Manjeer Mukherjee

Engineering Family Values: Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Their Impact on Kinship Relations in West Bengal Manjeer Mukherjee

The new genetics has spawned diverse manifestations for the society, as certainly these new technologies open up a plethora of options of becoming parents. In this book, we focus on the potential of New Reproductive and Genetic Technologies to call into question our understanding of family and kinship. The present book will focus on: Understanding the human agency in negotiating and manipulating family values in the infertility clinics through the recipient couples, medical practitioners and donors; Decoding the meaning/s of relationships, identity, and reproduction in a particular sociocultural context, namely, West Bengal. The study draws both from existing literature and from primary research conducted in an infertility clinic. The profile of both treatment seeking interviewees and providers is diverse, bringing in multiple dimensions to the study. Throughout the study negotiations of social and biological facts have remained a persistent dilemma. It is well evident that these negotiations have taken on an additional dimension as biology has become more visible and technologies more commonplace.