Based on an in-depth study of clinics offering assisted fertilization, Reproductive Medicine and the Life Sciences in the Contemporary Economy is the first book to examine the commercialization and commodification of know-how derived from the life sciences, from the point of view of organization theory. Assisted fertilization clinics are more than

In Reproductive Medicine and the Life Sciences in the Contemporary Economy, Alexander Styhre and Rebecka Arman illuminate issues that have given rise to terms such as 'the bioeconomy' and 'the baby business'. The life sciences play an increasing role in providing services and commodities consumed by businesses and the public. Based on an in-depth study of clinics offering assisted fertilization in Sweden, this book is the first to examine the commercialization and commodification of know-how derived from the life sciences, from the point of view of organization theory. In the field of reproductive medicine there has been significant growth of both public and private clinical work. Clinics are places where individual interests and concerns and social and institutional arrangements intersect. With a front office where patients encounter various professional groups and a back office comprising the laboratories wherein human reproductive materials are handled and stored, they are more than just places in which medicine is applied in a clinical setting. Clinicians in this field actively influence policy-making and the regulatory frameworks that monitor and set the boundaries for their work. These are places where social and cultural interests and concerns are translated into policies and practice. The clinics are open social systems, responding to and influencing discussions. This book combines organization theory, sociological theory, gender theory, science and technology studies, and philosophy. It emphasises the critical importance of a sociomaterial perspective on organization, stressing how material and social resources are always of necessity folded into each other in day-to-day organizing.

Reproductive medicine has been very successful at developing new therapies in recent years and people having difficulties conceiving have more options available to them than ever before. These developments have led to a new institutional landscape emerging and this innovative volume explores how health and social structures are being developed and reconfigured to take into account the increased use of assisted reproductive technologies, such as IVF treatments. Using Sweden as a central case study, it explores how the process of institutionalizing new assisted reproductive technologies includes regulatory agencies, ethical committees, political bodies and discourses, scientific communities, patient and activists groups, and entrepreneurial activities in the existing clinics and new entrants to the industry. It draws on new theoretical developments in institutional theory and outlines how health innovations are always embedded in social relations including ethical, political, and financial concerns. This book will be of interest to advanced students and academics in health management, science and technology studies, the sociology of health and illness and organisational theory.

Rapid advances in the life sciences means that there is now a far more detailed understanding of biological systems on the cellular, molecular and genetic levels. Sited at the intersection between the life sciences, the engineering sciences and the des

The transnational industry surrounding assisted reproductive technology and regenerative medicine is based on the unacknowledged labour of gamete providers, surrogates and research subjects, and benefits from low labour costs in ‘enabling’ sectors such as logistics and transport. This finding calls for a comprehensive analysis of how the contemporary intersection of neoliberal capitalism and the life sciences - in short, the bioeconomy - capitalises on the body and its (re)productive capacities. The Reproductive Body at Work uptakes this challenge as it explores the relations between value production, labour and the body in one particular realm of the global bioeconomy: the South African bioeconomy of ‘egg donation’. It highlights different forms and dimensions of unacknowledged or precarious human labour that are constitutive for the procurement, brokering and circulation of oocytes as valuable resources. The analysis illustrates that the respective organisation of value and labour renegotiate what ‘the’ (re)productive body can do, which status and roles it is ascribed, which cultural and economic values it signifies and how it is experienced and enacted within a matrix of intersectional power relations. A theoretically profound contribution to the interdisciplinary debate on ‘New materialism’, The Reproductive Body at Work will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as gender studies, medical anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, political economy and science and technology studies.

This book presents a sociomaterial perspective on work and organizational practices within the operating room. Looking at medical work from a sociological perspective and drawing on ethnographic observations conducted in a hospital's operating block, this book analyses the entanglements of humans and technologies in the execution of everyday activities. It highlights how the sociomateriality of work and organizational practices manifests in the encounters between operators and material artifacts and in the way objects and technologies participate in processes and practices of organizational communication. Objects and technologies are also shaped by these very practices, giving rise to a recursive relationship wherein technology, communication, and organizing are intertwined. A sociomaterial understanding of organizational and working practices explains the role of objects and technologies in the generation and enactment of professional knowledge, while questioning how power materializes through the interaction of humans and technical objects. This book will be of great interest to scholars, students, and practitioners interested in how sociomaterial perspectives can inform organization studies and reshape our understanding of the intricate relationships between humans and technologies in healthcare settings.

These essays examine the global impact of infertility as a major reproductive health issue, one that has profoundly affected the lives of countless women and men. The contributors address a range of topics including how the deeply gendered nature of infertility sets the blame on women's shoulders.