Auteurs : Petra Nordqvist
Department of Sociology, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Date de mise en ligne : 2019
Résumé
In recent decades, reproductive medicine has become a widespread global phenomenon. Within the field, donor conception, and the use of donated eggs, sperm or embryos from a third party, plays a key role. Despite the importance of those individuals who donate, there has been scant research exploring their experiences. Seeking to contribute to the growing, albeit still small, body of research on donors, this paper advocates bringing the process of donating into dialogue with a sociology of personal life. It suggests that important new insights about the donor experience can be achieved by utilising such a theoretical perspective. The paper applies a broad framework of a sociology of personal life to demonstrate that the decision to donate reverberates within donors’ everyday lives and relationships, and explores, primarily theoretically, how it is that acts of donation bring such issues into play. To this end, the paper examines in detail three ways in which donating interacts with dimensions that are integral to personal life: “living” genetic connectedness, relationality and the intimate body. Ultimately, the paper suggests that a sociology of personal life shows light on new, unexplored questions for this field that demand greater scholarly attention.
Citation : Nordqvist, P. (2019), Un/familiar connections: on the relevance of a sociology of personal life for exploring egg and sperm donation. Sociol Health Illn, 41: 601-615. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12862
licence : This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Lien du document : : https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12862
Mots clés : egg donors, sperm donors, genetic connectedness, personal life, relationality, intimacy
