Reproduction Across the Lifecourse presents dialogue between scholars on different reproductive technologies not only from a comparative empirical perspective, arguing that operating in disciplinary silos and working from narrow ideas about RTs and their meanings can put reproductive studies in danger of missing, and thereby reproducing, the kinds of power structures that shape reproductive life.