Prelims
The Cryopolitics of Reproduction on Ice: A New Scandinavian Ice Age
ISBN: 978-1-83867-043-6, eISBN: 978-1-83867-042-9
Publication date: 2 December 2019
Citation
Kroløkke, C., Petersen, T.S., Herrmann, J.R., Bach, A.S., Adrian, S.W., Klingenberg, R. and Petersen, M.N. (2019), "Prelims", The Cryopolitics of Reproduction on Ice: A New Scandinavian Ice Age (Emerald Studies in Reproduction, Culture and Society), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. i-xiv. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83867-042-920191001
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020 Charlotte Kroløkke, Thomas Søbirk Petersen, Janne Rothmar Herrmann, Anna Sofie Bach, Stine Willum Adrian, Rune Klingenberg and Michael Nebeling Petersen
Half Title Page
The Cryopolitics of Reproduction on Ice
Series Page
Emerald Studies in Reproduction, Culture and Society
Series Editors: Petra Nordqvist, Manchester University, UK and Nicky Hudson, De Montfort University, UK
This book series brings together scholars from across the social sciences and humanities who are working in the broad field of human reproduction. Reproduction is a growing field of interest in the UK and internationally, and this series publishes work from across the lifecycle of reproduction addressing issues such as conception, contraception, abortion, pregnancy, birth, infertility, pre- and postnatal care, pre-natal screen and testing, IVF, prenatal genetic diagnosis, mitochondrial donation, surrogacy, adoption, reproductive donation, family-making and more. Books in this series will focus on the social, cultural, material, legal, historical and political aspects of human reproduction, encouraging work from early career researchers as well as established scholars. The series includes monographs, edited collections and shortform books (between 20–50,000 words). Contributors use the latest conceptual, methodological and theoretical developments to enhance and develop current thinking about human reproduction and its significance for understanding wider social practices and processes.
Further titles in this series
Pam Lowe, Sarah-Jane Page, Anti-Abortion Activism in the UK: Understanding Religion, Gender and Reproductive Rights in the Public Sphere
Christina Weis, Commercial Surrogacy and Migration in Russia
Editorial Board
Asia Pacific
Professor Mark Andrejevic, Monash University, Australia
Professor Rod Broadhurst, Australian National University, Australia
Dr Akane Kanai, Monash University, Australia
Dr Monique Mann, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Dr Brady Robards, Monash University, Australia
Dr Campbell Wilson, Monash University, Australia
Europe
Professor Ross Coomber, University of Liverpool, UK
Dr Rutger Leukfeldt, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, Netherlands
Dr Adrian Scott, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Professor Majid Yar, Lancaster University, UK
North America
Associate Professor Michael Adorjan, University of Calgary, Canada
Professor Walter DeKeseredy, West Virginia University, USA
Professor Benoît Dupont, University of Montreal, Canada
Associate Professor David Maimon, Georgia State University, USA
Assistant Professor James Popham, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
Title Page
The Cryopolitics of Reproduction on Ice: A New Scandinavian Ice Age
Charlotte Kroløkke
University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
Thomas Søbirk Petersen
University of Roskilde, Denmark
Janne Rothmar Herrmann
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Anna Sofie Bach
University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
Stine Willum Adrian
Aalborg University, Denmark
Rune Klingenberg
Roskilde University, Denmark
Michael Nebeling Petersen
University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China
Copyright Page
Emerald Publishing Limited
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First edition 2020
Copyright © authors, 2020. Published under an exclusive license.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-83867-043-6 (Print)
ISBN: 978-1-83867-042-9 (Online)
ISBN: 978-1-83867-044-3 (Epub)
Contents
| List of Tables | x |
| About the Authors | xi |
| Acknowledgments | xiii |
| Introduction | 1 |
| 1. Scandinavian Legal Cryo Landscapes | 3 |
| 2. The Scandinavian Welfare States | 3 |
| 3. Freeze and Re-Animate. A Cryopolitical Framework | 7 |
| 4. Reproductive Imaginaries and Methodological Entanglements | 13 |
| 5. Chapter Overview | 15 |
| Chapter 1 The Market in Ice | 19 |
