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Beyond the petri dish: potentiality in assisted conception in South Africa
Research in assisted conception technologies has examined how technologies open up potential trajectories, futures, and family arrangements, yet remain shaped and embedded within local histories and politics (Franklin, 1997, 2003; Inhorn, 2003; Thompson, 2005; Roberts, 2012). Embryos (Franklin, 2006...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Social Anthropology
2020
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| _version_ | 1867613268710785024 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Moll, Tessa |
| author2 | Ross, Fiona |
| author_browse | Moll, Tessa Ross, Fiona |
| author_facet | Ross, Fiona Moll, Tessa |
| author_sort | Moll, Tessa |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | Research in assisted conception technologies has examined how technologies open up potential trajectories, futures, and family arrangements, yet remain shaped and embedded within local histories and politics (Franklin, 1997, 2003; Inhorn, 2003; Thompson, 2005; Roberts, 2012). Embryos (Franklin, 2006a), sex cells such as eggs and sperm (Ariza, 2018), and IVF more generally (Inhorn, 2003; Simpson, 2013), offer particular potential futures but also threaten existing social orders. In this thesis, I present an ethnographic analysis of potentiality in IVF in South Africa through tracing sites and processes to apprehend, assess, and manage potential. Potentiality invokes desires and fears about the future while inviting attempts to render the future knowable and manageable (Taussig, Hoeyer, & Helmreich, 2013). Drawing on 14 months of multi-sited ethnographic research in fertility clinics and egg donor agencies in urban South Africa, I draw out the political, affective and temporal registers of potentiality as they materialise in concrete instances of reproductive medicine that is entangled within a context of capitalist biomedicine. Here, I argue that while biomedical knowledge systems frame certain objects, times, and futures as having potential, it simultaneously negates and neglects other kinds of futures, an attribute I describe as “scoping.” While ARTs and the social “facts” they reproduce are imaged as global and mobile objects, they are deeply entangled within the terrain — historical, political, economic — in which they become materialised. I argue that while IVF has the potential to disrupt “established” orders, intensive effort, which I theorize as “curature,” works to manage and domesticate IVF’s potential, reinforcing certain shapes of family, gender, morality, race and kinship arrangements. I argue that examining potentiality in IVF in South Africa reveals the politics — namely political-economic and racialised — and histories that shape reproductive technologies and potentialities. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/31677 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:33:26.520Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publishDateRange | 2020 |
| publishDateSort | 2020 |
| publisher | Social Anthropology |
| publisherStr | Social Anthropology |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/31677 Beyond the petri dish: potentiality in assisted conception in South Africa Moll, Tessa Ross, Fiona Social Anthropology Research in assisted conception technologies has examined how technologies open up potential trajectories, futures, and family arrangements, yet remain shaped and embedded within local histories and politics (Franklin, 1997, 2003; Inhorn, 2003; Thompson, 2005; Roberts, 2012). Embryos (Franklin, 2006a), sex cells such as eggs and sperm (Ariza, 2018), and IVF more generally (Inhorn, 2003; Simpson, 2013), offer particular potential futures but also threaten existing social orders. In this thesis, I present an ethnographic analysis of potentiality in IVF in South Africa through tracing sites and processes to apprehend, assess, and manage potential. Potentiality invokes desires and fears about the future while inviting attempts to render the future knowable and manageable (Taussig, Hoeyer, & Helmreich, 2013). Drawing on 14 months of multi-sited ethnographic research in fertility clinics and egg donor agencies in urban South Africa, I draw out the political, affective and temporal registers of potentiality as they materialise in concrete instances of reproductive medicine that is entangled within a context of capitalist biomedicine. Here, I argue that while biomedical knowledge systems frame certain objects, times, and futures as having potential, it simultaneously negates and neglects other kinds of futures, an attribute I describe as “scoping.” While ARTs and the social “facts” they reproduce are imaged as global and mobile objects, they are deeply entangled within the terrain — historical, political, economic — in which they become materialised. I argue that while IVF has the potential to disrupt “established” orders, intensive effort, which I theorize as “curature,” works to manage and domesticate IVF’s potential, reinforcing certain shapes of family, gender, morality, race and kinship arrangements. I argue that examining potentiality in IVF in South Africa reveals the politics — namely political-economic and racialised — and histories that shape reproductive technologies and potentialities. 2020-04-23T08:02:52Z 2020-04-23T08:02:52Z 2019 2020-04-23T01:21:13Z Doctoral Thesis Doctoral PhD https://hdl.handle.net/11427/31677 eng application/pdf Social Anthropology Faculty of Humanities |
| spellingShingle | Social Anthropology Moll, Tessa Beyond the petri dish: potentiality in assisted conception in South Africa |
| thesis_degree_str | Doctoral |
| title | Beyond the petri dish: potentiality in assisted conception in South Africa |
| title_full | Beyond the petri dish: potentiality in assisted conception in South Africa |
| title_fullStr | Beyond the petri dish: potentiality in assisted conception in South Africa |
| title_full_unstemmed | Beyond the petri dish: potentiality in assisted conception in South Africa |
| title_short | Beyond the petri dish: potentiality in assisted conception in South Africa |
| title_sort | beyond the petri dish potentiality in assisted conception in south africa |
| topic | Social Anthropology |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/11427/31677 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT molltessa beyondthepetridishpotentialityinassistedconceptioninsouthafrica |