| 1. Introduction | 19 |
| 2. The Legal Framework | 21 |
| 2.1. The Development of Private Cryopreserved Sperm Banking in Scandinavia Up To 1997 | 26 |
| 2.2. Challenging Heteronormativity Through the Market | 27 |
| 2.3. From “Business-to-Business” to “Business-to-Consumer”: Danish Cryo-sperm Goes Global | 28 |
| 2.4. The Story of Why the Cold North Kept the Eggs at Home | 30 |
| 3. Theorizing the Market in Ice | 31 |
| 4. Imaginaries of Travelling Sperm | 34 |
| 4.1. Nature and Safety | 35 |
| 4.2. Kinship and the Best Interests of the Child | 36 |
| 4.3. Commercialization | 37 |
| 5. Imaginaries of Domesticated Eggs | 39 |
| 5.1. Nature and Safety | 40 |
| 5.2. Kinship and the Best Interests of the Child | 43 |
| 5.3. Commercialization | 44 |
| 6. Summary | 45 |
| Chapter 2 Disease: On the Use of Freezing on Medical Indication | 47 |
| 1. Introduction | 47 |
| 2. The Legal Framework | 49 |
| 3. Theorizing Disease | 52 |
| 4. Imaginaries of Medical Freezing | 55 |
| 4.1. Imaginaries of Progress and Possibility | 55 |
| 4.2. Medical Freezing and the New Regime of Risk Prediction and Management | 57 |
| 4.3. Cryo-insurance and the Imaginary of Reproductive Futurity | 62 |
| 4.4. Imaginaries of “Normal” Womanhood and “Potent”Masculinity | 66 |
| 5. Summary | 70 |
| Chapter 3 Delay: On the Use of Freezing for Non-Medical Reasons | 73 |
| 1. Introduction | 73 |
| 2. The Legal Framework | 76 |
| 3. Theorizing Delay | 78 |
| 4. Imaginaries on Freezing for Non-Medical Reasons | 81 |
| 4.1. Imaginaries of Reproductive Autonomy | 81 |
| 4.1.1. Egg Freezing as a Tool to Strengthen Women’s Individual Autonomy | 83 |
| 4.1.2. Delay as Socio-Cultural Coercion and Market Exploitation | 85 |
| 4.2 Imaginaries of Rightly Timed Kinship | 88 |
| 4.2.1. Kinship Temporalities and the Best Interests of the Child | 88 |
| 4.2.2. Kinship Temporalities and the Best Interests of (Older) Women | 90 |
| 5. Summary | 93 |
| Chapter 4 Death and Destruction | 95 |
| 1. Introduction | 95 |
| 2. The Legal Framework | 96 |
| 3. Theorizing Death and Destruction | 98 |
| 4. Imaginaries of Death and Destruction | 101 |
| 4.1. Dr Frankenstein’s Monstrous Technologies | 102 |
| 4.2. When Death No Longer Does Us Part. Imaginaries of Families Forever | 104 |
| 4.2.1. From the Deposit with Love | 104 |
| 4.2.2. Latent Siblings, Liminal Life | 107 |
| 5. Summary | 111 |
| Chapter 5 Disturb | 113 |
| 1. Introduction | 113 |
| 2. The Legal Framework | 114 |
| 3. Theorizing Disturbance | 117 |
| 4. Imaginaries of Disturbance | 121 |
| 4.1. Disturbances of Reproductive Time – Old Mothers | 122 |
| 4.2. Disturbing the Generational Kinship Order | 124 |
| 4.3. Disturbing Gendered Reproductive Categories | 127 |
| 4.3.1. From Sickness to Reproductive Citizenship in the Welfare State? | 128 |
| 4.3.2. Where Is the Mother? Troubling Reproductive Categorization | 135 |
| 5. Summary | 138 |
| Conclusion | 139 |
| 1. Scandinavian Repro-Cryopolitics | 142 |
| 2. Final Thoughts on Methodology | 146 |
| Appendix: Empirical Work | 149 |
| Bibliography | 155 |
| Index | 175 |
List of Tables
Table 1. Scandinavian Legal Cryo Landscapes 4
About the Authors
Anna Sofie Bach is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department for the Study of Culture at the University of Southern Denmark. She holds a PhD degree in Sociology from the University of Copenhagen and has published her work in sociology and gender studies journals. Her current study on ovarian tissue cryopreservation cuts cross gender studies, feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS), and medical sociology.
Charlotte Kroløkke is a Professor with special responsibilities in Cultural Analyses of Reproduction in the Department for the Study of Culture at the University of Southern Denmark. Her work has been published in different journals within cultural studies, feminist and gender studies while her latest book Global Fluids. The Cultural Politics of Reproductive Waste and Value was published in the Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality special series in Berghahn Books in 2018.
Janne Rothmar Herrmann is a Professor with special responsibilities in Health Law and Technology at the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen. She is a Governor of the World Association for Medical Law, serves as a member on the Danish Dataethics Council by appointment by the Minister for Justice and has previously served on the Nordic Committee on Bioethics by appointment by the Nordic Council of Ministers.
Michael Nebeling Petersen, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark. Has worked extensively with gay culture and citizenship, new technologies of reproduction and kinship, and digital media and mediated cultures of intimacy. His research centers questions on culture, power, and identity, and he is interested in the intersections between gender, sexuality, kinship, race, and nation.
Rune Klingenberg is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Communication and Arts at Roskilde University. He holds a PhD in Philosophy and Science Studies from Roskilde University and has worked on various issues in practical ethics, including ethical vegetarianism, punishment ethics, and neuroethics.
Stine Willum Adrian is an Associate Professor in Techno-Anthropology at Aalborg University. She holds a PhD in Feminist STS and Cultural Analysis from Linköping University. Adrian’s work has always been interdisciplinary focusing on reproductive technology, gender, intersectionality, feminist materialisms, ethics of technologies, and ethnographic methods. Adrian has previously done comprehensive ethnographic studies on fertility clinics and sperm banks in Denmark and Sweden, and she is currently engaged in researching masculinity, reproduction, and kinship when men freeze and deposit sperm. She has published articles in journals like BioSocieties, European Journal of Womens Studies and Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory.
Thomas Søbirk Petersen (TSP) is Professor with special responsibilities in Ethics at Roskilde University, Department of Communication and Arts. TSP primarily focuses on Criminal Justice Ethics. TSP has published a number of books and articles in international journals dealing with topics like adoption, assisted reproduction, doping, organ donation, neuroethics, criminalization theory, and theories about the quality of life. TSP is a former member of the Danish Council on Ethics and the Danish Centre for Animal Welfare and received the Danish Ministry of Research and Information Technology’s Research Communication Prize in 2013.
Acknowledgments
The research that has gone into this book was supported by the Independent Research Fund Denmark’s collective grant: “Ice Age. Entangled Lives, Times, and Ethics in Fertility Preservation” (grant #7013-00042B). As we identified sociotechnical imaginaries as a fruitful platform for interdisciplinary analyses, Professor Sheila Jasanoff and her Fellows at Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Science, Technology, and Society hosted a valuable research seminar which enabled us to discuss early thoughts. We also owe a special thank you to the Danish-Norwegian Cooperation Fund who awarded us a week long writing retreat at Lysebu, to Schæffergaarden for hosting our second writing retreat as well as the Law School at the University of Copenhagen for providing us with inspiring spaces to write as well as the empirical venues that so generously enabled our access to patients as well as ethnographic studies: Thank you to the Lab of Reproductive Biology in Copenhagen, Cryos International, the 30 sperm deponents that generously shared their stories of having deposits, the 508 Danish students that participated in a survey study, the 11 anonymous women who generously shared their reflections and feelings about the cryopreservation of embryos, and the 41 women who willingly accounted for their experiences with ovarian tissue freezing and transplantation. Thank you to the Library of the Danish Parliament for granting us access to their archives.
A special thank you to our generous colleagues some of whom volunteered to read and comment on earlier drafts of this book: Kathrine Carroll, Karin Hammarberg, Marcia Inhorn, Sheila Jasanoff, Venetia Kantsa, Ori Katz, Thomas Lemke, Lia Lombardo, Guido Pennings, Joanna Radin, Aviad Raz, Julie Smith, Ole Sohn, Zvi Triger, and Catherine Waldby. Valuable insights were gained from our many collaborations with practitioners from the reproductive field and politicians with special interests in the arena. Thank you to: Claus Yding Andersen, May-Britt Kattrup, Stine Gry Kristensen, Peter Reeslev, Maria Salomon, Ole Schou, and S⊘ren Ziebe. Thank you also to Yael Hashiloni-Dolev, Caroline Wraa Rasmussen, and Amit Kaplan who helped facilitate a survey study of Danish students’ attitudes on the cryopreservation of reproductive cells. We were incredibly fortunate to have Caroline Wraa Rasmussen provide us with expert research assistance throughout the writing of this book. We greatly appreciate the work of the two special series editors of the Emerald Studies in Reproduction, Culture, and Society: Nicky Hudson and Petra Nordqvist, the constructive comments made by an anonymous reviewer as well as the Emerald Publishing team led by Jen McCall.
We need to extend a special thank you to our families and friends whose support and understanding have made the writing process easier as well as our university colleagues, administrators, and friends located at Roskilde University, the University of Copenhagen, University of Southern Denmark and Aalborg University.